TO: ALL TEACHERS
PLEASE REMIND THE PARENTS YOU INTERVIEW OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NUTRITION AND ACADEMIC WORK.
FRANCES EGAN
SCHOOL NURSE
INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: H. Pastorfield
TO: S. Barrett, 304
Dear Sylvia,
Can you let me have a few of your kids' compositions for my bulletin board? I haven't had time to assign any yetThanks loads!
Henrietta
INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: 508
TO: 304
Dear Syl
If you get into any difficulty, send me an S.O.S. You'll meet all kinds of parents. But the ones who should come, don't.
Bea
INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: M. Lewis, 302
TO: S. Barrett, 304
Dear Sylvia,
Do you happen to have a basin and a sponge? A rag will do. My clean-up monitor didn't show up and I have to do it all myself!
Mary
INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION
FROM: P. Barringer, 309
TO: S. Barrett, 304
Sylvia!
If any parents do show up, try to get rid of them fast, and meet me at the usual place
Paul
Dear Miss Barett, I am the mother of Edward Williams but I can't come I've got my hands full his father is put away he's mental and it's very hard without more trouble from school. There's a lot of work for him to help out at home so can you let him out earlier?
Mrs. G. Williams
Dear Miss Barrett,
My daughter Vivian wanted me to come but I have my Monthly Social. You're her favorite subject. She tries to copy you tho what good will it do the way she looks. My other daughter is a completely different type. Please don't let her eat so much sweets, it breaks out on her skin and she gains and looks terrible. I keep telling her but it just goes down the drain.
Sincerely yours,
Elsie Paine
Does the Board of Education know you let our children read filthy books on the outside like Catcher in the Rye? You should teach the Bible instead, but they outlawed it.
Dear Miss Barret,
It's not my son's (Lou) fault he failed spelling, he comes from a broken home. When he gets bad marks it only discourages him more and he starts cutting up. He's getting too big for the other lads in his class, so all the teachers said they'll pass him on. After all, it's only spelling.
Mrs. Bess Martin
My question is who is Linda running around with after school? When I ask she snaps my head off, but I know she runs around. Her father more or less beats her but she still runs around. Her two sisters went bad too after I sacrificed for them, so I'm worried. Can you do something?
Mrs. Lucile Rosen
Dear Miss Barrett,
Alice didn't want me to come. I hoped to see your face to make me feel better. I don't know why she's so moody. I don't know how I failed her.
Mrs. Marian Blake
My dear Miss Barret,
There was no time to interview you because I was interviewing other teachers. It would have been a pleasure to make the acquaintance of such a lovely teacher like you. Harry A. Kagan, my son, always talks about you very well. I hope you continue to guide him in his career.
Very truly yours,
Alberta Kagan
Miss B
I see by my son's work school hasn't changed. I used to hate it too but I know they need an education. I don't understand why Charles got only 68 so far. He needs at least an 85 average to get into the college I picked for him, even though he thinks he doesn't want to go. As a tax payer, please look into it.
Roger Robbins
Dear Miss Barnet, Thank you for the invite but I can't come to visit you and talk about my son Jose being that I'm on the night shift at the factory besides my day job. His mother can't come neither being dead. I hope you excuse it.
Truly yours
Raymond Rodriguez
34. Youre the Teacher
Nov. 12
Dear Ellen,
Just got home from Open School sessionand I must talk to someone!
It was a fiasco, though I did everything I was told to do. I got fresh book jackets from the library to festoon the walls with and had my wardrobe cleaned out. (Why is it only one sneaker is always left on the closet floor? And the ubiquitous, tattered notebook? I found one belonging to one of my homeroom girls, Alice Blake, full of scribbles, doodles, and chaos.) I even made sure that the little flag stuck in the Calvin Coolidge Alma Mater ("Ye loyal sons and daughters"a substitute for the unlawful hymns) was tilted at the correct angle. (The other day Admiral Ass found it drooping disrespectfully.)
I see 243 kids daily: 201 in English (after dropouts and new registers) and 42 in homeroombut only a few parents showed up; a few wrote cards; and the rest ignored the whole thing. The ones I had particularly hoped to see never came.
I don't know why they hold Open School so soon after the beginning of the term, before we've had time to get to know all our students. The Delaney Book wasn't much help to me; it showed days absent, times late, and some checks, crosses and zeros I'd forgotten for what. Unprepared homework? An insolent whistle? A four-letter word?
One father came, in work overalls, hands patiently clasped on the desk, out of some dim memory of his own school days. The motherspatient, used to waiting, careworn, timid, bewildered or just curioussat clutching their pocketbooks, waiting to plead, appease, complain or hear a kind word. A few were hostile and belligerent; they had come to avenge themselves on their own teachers of long ago, or demand special privileges, or ask the teacher to do the job they had failed to do.
And Iwho was I to tell these grown-ups anything about their children? What did I know? A few clichs from the mimeographed directives: "Works to capacity, doesn't work to capacity, fine boy, fine girl." A few euphemisms: "Seems to enjoy school" (the guffawer); 'Is quite active" (the window-smasher) . . .
For a moment, the notion occurred to me to try to match the parent to the child; but they were strangers, looking at me with opaque eyes.
MOTHER: How's my boy doing?
I: What's his name?
MOTHER: Jim
I: Jim what?
MOTHER: Stobart
I: Oh, yes. (Now, which one was he?) Well, let's see now. (Open the Delaney Book with an air of authority: a quick glanceno help. Stobart? Was he the boy who kept drumming with a pencil on his desk? Or the short, rosy one who reclined in his tilted chair combing his hair all the time? Or the one who never removed his jacket? I couldn't find his Delaney card; perhaps his mother would give me a clue.)
MOTHER: About that F you gave him.
I: Oh, yes. Well, he's obviously not working to capacity. (He must be the boy who got an F on his composition, on which he had written only one sentence: "I was too absent to do it".) He must work harder.