Karen's School (7-13)
All right everyone, get ready to feel sorry for the poor college student who had the misfortune of being assigned to a class with Karen Brewer in it as a student teacher. But Mr. Howard is an awesome teacher who absolutely refuses to assimilate to the Karen Borg. And he STAYS THAT WAY FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK!!!!
Of course, that means Mr. Howard is a horrible nasty man who should go fall in a pit in Karen's world.
Chapter 7
Karen gets all Judgey McJudgerson the High Court Judge about Mr. Howard's clothes and hair and somehow lops that into how good he is as a teacher. The illustrator purposefully made him look ugly in order to conform to Karen's views. The rest of Karen's review of him all bows down to "Bawwww he won't bend to my will the way Miss Colman does!" Nobody else in the class has a problem with Mr. Howard. Mr. Howard says they're starting a unit on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and takes out the book to read. Karen has the fucking nerve to say "Mr. Howard, I already read that story" and says Mr. Howard should want to teach them something new. Holy shitballs, Karen, the fact that YOU read the book doesn't mean EVERYONE ELSE IN THE CLASS DID. Maybe it's NEW to them and maybe they WANT to read it. But nope, sorry, they should all be SOL because YOU read the book and nothing else ever matters!!! Mr. Howard tells her he's going to read the book anyway and they'll be doing a lot more things besides just reading it. Karen uses the time to criticize his reading aloud, which nobody else in the class has a problem with but her. Karen's like WTF YA'LL'S PROBLEM HE'S HORRIBLE!!!! Because you know, it's GOT to be their problem and can never, EVER be Karen's because she's always right and everyone else is always wrong unless they're agreeing with her!!! At the end of class, Nancy tells Karen she's in love with Mr. Howard. OH SNAP.
Chapter 8
Karen says Nancy being in love with Mr. Howard explains why she doesn't want to do the school with her, when I seriously think it's because Nancy knows that nothing could can come out of it and she wants to get the hell out while she can. Nancy is very very smart. Nancy's apparently been wearing party dresses and fancy jewelry and curling her hair for school because she wants to dress up for Mr. Howard. She's also been leaving him little gifts. AWWWWWW. Karen thinks being nice to Mr. Howard means Nancy is hurting Miss Colman's feelings. I...WHAT? WHY would it hurt Miss Colman's feelings to see a student of hers doing what to her seems to be a completely unbidden act of kindness for another person? Especially a new student teacher who's probably nervous enough about whether he's good with the class or not (Karen is NOT helping!), and these gifts show him that the class does in fact like him and he must be doing a good job. That wouldn't hurt her feelings, that would be a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming to her and make her extremely PROUD of her student's kindness! I really, really don't understand the way Karen thinks. Especially in this book. Karen gets Hannie to talk about the school so they can get off the subject of her archnemesis Mr. Howard, but Nancy is not having any of that and decides to show them the extremely CUTE poem she wrote for Mr. Howard. Nancy is too nervous to give the poem to him herself so she asks Karen or Hannie to do it. Karen's like EWWWW NO!!!! but Hannie is fine with it.
Chapter 9
FIRST DAY OF MISS KAREN'S SCHOOL let the circus begin. Karen's students head on over for the first day of being enslaved to Karen. Andrew whispers something to Keith, and Karen is all "OMG NO FREAKING *TALKING!!!!!*" Oh my god, the irony STINGS with this one. Then she yells at the TWO-YEAR-OLDS for playing because "THIS. IS. REAL SCHOOOOOOOL!!!!" Hannie's like omg Karen chill, they're two and don't like sitting still. She then tells Andrew to remember to raise his hand, which is something she NEVER, EVER does. She yanks some My Little Ponies from Emily and makes her cry, and Karen doesn't have a single care to give. At the end of the class, she gives everyone homework, including the two-year-olds. And she pitches a fit about Mr. Howard? I'm entirely sure Mr. Howard would not make his students cry and give two-year-olds homework.
Chapter 10
Throughout the day, Karen bitches at Andrew for not doing his "homework," going on and on about "BUT THIS IS REAL SCHOOL!!!!!" All she is going to do is instill a debilitating school phobia into them for when they have to go to ACTUAL real school. When the next day of Miss Karen's School starts, nobody wants to come. At all. But Karen forces them, actually going over to Callie and Keith's house and DRAGGING THEM TO HER PLACE FOR "SCHOOL." Where are Callie and Keith's parents, and why the FUCK are they allowing this?! Of course nobody did the homework. They're TWO AND FOUR. They're too damn young to get the concept of homework! I didn't get homework until first grade! Karen makes them all stay an extra hour to make up for the work they didn't do. That is bullshit. They are PRESCHOOLERS and you're not teaching them, Karen, you're BULLYING them. Andrew cries "NO FAIR!" and Karen's like HEY HEY NO CALLING OUT EVEN THOUGH IT'S ALL I EVER DO WHEN I'M AT SCHOOL. The older kids decide they want to try writing words now instead of tracing letters, but Karen's like "NOPE SORRY YOU'RE NOT READY FOR WORDS. TRACE OR GO TO HELL." Forget you, Karen, I'm pretty sure THEY know what they are ready for better than you do. She sulks that the two-year-olds are playing instead of working. Gee, Karen, maybe there's a REASON nobody puts two-year-olds in school yet!!! The kids are getting annoyed with her and say they want recess. Her response is to SCREAM at them "No wiggling! No talking! And no My Little Ponies!!!" And then of course she assigns more homework. And WHY are Callie and Keith's parents allowing this BULLY to come into their home, drag their kids across the way to her house, and bully them in the name of "school?!" These kids are gonna be so screwed up when it comes time for them to go to a real school.
Chapter 11
Mr. Howard has become the kids' full-time teacher now. He's made every subject of the curriculum somehow conform to their Charlie and the Chocolate Factory unit (in math they measure the dimensions of a pretend chocolate factory and build it with blocks, in art they draw pictures of characters from the book, etc). And this is supposed to be a BAD teacher? Sounds like the complete OPPOSITE of a bad teacher to me. Then he announces they're having a "chocolate factory party" at the end of the unit. See, THIS is how you do parties in school; you tie them into the unit you're studying and then tack them on at the END. You don't just throw random parties for the sake of having a party. Take notes, Miss Colman. But since this is a class party, of course Karen has to take everything over, and she starts firing a barrage of ways to be the center of attention at Mr. Howard and will not. Shut. Up. Mr. Howard is trying to explain the damn party to everyone and Karen just keeps interrupting him with shit she plans on doing for it. So Mr. Howard finally tells her, "Karen, I know you have a lot of ideas but can you please quiet down so I can finish explaining and the other kids can share their own ideas?" This is an extremely reasonable request and Mr. Howard did absolutely nothing wrong in making it. So how does Karen respond?
She says "I KNEW MR. HOWARD DIDN'T LIKE ME!!!! HE DOESN'T WANT TO HEAR MY IDEAS!!! I HATE HIM!!!"
What. The. FUCK?!
HE WAS JUST FUCKING FINE WITH HEARING YOUR IDEAS UNTIL YOU STARTED INTERRUPTING HIM AND REFUSED TO LET ANY OTHER KIDS SHARE ANY IDEAS. ALL HE DID WAS ASK YOU TO QUIET DOWN SO THEY COULD DO SO. HE DIDN'T SAY HE DIDN'T LIKE YOUR IDEAS, HE ACTUALLY SAID HE LIKED THEM UNTIL YOU WENT OFF THE DEEP END!!!!
WHAT kid thinks this way?! Well, okay, I thought this way up until I was a sophomore in high school, but I'm not going to pretend I was a normal well-adjusted kid and so Ann shouldn't pretend Karen is either! NO normal kid thinks this way when told to quiet down and stop interrupting!!!!
AUGH.
Chapter 12 (in which Karen is an insufferable brat to Mr. Howard)
....and Mr. Howard gets her GOOD.
Nancy is still being adorable with her precocious crush on Mr. Howard. Karen doesn't care 'cause HE'S TERRIBLE HE TOLD ME TO BE QUIET! HOW DARE HE! All Hannie cares about is the free chocolate. Lol, rock on, Hannie. Karen decides maaaybe she and Mr. Howard got off to a bad start and so she's going to be "nicer" and "polite" to him today. Except she is absolutely ANYTHING but. Mr. Howard asks Natalie to read aloud and Karen yells "BUT BUT MISS COLMAN NEVER MAKES HER READ ALOUD UNLESS SHE WANTS TO 'CAUSE SHE TALKS FUNNY!!!" I wish Natalie had thrown the book at her face at this point or at least screamed at the top of her lungs at her. And who the hell is Karen to just ASSUME Natalie didn't want to read? Maybe she DID. She never objected! In art class, Karen's like "Y U NO PUT PICTURES ON THE BULLETIN BOARD" and Mr. Howard's like "Uh, because it's FULL?" Karen stares down Miss Colman hoping she will come to her rescue and make Mr. Howard bend to her will, but she's not forthcoming. Karen finally picks up on the fact that Mr. Howard doesn't need or want any help from her. But the next day, she sees a stain on Mr. Howard's tie and interrupts class to go HEY MR. HOWARD! YOU HAVE A STAIN! FIX IT! Okay, if I saw stains on my teachers' shirts or ties I'd tell them "Uh you have a stain did you notice that?" but not in the middle of the fucking class. I'd mention it to them as I was walking into class or something. Mr. Howard tells Karen to raise her hand for Pete's sake. The next day Karen is spazzing and screaming all over the place and instead of going "uh indoor voice plz" which obviously does NOTHING, Mr. Howard says "Karen Brewer! Stop your shouting! I can't hear myself think!" GO MR. HOWARD GO!!! And then they move back to Chocolate Factory day and Karen keeps on screaming them out over and over and over until Mr. Howard finally tells her to shut up for the rest of the day. So of course, he is now "Smelly Mean Mr. Howard" again. For Chrissake, this has GOT to be a passive-aggressive satire or something. There is just NO WAY Ann could make the kid behave like this and think it is perfectly fine, acceptable behavior and the teacher's in the wrong, not the kid! There is just. No. Flipping. WAY.
Chapter 13 (Karen is even more of an insufferable brat)
Mr. Howard is mean and should die in a pit because he disciplined Karen for acting up in class. So Karen decides to go on strike. She tapes a "strike" sign to her shirt, and Andrew finds out and starts getting a few IDEAS for the next round of Miss Karen's School. I already told you about how I went "on strike" in senior year in the comments of masterdivinity's snark of this book. But I didn't do it like this and purposefully attempt to disrupt the class. Karen goes to school and refuses to talk, do any work, or do anything but sit there and sulk. Mr. Howard's face is turning red when he sees this. Like I said, Mr. Howard is a young aspiring teacher who is probably nervous enough as it is wondering if he's going to do a good job with the kids and y'know, not ruin their lives and everything, and in comes Karen acting up and screaming at him and then going "on strike" against him. I want to buy this guy a beer. Karen strikes away, and after lunch Miss Colman calls her over and tells her she can either cut this "strike" shit out or she can go to the principal's office. Karen is appalled and ends the strike but still plans on being a bitch to Mr. Howard.
My soulbond Mia, who's never read the BSC or LS books before, was looking over my shoulder the whole time I was writing this snark and providing a witty commentary, and when I was through snarking Chapter 8 she was like "Wow, this Karen sounds like a little bitch." By the time I finished snarking Chapter 10 she said Karen is a big bully. She's never even read the book xD