Part 44 of my attempt at writing a novel
I am currently attempting to write a novel - primarily aimed at gifted children. Yes, one day I might like to see it published properly, and eventually I may resort to publishing it myself, but at the moment, mostly I am writing it for fun.
I am sharing all parts of it with a select audience at another site but I shared an early section of it more publically, and now it's been suggested to me by one of my readers that I should share another part. I'm doing so partly because I am hoping some people might be willing to tell me if they think I am successfully depicting a gifted child. It's hard to explain what I mean by that - which is part of the problem.
For background - the novel is about a ten year old boy - gifted but not formally identified as such - attending a Catholic primary school in Melbourne, Australia circa 1981. It is not autobiographical, but some scenes and places are certainly influenced by my own life experiences.
If after reading this extract, if you would like to read more, let me know. I'm quite prepared to let more people (within reason) join the group reading along as I write.
Unfortunately things were not anywhere near as interesting when he got to class that day. They had a dictation exercise to do - Mrs Jolly stood up at the front of the class and read a long passage from one of the old state readers that sat in dusty boxes in the cupboard under the blackboard. Chris liked the state readers - there was one for every grade of school and they were novel sized books with plain covers that each contained a lot of short stories and poems. They were pretty old - he had seen them with dates from the 1930s through to the 1950s - and every classroom seemed to have a mixed set of them hidden away somewhere. During his schooling, in odd moments, he had picked one up and read from it just for something interesting to do - but the piece that was being dictated to them was one that he had first read back when he was five years old and in prep. It was probably supposed to be the right level for ten year olds according to the government who had made the books and a lot of the class did seem to find the dictation exercise difficult - but he certainly did not. He was totally bored at having to do something so simple.
Two things made it especially annoying - the first was that Mrs Jolly absolutely knew that he could do this. She knew how well he read. She knew how well he spelled. She knew how well he could write. He could understand that she had to get him to prove that he could do certain things sometimes even when they both knew he could do it - Miss Pease, his teacher the previous year had finally explained it to him once that teachers sometimes needed evidence to prove to other people who did not know the children they were teaching that the child could do what they said - that it was as much about testing the teacher by making them have to prove they were doing their job properly as it was about testing the children they taught. But he felt like this was something he was being asked to prove again and again and again.
The second thing...
When the dictation exercise was completed, Mrs Jolly asked him to take it up and bring it to her at her desk. Penny was asked to hand out a worksheet for the class to be going on with. When Chris took the pile of exercise books up to Mrs Jolly's desk, he could see she was getting ready to mark them - it was easy to tell, because she was so organised about marking. There was a space on the right edge of the desk for Chris to neatly pile the exercise books, there was a space on the left edge of the desk for her to put them after she was finished with each one, and there was an empty space in front of her where she would put each book in turn. Her red pen and her star and happy face stamps were in front of her, and as he put the books down, she reached for the first one. He spoke.
"Mrs Jolly, are you going to mark my dictation work on handwriting?"
"Pardon, Chris?"
"Are you going to mark my dictation work on handwriting? You did last time and I wanted to know if you were going to do it again."
"Well. Yes, I am. Why do you ask?"
"Well, you do not mark anybody else's dictation on handwriting. And I think it is unfair. Last time, Penny and Darren got all their spelling right and you gave them a star and a happy face and wrote down 'Great Job', and I got all my spelling right and you wrote 'Horrible handwriting' on my work and I did not get any stamps at all."
She looked at him with a rather bemused look on her face. "Do you really care about getting stamps, Chris? At your age?"
"Why would you use them with children my age if we were not supposed to care?"
"Well... Christopher, your work is nearly always excellent in nearly every single way. I marked your handwriting on your dictation because I needed to find - I need you to focus on the rather small number of things you are not good at."
"But that is not fair."
"It's perfectly fair. Just because you are good at most things doesn't mean I can ignore the things you are not good at."
"I am not asking you to."
"Then I don't see why we are having this conversation. Go and do your worksheet."
"Are you going to mark my handwriting on that?"
Mrs Jolly looked at him with a stern expression on her face. "That is entirely up to me, Christopher. Now, this discussion is over. Go and sit at your desk and do your worksheet - in your best handwriting. And when you finish early in the way you nearly always do, start writing out 100 times on lined paper, 'I need to constantly try to do my best handwriting.' We'll see if that approach makes you take this more seriously."
Chris went back to his seat as ordered. There was no point in continuing a discussion after the teacher said the discussion was over. They were in charge of the classroom after all and he respected that. He did the worksheet as neatly as he could manage - it was a simple reading comprehension exercise and he finished in a few minutes, before going and getting some lined paper and he began writing out the sentence 'I need to constantly try to do my best handwriting' over and over again. He supposed this was probably a good way to practice his handwriting.
Chris knew his handwriting was far from perfect, but he also did not really think it was entirely his fault. He had learned to write before he started school - his mother had taught him when he insisted on learning once he had worked out - he must have been about three, he though - that writing was the other side of reading. She had taught him how to write all the letters one way and when he had started school, he had found out that the way he wrote letters was wrong. They were not quite the right shape and you were not meant to join them together. It seemed a bit strange to him that there was only one way to write letters because he knew that grown ups all had different handwriting - so different that experts could tell who somebody was by their handwriting so why did school insist there was only one way? But he did his best to do it, but every now and again, his hands seemed to get confused between the way his mother taught him and the way the school insisted on. And then suddenly in Grade Three after years of teachers telling him not to join his letters together, they suddenly started insisting people learn to join their letters together which made things even more confusing. Now his hands seemed to get confused between the way his mother taught him, and the way the school taught him, and the way his mother had taught him to join letters together and the way the school had taught him not to and then the way the school was teaching them too. And his eyes starting to go bad probably had not helped - it was a bit easier now he had glasses. Maybe practicing in the way Mrs Jolly was getting him to do things now would make his hands learn the right way. He had almost finished one sheet of paper when the bell rang for playtime, and he went out to eat his playlunch and he was trying and decide if he was best trying to keep an eye on Bridget or on Penny or on doing something else, when Darren approached him. "Do you want to play cricket, Chris?"
Once again, he wondered why Darren was making such an offer? Was he really sorry for what he had done? Was he trying to make up for it? Chris decided he still did not know and he decided to take the chance. If Darren was genuine, and he was offering some sort of peace settlement - or maybe even more - Christopher felt he had to give it a chance.
"All right."
And so he spent his playtime in the game of cricket. Nothing bad happened. It seemed all right. He went to the toilet near the end of the music and he lined up at the back of the line just as the bell went. He went inside and went to his desk. From the front of the room, Mrs Jolly spoke in an angry tone.
"Chistopher Bolt - go to the office and get a Detention Slip. When I give people a punishment exercise you know that they are expected to stay in at playtime and lunchtime until it is finished. How dare you go out and play cricket when you've done less than thirty of the one hundred lines I gave you. Go and get a Detention Slip and count yourself lucky I am not sending you straight to Sister Anne."
Copyright 2012 Shaun Hately. All Rights Reserved. Not to be shared or distributed in any form by anybody without his express permission.
I am sharing all parts of it with a select audience at another site but I shared an early section of it more publically, and now it's been suggested to me by one of my readers that I should share another part. I'm doing so partly because I am hoping some people might be willing to tell me if they think I am successfully depicting a gifted child. It's hard to explain what I mean by that - which is part of the problem.
For background - the novel is about a ten year old boy - gifted but not formally identified as such - attending a Catholic primary school in Melbourne, Australia circa 1981. It is not autobiographical, but some scenes and places are certainly influenced by my own life experiences.
If after reading this extract, if you would like to read more, let me know. I'm quite prepared to let more people (within reason) join the group reading along as I write.
Unfortunately things were not anywhere near as interesting when he got to class that day. They had a dictation exercise to do - Mrs Jolly stood up at the front of the class and read a long passage from one of the old state readers that sat in dusty boxes in the cupboard under the blackboard. Chris liked the state readers - there was one for every grade of school and they were novel sized books with plain covers that each contained a lot of short stories and poems. They were pretty old - he had seen them with dates from the 1930s through to the 1950s - and every classroom seemed to have a mixed set of them hidden away somewhere. During his schooling, in odd moments, he had picked one up and read from it just for something interesting to do - but the piece that was being dictated to them was one that he had first read back when he was five years old and in prep. It was probably supposed to be the right level for ten year olds according to the government who had made the books and a lot of the class did seem to find the dictation exercise difficult - but he certainly did not. He was totally bored at having to do something so simple.
Two things made it especially annoying - the first was that Mrs Jolly absolutely knew that he could do this. She knew how well he read. She knew how well he spelled. She knew how well he could write. He could understand that she had to get him to prove that he could do certain things sometimes even when they both knew he could do it - Miss Pease, his teacher the previous year had finally explained it to him once that teachers sometimes needed evidence to prove to other people who did not know the children they were teaching that the child could do what they said - that it was as much about testing the teacher by making them have to prove they were doing their job properly as it was about testing the children they taught. But he felt like this was something he was being asked to prove again and again and again.
The second thing...
When the dictation exercise was completed, Mrs Jolly asked him to take it up and bring it to her at her desk. Penny was asked to hand out a worksheet for the class to be going on with. When Chris took the pile of exercise books up to Mrs Jolly's desk, he could see she was getting ready to mark them - it was easy to tell, because she was so organised about marking. There was a space on the right edge of the desk for Chris to neatly pile the exercise books, there was a space on the left edge of the desk for her to put them after she was finished with each one, and there was an empty space in front of her where she would put each book in turn. Her red pen and her star and happy face stamps were in front of her, and as he put the books down, she reached for the first one. He spoke.
"Mrs Jolly, are you going to mark my dictation work on handwriting?"
"Pardon, Chris?"
"Are you going to mark my dictation work on handwriting? You did last time and I wanted to know if you were going to do it again."
"Well. Yes, I am. Why do you ask?"
"Well, you do not mark anybody else's dictation on handwriting. And I think it is unfair. Last time, Penny and Darren got all their spelling right and you gave them a star and a happy face and wrote down 'Great Job', and I got all my spelling right and you wrote 'Horrible handwriting' on my work and I did not get any stamps at all."
She looked at him with a rather bemused look on her face. "Do you really care about getting stamps, Chris? At your age?"
"Why would you use them with children my age if we were not supposed to care?"
"Well... Christopher, your work is nearly always excellent in nearly every single way. I marked your handwriting on your dictation because I needed to find - I need you to focus on the rather small number of things you are not good at."
"But that is not fair."
"It's perfectly fair. Just because you are good at most things doesn't mean I can ignore the things you are not good at."
"I am not asking you to."
"Then I don't see why we are having this conversation. Go and do your worksheet."
"Are you going to mark my handwriting on that?"
Mrs Jolly looked at him with a stern expression on her face. "That is entirely up to me, Christopher. Now, this discussion is over. Go and sit at your desk and do your worksheet - in your best handwriting. And when you finish early in the way you nearly always do, start writing out 100 times on lined paper, 'I need to constantly try to do my best handwriting.' We'll see if that approach makes you take this more seriously."
Chris went back to his seat as ordered. There was no point in continuing a discussion after the teacher said the discussion was over. They were in charge of the classroom after all and he respected that. He did the worksheet as neatly as he could manage - it was a simple reading comprehension exercise and he finished in a few minutes, before going and getting some lined paper and he began writing out the sentence 'I need to constantly try to do my best handwriting' over and over again. He supposed this was probably a good way to practice his handwriting.
Chris knew his handwriting was far from perfect, but he also did not really think it was entirely his fault. He had learned to write before he started school - his mother had taught him when he insisted on learning once he had worked out - he must have been about three, he though - that writing was the other side of reading. She had taught him how to write all the letters one way and when he had started school, he had found out that the way he wrote letters was wrong. They were not quite the right shape and you were not meant to join them together. It seemed a bit strange to him that there was only one way to write letters because he knew that grown ups all had different handwriting - so different that experts could tell who somebody was by their handwriting so why did school insist there was only one way? But he did his best to do it, but every now and again, his hands seemed to get confused between the way his mother taught him and the way the school insisted on. And then suddenly in Grade Three after years of teachers telling him not to join his letters together, they suddenly started insisting people learn to join their letters together which made things even more confusing. Now his hands seemed to get confused between the way his mother taught him, and the way the school taught him, and the way his mother had taught him to join letters together and the way the school had taught him not to and then the way the school was teaching them too. And his eyes starting to go bad probably had not helped - it was a bit easier now he had glasses. Maybe practicing in the way Mrs Jolly was getting him to do things now would make his hands learn the right way. He had almost finished one sheet of paper when the bell rang for playtime, and he went out to eat his playlunch and he was trying and decide if he was best trying to keep an eye on Bridget or on Penny or on doing something else, when Darren approached him. "Do you want to play cricket, Chris?"
Once again, he wondered why Darren was making such an offer? Was he really sorry for what he had done? Was he trying to make up for it? Chris decided he still did not know and he decided to take the chance. If Darren was genuine, and he was offering some sort of peace settlement - or maybe even more - Christopher felt he had to give it a chance.
"All right."
And so he spent his playtime in the game of cricket. Nothing bad happened. It seemed all right. He went to the toilet near the end of the music and he lined up at the back of the line just as the bell went. He went inside and went to his desk. From the front of the room, Mrs Jolly spoke in an angry tone.
"Chistopher Bolt - go to the office and get a Detention Slip. When I give people a punishment exercise you know that they are expected to stay in at playtime and lunchtime until it is finished. How dare you go out and play cricket when you've done less than thirty of the one hundred lines I gave you. Go and get a Detention Slip and count yourself lucky I am not sending you straight to Sister Anne."
Copyright 2012 Shaun Hately. All Rights Reserved. Not to be shared or distributed in any form by anybody without his express permission.