Reminiscing about an old English teacher
I was moved up from 9th grade English to 10th grade English 3/4 of the way through my freshman year in high school. I think I surprised my 9th grade English teacher (who was just fresh out of college) with my intensity, which prompted her to recommend and encourage the move up (I don’t think she was fed-up with me or anything-I highly doubt that was possible as I hardly ever spoke in class).
I was moved into Ms. T.’s notorious English 10H course, and I’m sure to her, I must have seemed like a presumptuous overachieving little freshman more concerned with grades and competition than anything else (just like every other student in that godawful school, all of them vying for A+’s). So of course she gave me a hard time. Indeed, she has the reputation of making a girl cry in class as well as a keen sense of humor, a battery of nitpicky and difficult exams, and a brutal array of sharp (but hilarious) comments. For example, she addressed the snooty girls in class as “Princess”, the humor being in her casual and matter-of-fact delivery. All of her insults like “my bright little buttons,” or statements like “ ‘Life’s not fair’ - those are the words of a losesr,” were spoken with a gently teasing tone.
At any rate, she took one look at me and asked me “do you know what you’re getting into?” And I said, “Yes, I’ve already read Jane Eyre before, so I should be ok with picking it up in the middle” (the answer sounds naively foolish now…). I was used to being something of a pariah in classes because I despised most of my peers deeply, and was too shy to approach the others. It was worse in the English 10H class because most of them were a year ahead of me, and the other freshman in the class had been there since the beginning of the year and so had worked out their places in the pecking order. I was a foreign element and one rumored to be “mad smart” because I’d been moved up in the middle of the 3rd quarter.
To test my self-avowed knowledge, as we were discussing a passage in class, T asked about a word that came up in class. I forget the context now, but I shall forever remember the word. She singled me out and asked me in a rather patronizing manner if I knew what “manacles” meant before the entire class, expecting me to confess my ignorance. I hesitatingly answered (in almost a whisper) “they’re like chains,” and saw her eyes light up as if I had presented her with a challenge. She forced me to prove myself over and over in the next week, and then we had the Big Jane Eyre Test.
Having dealt with indifferent and lazy students for a couple of decades, she realized the only way to force them to read was to give large unit tests of 100 questions or so that tested obscure details of the “Which of the following was a book that Jane read while still living with her cousins?” variety. She took pity and threw 5 extra credit questions on there too.
I broke the curve. And she announced it quite publicly too: “Well my little morons, I’ll have no more whining about this. There will be no curve. Aditi here manage to get a 102, and I have never given anything above a 100 before. So really, you shouldn’t need a curve.” She smiled, and the bell rang. I think she wanted to see my social response to the situation. I have to say, even now, I’m impressed by their maturity. No one voiced any complaints against me-they complained about exam but did not blame me.
And after that, she became a mentor to me, to the point that by my senior year, I was spending my study period in the English office with her, helping her grade quizzes while she listened to my teenage angst.
I was moved into Ms. T.’s notorious English 10H course, and I’m sure to her, I must have seemed like a presumptuous overachieving little freshman more concerned with grades and competition than anything else (just like every other student in that godawful school, all of them vying for A+’s). So of course she gave me a hard time. Indeed, she has the reputation of making a girl cry in class as well as a keen sense of humor, a battery of nitpicky and difficult exams, and a brutal array of sharp (but hilarious) comments. For example, she addressed the snooty girls in class as “Princess”, the humor being in her casual and matter-of-fact delivery. All of her insults like “my bright little buttons,” or statements like “ ‘Life’s not fair’ - those are the words of a losesr,” were spoken with a gently teasing tone.
At any rate, she took one look at me and asked me “do you know what you’re getting into?” And I said, “Yes, I’ve already read Jane Eyre before, so I should be ok with picking it up in the middle” (the answer sounds naively foolish now…). I was used to being something of a pariah in classes because I despised most of my peers deeply, and was too shy to approach the others. It was worse in the English 10H class because most of them were a year ahead of me, and the other freshman in the class had been there since the beginning of the year and so had worked out their places in the pecking order. I was a foreign element and one rumored to be “mad smart” because I’d been moved up in the middle of the 3rd quarter.
To test my self-avowed knowledge, as we were discussing a passage in class, T asked about a word that came up in class. I forget the context now, but I shall forever remember the word. She singled me out and asked me in a rather patronizing manner if I knew what “manacles” meant before the entire class, expecting me to confess my ignorance. I hesitatingly answered (in almost a whisper) “they’re like chains,” and saw her eyes light up as if I had presented her with a challenge. She forced me to prove myself over and over in the next week, and then we had the Big Jane Eyre Test.
Having dealt with indifferent and lazy students for a couple of decades, she realized the only way to force them to read was to give large unit tests of 100 questions or so that tested obscure details of the “Which of the following was a book that Jane read while still living with her cousins?” variety. She took pity and threw 5 extra credit questions on there too.
I broke the curve. And she announced it quite publicly too: “Well my little morons, I’ll have no more whining about this. There will be no curve. Aditi here manage to get a 102, and I have never given anything above a 100 before. So really, you shouldn’t need a curve.” She smiled, and the bell rang. I think she wanted to see my social response to the situation. I have to say, even now, I’m impressed by their maturity. No one voiced any complaints against me-they complained about exam but did not blame me.
And after that, she became a mentor to me, to the point that by my senior year, I was spending my study period in the English office with her, helping her grade quizzes while she listened to my teenage angst.