Though, it is difficult to believe that everyone does in fact play the culturally assigned roles of report and rapport speakers by stereotypically assigning language to gender, it is apparent that a great many in our society do in fact follow this trend. I can remember myself thinking about this subject on several occasions in fact. At my high school there were two teachers assigned for the social sciences classes. Mr. Bueller who taught the geography/economics and sociology classes and Mrs. Wheatly who taught the American History class, aka: the class of death. Now what surprised me about these two was how there teaching styles seemed to differ so dramatically from one another.


Mr. Bueller always had something to say, and when I say always I mean always. The man barely stopped to catch his breath sometimes; he liked hearing his own voice way to much. A truly report style. And, if you wanted to have a free day all you had to do was ask him about his good old college days and then you would get all the hell raising escapades he had been on in his frat. At this time, Mr. Bueller was going through the beginnings of his forties and probably was distracted by gray more than youthful remembrance. Don't get me wrong the man knew his stuff, he could tell you basically anything you wanted to know about history and political function, as long as you accepted his own personal perspective. And as for actual work, we probably did about three assignments all year.


Mrs. Wheatly on the other hand was a completely different animal. She didn't bark...she bit and hard too. Now just so you can get the picture of this woman I would like you to think of the finest piece of silver jewelry with sparkling emeralds glittering with a great intensity. Now throw that piece of jewelry in an ancient tomb for about 3 thousand years, and equip the tomb with so many crocodiles, compressing walls, and pongee sticks that not even Angelina Jolie in a g-string with a nuclear weapon could get the evil thing out.



Mrs. Wheatly was fifty-seven when I was in her Senior American History class, and she had lost none of her intensity. Everyday at seven o'clock she was in the class room, writing her notes in its small yet mystically clear enough for blind to see from the back of the room font. Her silver head bobbing over and over, covering every inch of the board. She always had her lesson plan laid out years in advance, mostly because she had lived through practically all of history. I can remember that everyone had to come in at least at 7:15 just to keep up with everything. She always had time to allow questions during the lecture, and she was constantly giving quizzes. Now if that wasn't bad enough, Mrs. Wheatly also had here final exam. A 500 to 700 question test with multiple choice, fill in the blank, true and false, and some but little matching.


A test which made some adults awed by the woman's sheer lack of mercy. But she always had to have every thing prepared, and she never tried to come off as dominate in a conversation. She was better at listening to others problems and allowing them to come up with the answers they already knew was best.


Though their teaching styles followed the report and rapport it was completely different when it came to discipline. With Mr. Bueller it was live and let live, he didn't want to face an altercation if he could help it. If somebody did anything such as cheat, if that person was particularly popular he would act like the whole thing was funny, or if someone talked about performing the worst bouts of debauchery he would think the whole circumstance funny. If that wasn't enough if something really bad went down such as a fight, he would try to stop it by telling a child like "stop it" and would proceed to run across the hall to Mrs. Wheatley. She would come flying, in force both parties away from each other, with herself in between, and would say if they didn't stop it she would personally insure that they never be able to fight ever again." Obviously the ability to truly express ones self only comes when you are really angered.