One Small, Dark, Windowless Classroom

"Ms Fried?" "Ms Frie-eeed?" "Um, excuse me, Ms. Fried." "Hi Ms. Fried, I was wondering ... " "Ms. Fried can you?" "I wasn't here yesterday, Ms. Fried." "Ms Fried did we ..." The bell has just rung, or is about to, and I am surrounded by thirty-five students who stand with the urgent conviction that they need me. My last name is in the upper left corner of all of their papers, beneath their own. They are taking my class, answering my questions and writing long responses to the journal prompts I give them. I am their teacher; perhaps they do.

I sit on a high stool in the front of the room and feel too powerful. I move to a desk on the right side of the horseshoe, but can no longer see half of the students' faces. There is an empty desk in the middle, and if I reside there for a few minutes of our discussion, perhaps the students will begin to talk to each other, forget me. The experiment fails, and I pace the room hoping to increae the trajectories of my voice, and thus its targets My legs hurt, and I find my stool again and occupy it, legs crossed, for the rest of the period.

What do I know, anyway? I ask myself this after every period. Thirty-five students a class means 175 responses I did not have to the literature we read. I'm older, but am I wiser? Carrie says I have the soul of a seventy-year old, and for the first time, I find consolation in that.

My feet hurt, I am tired and already yawning into the cliches of an overworked public high school teacher. My hair grows stringier, my clothes more rumpled by the hour. But what was it? What did that student say earlier this week that me feel like all of my goals had already been accomplished? That I might just do well at this job I've dreamed for myself? Oh, yes, that's right, I remember. After handing Lucien, the boy who wrote on his questionnaire that in ten year he aims to be a culinary artist, the photocopied chocolate cake recipe, Celia told me that I remind her of Miss Honey. Miss Honey from Matilda, the first book over one hundred pages I ever read. The first book I ever stayed up late and woke up early to read. Miss Honey, my first literary hero, my first and last favorite teacher, the only teacher I have ever wanted to be. In my first week of teaching I reminded someone of her. I think I'll be alright.