Mei Flower, a 30-year-old high school English teacher, at Randomville High, reflects on a recent conference with the parent of a child who is failing:
YES I AM 532% AT FAULT FOR YOUR CHILD'S GRADE. IT IS ALL MY OWN RESPONSIBILITY AND IF I WERE A GOOD TEACHER, WHEN I SAW THAT HE WAS GOING TO FAIL, I WOULD HAVE PICKED UP HIS PENCIL AND DONE THAT WORK MYSELF.
File under: What I Should Have Said.
But teaching at RH does have its bright spots. In a separate entry, Ms. Flower does the happy dance when her ninth-graders finally get Oscar Wilde:
At first I had to explain a LOT of passages to them, but they began to spend more time trying to understand for themselves, and today ... I didn't have to explain anything, and they were laughing themselves into a frenzy. ...I think my proudest moment was when one kid said, totally unprompted, "Oscar Wilde was a genius!" It's what I've been saying all along, but I was so happy that they were actually ENJOYING the play that I didn't even have the urge to say, "I TOLD you so!"
Nice work.
