that one girl

that one girl

fiction
edward w pritchard

I was teaching for my friend as a substitute teacher and the class was being good. Relatively good, at this junior high in the inner city the students had trouble sitting and focusing and it was hard to get any real work done. Still they were nice kids and were respectful to me and unless I let thing get started they would work a little on the assignment my friend left. I had to teach the same class 6 times to different students of mixed abilities in the same classroom.

The afternoon classes always seem to be the harder to handle and the boys are usually worse than the girls, of course, at least at this age, 7th grade. Young girls 5th grade are potentially the worst of the girls, and 10th grade girls are unpredictable in their behavior. I usually keep a barrage of control at the boys and let the girls follow my criticisms of the young men as to how to act.

It's hard to get the work done because the children do not like to read because they don't read well. At least a large percentage don't read well. They are intelligent but at this age at least, 13 or so, they don't want to read. That makes it difficult to teach all subjects. It also results in the homework and in school worksheets being too easy. The teacher directs the work to the lower functioning students. Some students have trouble focusing and that slows down the class.

Walking around, managing by locomotion, facing the class, confronting students who weren't working, helping others get started I found a quiet girl in the back who wasn't doing her paper. I had taught for my friend before and the girl was shy and quiet and I hardly remembered her, a good thing for it meant she wasn't making trouble.

Confronted politely she told me she was done with the three worksheets. [In about fifteen minutes into the class]. She then asked me if she could read me something. She had a green leather notebook about 5x8 and it said horoscopes. She wrote horoscopes on the people she met for a hobby.
She read me mine. I had never talked to her but had been in front of the class room twice with her. Once for 40 minutes and today for about 15.

She said you don't like to take orders, you go your own way, to your detriment, you like us students, but sometimes you get angry easily, you worry about us, more than anything you want us to take our school work seriously, you sometimes have trouble being organized, and then she had written a few other things.

That one girl, she was astute for a seventh grader, and creative. She could do horoscopes now and someday do psychoanalysis. Sometimes teaching is rewarding.
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