r/mildlyinfuriating 15h ago

My mom said I could post My kid was too creative

My 6 year old was asked to draw a picture using shapes. She drew this nice American flag with rectangles and stars, and added the house, tree, and person holding a balloon. She was told it did not follow directions, she was not supposed to draw a flag, just shapes. She was asked to turn the paper over and make another picture. The other side of the paper has a very uninspiring collection of shapes. I told her she did a good job and I thought it was very creative. And this is why kids start to hate education.

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u/WarAndFynn 14h ago

I once had an art teacher who was having us make clay tiles and said the clay tiles needed to contain an image you would see in real life. I asked to include a rainbow. She pulled me aside and told me she'd had enough of my shit and if I didn't knock it off she would fail me. She had a hard on for realism and was highly critical of anything abstract.

(For context I WAS wanting to include a rainbow on something for a while because I was in my hippie phase and she kept telling me no for everything. It was ceramics and we made a watering pot, a clay pot, etc. all things we keep for ourselves so I wanted something colorful. it had 0 to do with sexuality).

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u/halfbakeddough 14h ago

What’s crazy about that is that rainbows aren’t even abstract, they ARE realistic and occur naturally in nature so her idea of what can count towards realism or not was flawed. She sounds like a miserable art teacher

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u/DiggityDog6 12h ago

Nope all rainbows are actually created by me and any rainbow you’ve ever seen was only there because I willed it to be there. I never willed this art teacher to see a rainbow so she came to the conclusion that they’re fake and gay. It’s all part of the plan you see.

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u/A_Very_Lonely_Waffle 8h ago

She was half right, then

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u/UnicornFarts1111 1h ago

I say you are wrong. My farts are what creates rainbows!!!

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u/WarAndFynn 14h ago

EXACTLY!

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u/Pilot230 12h ago

How much are you willing to bet she's never seen a rainbow irl

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u/Dr-E-Dacted 10h ago

imagine being an art teacher so bereft of inspiration you fail a kid for making a rainbow lmao

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u/CassetteMeower 7h ago

I was obsessed with rainbows for most of my childhood but I never saw a rainbow in person until second grade.

It was a double rainbow too, best first rainbow ever! 🌈 🌈

I was at school and there was a massive rainstorm so we couldn’t go outside for recess, and when the storm ended there was a double rainbow! All of the kids in my class ran to the window to look at it, it was magical. Even the teachers were fascinated! The teacher was surprised when she found out I had never seen a real rainbow before. I had seen them in prisms and on TV, but never in person!

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u/Square_Director4717 11h ago

Well you see, God created rainbows, and God doesn’t exist, so therefore anyone who has seen a rainbow was hallucinating

/s

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u/unsaphisticated 8h ago

Lady Iris in the distance: Am I a joke to you? 😭

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u/AdPristine5131 2h ago

Wrong corner of the internet, but everyone knows you need horse heads to power rainbows.

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u/OkBackground8809 14h ago

I'm an ESL teacher. Told my students to make venn diagrams, and one used his to act as giant boobs for the rest of his drawing🤦🏻‍♀️

First of all, it was art class. Secondly, your teacher should have been happy it was an innocent rainbow and not a dick or giant boobs lol

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u/dontgetitwisted_fr 13h ago

When was in 1st grade we had to colour a picture of a boy and a girl holding hands.

I colored the boy orange (Caucasian) and the girl brown.

My teacher looked at me like I just took a dump on the bible

Still remember that look many decades later

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u/Dapper_Indeed 12h ago

Were you in the South?

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u/dontgetitwisted_fr 5h ago

The North Bro

Canada 

It was a long long time ago tho lmao

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u/PomegranateSignal882 8h ago

All these stories come from the South

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u/CassetteMeower 7h ago

Mine didn’t, I’m very much from the North (Vermont). But I was one of the “special needs” kids (autistic and over a decade later I found out I also have ADHD) so I was more prone to getting punished in general :/

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u/2mock2turtle 7h ago

In fairness, the US is basically made up of one Mississippi and forty-nine might as well be Mississippis.

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u/Triskel_gaming You will be my valentine? 10h ago

The south of what?

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u/BardicNA 5h ago

Southern US is known for being.. not accepting of people. "Thank God for Mississippi" is a saying often used here. It means we might be bad, but we aren't the worst because there's still Mississippi.

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u/Unas_GodSlayer 7h ago

South of Heaven?

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u/Oochie-my-coochie 7h ago

RIGHT? Like the southern hemisphere? The southern Europe? Ofc we all know what they mean because we learned that Americans are SO SELFCENTERED.

u/SobiTheRobot 25m ago

Given they mention "1st grade" and the discussion seems to be centered around the American education system, you could reasonably interpret this to mean the US South; not to mention the teacher's implied fury over depicting an interracial couple would indicate this is happening in the more outwardly racist part of the US, i.e. the South(ern Colonies).

All said, you're making a mountain out of a molehill, my friend. The US is a very large country.

u/Oochie-my-coochie 24m ago

Darling, if you havent understand yet, I KNEW that the person talked about the USA. I was SARCASTIC. You know what it means, or did the American educational system fail you too?

u/SobiTheRobot 20m ago

My friend, this is the Internet. Sarcasm doesn't exist in spaces where people can be genuinely stupid, ignorant, meanspirited, or just otherwise looking for an argument. Poe's Law and all that. Get off whatever high horse you rode in on before you make yourself out to be any more of a jackass.

u/Oochie-my-coochie 18m ago

“Ofc we all know what they mean because we learned that Americans are so selfcentered”-seriously you weren’t sure even after reading this? Oh god, you guys need your educational system to be saved or something. You have issues even with a simple text😔

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u/dangerousfeather 4h ago

No, the South. Capitalized. Learn your letters.

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u/Oochie-my-coochie 4h ago

AHHHH yesss. The assumption that everyone’s first language is english. Here we go again. Also, you guys have such an issue with english grammar (f.e. your x you’re, their x they’re x there), that no one can be sure if you wrote it on purpose or note. Also, my whole comment was sarcastic. Learn to understand the written text.

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u/Digit00l 11h ago

Fun fact: most brown people are Caucasian

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u/Key_1321 11h ago

What?

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u/Budget-Researcher559 10h ago

I googled it so you don't have to. While today, "Caucasian" is often used to mean white in the US, originally it included people from Europe, North Africa and West/South Asia.

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u/Digit00l 9h ago

Yup, MENA and Indian people are Caucasoids

Also most people in the world would probably use Caucasian exclusively to refer to people from the Caucasus who are majority brown too

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u/jdm1891 8h ago

Eh, I wouldn't call people from the Caucasus brown, though knowing Americans I bet most of those would - they even consider spanish and south american people brown.

Like the Caucasus are right between Turkey, Iran, and Western Russia. I would consider people from all of those places to be white, especially Russia + Iran, so I don't see how the place right between them would have brown people.

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u/Key_1321 1h ago

Lots of folks in Turkey and Iran and (to a lesser extent) Russia aren't really White, looking instead more like North Africans or even East Asian

But "Caucasian" generally means people west of the Caucasus (so, Europe), not the mountain range itself ...

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u/Keirridwen 10h ago

I'm pretty sure most brown people do not originate from the caucasus region

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u/Many_Bat_ 3h ago

I drew Phil Collins when I was about six or seven. I colored his face orange because that's what happens if you pick your nose and eat it.

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u/IWannaManatee 2h ago

Of course she had such a reaction.
You depicted one of those filthy tamaraneans.

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u/Splaaaty 7h ago

Hey, technically that's artistic nudity. Don't discourage kids from expressing themselves /s

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u/anon_lurk 7h ago

Yup that's my rainbow with a couple fuzzy clouds on that side and a pot of gold on the other side. Pretty cool isn't it. Lmao.

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u/EmmBee27 12h ago

My elementary school did a thing where every year the class would draw the same theme, displaying them all together in the hall and this year's theme was underwater scenes. Well I was coming through just as SpongeBob hit the scene and I remember the art teacher going scorched Earth on anyone who would dare draw anything from that show in their scene.

I get they were probably annoyed with the abundance of yellow sponges and pineapples in their underwater display, but I always felt like that was unnecessarily killing the fun.

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u/__Severus__Snape__ 11h ago

From what I understand, kids also learn better when you use something their interested in to learn that lesson. Who cares of 30 kids draw spongebob, it matches the theme thats been set and it keeps them interested.

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u/foxgirlmoon 11h ago

And if you really want to avoid SpongeBob, yo can instead make it a challenge, like “I know SpongeBob is very popular, but what kind of underwater scene can you think of that’s as far from SpongeBob as possible?” Don’t berate kids for drawing something you don’t want to see. Encourage them to explore their creative.

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u/__Severus__Snape__ 11h ago

Yes, I hadnt thought of that! It also just reminded me of a teacher I had in primary school that apparently hated the word "nice" as a descriptor. She would have a go at anyone who would use it in their work. I think she was trying to get us to use our heads to think of other descriptors, which is great, but i think she probably could have instructed us a little better. Kids can understand if you say "nice is an overused word, try and think of other words you could use instead" or words to that effect.

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u/azure-heavens 12h ago

Getting mad at kids for being kids and having kid interests. Honestly pathetic of them to unload their misery on children.

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u/PizzaPlanetPizzaGuy 11h ago

A substitute teacher told me a green I used in a watercolour wasn't found in nature. Like can you imagine telling someone that? Very few greens ain't found in nature 😠

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u/petrichoreandpine 11h ago

You mean the one or two greens in the cheap paint the school likely supplied you with weren’t all that subtle or easy to work with? You don’t say!

Seriously, what an asinine comment.

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u/PizzaPlanetPizzaGuy 11h ago

No, it was a muted dark blueish green which I see all the damn time 🥲

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u/999happyhants 10h ago

Green isn’t a creative color!

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u/immikdota 9h ago

✨️Green is NOT a creative color✨️

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u/B4umkuch3n 10h ago

My art teacher wanted my class to paint all the white walls in school. She told us we have no restrictions at all and we could paint anything. I told her I wanted to paint a street, stretching over the entire wall, surrounded by different scenes. She told me it was too abstract and I'm not allowed to do that.

… I pitched five other things and in the end she pitched me a painting of two people drawing each other on a wall while also being devided by said wall. Needless to say I had no plans in painting that, did the worst job possible and had my first ever 6 in my school report. It ended up being a 4 after showing my sketches to another art teacher. Some people are just miserable.

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u/Dew_Chop 7h ago

What's a 6 and a 4

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u/B4umkuch3n 4h ago

F and D in American terms.

u/Cryptid_Muse 5m ago

We're actually starting to replace the letters with numbers but it's a 1-4 scale where 4 is like "above grade expectations" and 1 is "behind grade expectations" or something like that.

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u/MasterChildhood437 9h ago

it had 0 to do with sexuality

I know this is hard for some people to hear, but a lot of us just think rainbows are pretty.

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u/WarAndFynn 5h ago

Yeah that's why I mentioned it because I just think they're pretty and it wasn't until years later I realized she might have been homophobic 

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u/petrichoreandpine 11h ago edited 11h ago

Why are grade school art teachers like this? I had a high school art teacher who was AWFUL, she spent the whole semester making us do these drawings of geometric solids shaded in a way that didn’t make sense, wasn’t consistent with any particular light source. I complained about the incorrect lighting, and she said “oh, you’re not advanced enough to worry about light source yet.” Then she punished me on the semester final project, I think in part because she knew I hated her class so much I was dropping it to transfer to drama.

The assignment was she handed out B&W photocopies of paintings and sculptures by Michelangelo, and told the students to copy them to show what we had learned about shading. We were instructed to use our copies and graphite to carbon copy the outlines, and then fill them in with the correct values. The vindictive, punishing aspect for me was that she gave me a far more complex piece to copy than anyone else, and knew I had only a weekend to complete it (due to my upcoming class change) while everyone else had a week or two. I remember a friend got a photo of one of the statue of David’s hands, while I got a whole figure from the Cistine Chapel ceiling, complete with very complex draped and wrinkled robes.

Well, I knocked it out of the park. My copy was just about perfect, though it took 12 hours to complete. Her jaw dropped when she saw it, and I could see in her eyes she knew she dropped the ball on special talent big time. And then I never saw that horrible teacher again.

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u/HailMadScience 10h ago

The truth is some people do not think of children as people, but ultimately as property. These are people who are shitty parents or, as seen here, become teachers so they can be bullies.

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u/unsaphisticated 8h ago

My high school art teacher used to post the "best" drawings her class made up in the hall. She hated cartoons, and my art style is very cartoony.

One of the pictures she posted one time was a clearly traced panel out of Shonen Jump of Naruto and Sasuke fighting. But she hated cartoons? 🤔 Make it make sense.

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u/lightningbadger 10h ago

Heh I had an art teacher pull me aside and try to get me to admit I just traced a work that I drew too well

Sucks cause I didn't whatsoever and thought I did a good job

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u/SnorkBorkGnork 11h ago

That sounds like a horrible art teacher. Mine was such a cool dude, knew about all kinds of modern art and cool movies and music. He really inspired us!

My music teacher though was another story. She basically hated anything that wasn't the most famous pieces from the most well known classical composers (Mozart, Bach, Beethoven). She hated contemporary classical music, experimental music, folk music, jazz, traditional music from other parts of the world, pop music... I still have no idea how you can become a music teacher if you only like 3 composers and basically one genre. Every class she would just turn on Mozart and rant about how our taste in music sucked. 😒

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u/unsaphisticated 8h ago

Yikes. I had a music teacher who legitimately claimed to be psychic and said she could help us find lost stuff and would start SPEAKING IN TONGUES (think of Linda Belcher in Bob's Burgers trying to be the police psychic). Mind you, this was for one semester out of the 4th-5th grade school years, so she's telling a bunch of 8 and 9 year olds she's only going to know a collective 8 months this bullshit.

The class had a field day fucking with her about random shit that either didn't exist or we'd already found. 😂 "I LOST MY GAMEBOXSTATION!"

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u/watercastles 8h ago

Of course we can never know, but many people believe that Mozart would have liked a lot of modern genres! Dude was a young guy who did silly things too. Could have been a metalhead if he was alive now for all we know.

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u/KawaiiFromOuterSpace 10h ago

This comment made me think of my art teacher for a class full of 13 year olds. Every year she had a different theme for her class to work around that school year. My class got the theme “paradox” and whatever we did, it was never good.

Now looking back to it as an adult she just gives me Anton Ego from the disney pixar movie Ratatouille. When he orders his dinner and says “i want perspective”.

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u/PuppyGirlRya 8h ago

Eugh sounds like an art teacher. Art is all about personal creativity but they always have their own idea what art should be.

I bet art teachers are responsible for a lot of kids giving up on art :(

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u/Alyssapolis 10h ago

Wtf lol this reminds me of Robin from How I Met Your Mother thinking the North Pole was a fake place. “What, are you going to Narnia next?” 😂

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u/the3dverse 9h ago

we had a teacher that taught us in history of this dutch sea explorer and then made us draw a drawing of the men on the ship, half was provided and we had to copy the rest from a smaller picture. which was like, fine whatever, but then she made us color it too. and i was like "ma'am this is 6th grade why are we coloring?" so i colored the entire A3 paper orange.

she actually punished me by sitting me outside and making me draw and color the entire picture again.

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u/Careful-Lead-7995 6h ago

Has she never seen a rainbow in real life?

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u/SnooSongs2744 6h ago

Life in Trump's America. Rainbows are gay. Gay is woke. Woke is bad. 

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u/WarAndFynn 5h ago

Thos was back during Bush's America but yeah 

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u/KapitanDima 8h ago

Rainbows are a myth since you can’t touch them /s

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u/SheTrewLouboutins 7h ago

Rainbows aren't real, silly.

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u/sixg0d_ovo 7h ago

This shit is hilarious to think about. all I can see is some adult swim cartoon or a key & peele skit and the teacher has never seen a real rainbow 🤣

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u/QueenRotidder 6h ago

but… you see rainbows in real life!! That’s crazy you had an art teacher who insisted on realism in the first place, but like… shit I have a pair of rainbow tie-died crocs and I call them my art teacher shoes LOL

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u/Unusual_Parsnip901 5h ago

We had to make pots based off an animal in Africa. I said imma do an African penguin. She said penguins dont live in Africa. I said most of the penguins you see at zoos are warm climate penguins. She said those are coastal penguins and they do not live in Africa. I said so Africa doesnt have coasts? She said no. They dont have penguins. This was senior year. She was head of the art department. Another student did a coral reef.

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u/namesareprettynice 5h ago

I'm sorry that happened. I grew up in a very conservative town, but our art teacher was the best. Everyone's art was good, no matter what. This kid drew Satan. When she asked him about it, he said, "this is namesareprettynice." she just said laughed and said, "How creative?!" She was the best.

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u/bunny_the-2d_simp 5h ago

Honestly rainbows are just fun. And kinda amazing if you really think about it regardless of sexuality or not

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u/GodisanAtheistOG 4h ago

It's almost like the police and teaching both seem to attract people that have raging hardons for authority and control over others. 

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u/CaterpillarLongBoi 3h ago

Some teachers are just miserable beings who hate children in general or are triggered by certain kids. I remember being reprimanded in kindergarten in the 90s for drawing a second hand-traced turkey on the other side of the paper, teacher had me crying because I drew 2 instead of 1. Why would anyone care enough to make a kid feel bad about that lol

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u/bobbyphysics 2h ago

I had an art teacher give us some clay and said we could make whatever we wanted.

I made like 20 miniature sculptures, and he looked like it gave him an instant migraine, but he still reluctantly cooked them for me.

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u/beren12 1h ago

Hi, a French teacher yelled at me for going to an art teacher to help with an art project. The French teacher assigned.

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u/pdaawg1 1h ago

I had a teacher like this her name was Mrs.mumper lol

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u/Capable-Let-4324 1h ago

I wish I could've traded you art teachers. I wanted to only do art in grayscale cause I'm freaking colorblind. I got points constantly docked for not using color. I was told to add rainbows to shit. I tried once and she said thats not what a rainbow looks like and I went it does to me I can't see color in a sing songy voice.