Ms. Hempel sighed. A real one, this time.
“My school — it was demanding, academically. They had very high expectations of us.”
“So you were a really good student?”
“No,” Ms. Hempel said. “I wasn’t.”
And this, finally, impressed them.
“I did well on all the standardized tests — like the ERBs? — I scored very high on those. Anything with bubbles I was excellent at, or multiple choice. Even short answer. But it was hard for me to develop my ideas at length. You know, stick with an argument, weave different threads together.
“And my school placed a lot of emphasis on that. On essays, term papers, the final question on exams. It’s not because I didn’t have anything to say or because I didn’t have any ideas. I had lots of them, too many of them. My papers were hard to make sense of.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have lots of potential? But that you aren’t fulfilling it? That’s what I heard all throughout high school.
“So I would get terribly nervous before a paper was due. I would tell myself, I’m really going to fulfill my potential on this one. I’m going to make an outline, do a rough draft, write a paragraph a night. I’m going to plan my time effectively. And I would spend two weeks telling myself this, and there I’d be, three o’clock in the morning, the paper’s due in five hours, and I can’t get my ideas to sit still long enough for me to write any of them down.
“That’s why,” Ms. Hempel concluded, “I make you turn in your outlines. And your rough drafts. Even though you hate me for it.”
But the attempt at levity went unremarked. Her class gazed at her soberly.
“So how’d you become a good student?” Cilla Matsui asked. “How did you get into a good college, and become a teacher?”
“I don’t know,” Ms. Hempel said. “Worked harder, I guess. What do they say? — I buckled down.”
It wasn’t until high school that all of this unfulfilled potential was discovered; up until then she had been simply great: great kid, great student. A pleasure to have in class. But beginning in the ninth grade, she felt her greatness gently ebbing away, retreating to a cool, deep cistern hidden somewhere inside her. I think it’s there! her teachers hollered down into the darkness. It is there! her father insisted. But where? she felt like asking. Because there was something faintly suspicious, faintly cajoling, about the way they spoke to her, as if she alone knew the location, and was refusing to tell them for the sake of being contrary.
Dear Parents,
You recently have received an anecdotal about your child. Although it might not have been immediately apparent, this anecdotal was written BY your child, from the perspective of one of his or her teachers. In response to the students’ entreaties, I did not include a note of explanation. They wanted to explain the exercise to you themselves, and I hope you have had a chance to talk with your children about the letters they wrote. At this point, though, I would like to offer my own thoughts about the assignment and provide a context in which to understand these “anecdotals.”
The assignment was inspired by a passage from the memoir we currently are reading, This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. When this passage occurs, Toby is longing to escape his abusive stepfather and the dead-end town he lives in. When his older brother suggests that Toby apply to boarding school, he becomes excited about the idea, but then discouraged when he realizes that with his poor grades, he will never be accepted. Help arrives in the form of his best friend, who volunteers in the school office and supplies Toby with all the official stationery he needs to create his own letters of recommendation.
“I felt full of things that had to be said, full of stifled truth. That was what I thought I was writing — the truth. It was truth known only to me, but I believed in it more than I believed in the facts arrayed against it. I believed that in some sense not factually verifiable I was a straight-A student. In the same way, I believed that I was an Eagle Scout, and a powerful swimmer, and a boy of integrity. These were ideas about myself that I had held on to for dear life. Now I gave them voice….
“I wrote without heat or hyperbole, in the words my teachers would have used if they had known me as I knew myself. These were their letters. And in the boy who lived in their letters, the splendid phantom who carried all my hopes, it seemed to me I saw, at last, my own face.”
I had hoped that through this exercise students could give voice to their own visions of themselves, visions that might differ from those held by teachers, parents, or friends. I wanted to give them a chance to identify and celebrate what they see as their greatest strengths. During this crucial stage of their development, kids need, I think, to articulate what they believe themselves capable of.
The students approached the assignment with an enthusiasm that overwhelmed me. In their efforts to sound like their teachers, they wrote at greater length, in sharper detail, with more sophisticated phrasing and vocabulary, than they ever have before. Spelling and grammatical errors instantly disappeared; drafts were exhaustively revised. They felt it important that their anecdotals appear convincing.
The decision to mail these anecdotals home was fueled by my desire to share with you these very personal and often revealing self-portraits. When I read them, I found them by turns funny, poignant, and, as Tobias Wolff writes, full of truth. I thought that you, as parents, would value this opportunity to see your children as they see themselves. The intention was not, as I think a few students have mistaken, to play a joke.
I hope that this assignment has offered some meaningful insights into your child, and I deeply regret if it has been the cause of any misunderstanding or distress. Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions or concerns.
Ms. Hempel distributed the letters, each of which she had signed by hand. “Please,” she said. “It’s imperative that you deliver these to your parents. First thing tonight, before you do anything else. Its contents are extremely important.” Though she had omitted certain details: the glee with which she had brandished the school stationery, pulling it out from beneath her cardigan; the instructions she had provided as to perfecting her signature, the way she had leaned over her students’ shoulders and adjusted the loops in their Ls. How they had jigged up and down, and laughed wickedly, and rubbed their palms together in a villainous way. How she hadn’t the heart to tell them that their anecdotals, so carefully fashioned, would be, upon first glance, apprehended as false.
They didn’t sound quite right. And the signatures were awful.
Ms. Hempel had contemplated forgery, once, when she was still a student. Her school instituted a new policy: throughout the semester parents had to sign all tests and papers, so that when final grades were sent home, there wouldn’t be any unwelcome surprises. In accordance with the policy, she left her essay on her father’s desk, with a little note requesting his signature. The essay had earned a C+.