When Ian Connor arrived at the school, he believed that at schools where all students wore a uniform everyone would be forced into a homogeneous conformity. Individuality, creativity, critical creative thought would be crushed. The students would be depressed, compliant and focused on leaving at the end of each day.
The teacher Ian was covering for on that day had her degrees hung on the wall behind her desk. She had a Master of Science in mathematics and her thesis was displayed on top of a filing cabinet beside her desk. It was over the top for a middle school teacher.
The students arrived in hushed voices. This was a all-girl school. They wore skirts, white blouses, and jackets made of the same tartan, a pattern of dark green, yellow, blue, and black lines. Ian introduced himself and a student put her hand up.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Can I write the question on the whiteboard?”
“Yes,” Ian said, as it was going to be a stand and deliver situation, like many he had faced before. This was common where there was a population of gifted students. As a substitute it was about whether Ian was good enough to be their teacher.
She wrote a long algebraic question—a quadratic equation.
“Can you simplify this?”
“Yes,” Ian replied.
The work was done quickly.
“I don’t think that’s right,” said another student. Grade eight honors math was not a problem for Ian.
“Oh, please do show me,” Ian replied.
“Don’t,” said another student. “It’s correct.”
“You should have asked me to find the derivative and solve for zero,” Ian said. “I will use short form because first principles will take too much time.” Ian solved for zero and showed the x and y values.
“That would be the location on the quadratic where the slope is zero.”
“Yes, of course,” said the girl who asked to write question on the whiteboard. One of her eyebrows raised.
“I have one,” said another girl.
“What?”
“A question.”
“Yes,” Ian said.
“If you have an immovable object, what happens when an unstoppable force hits it?”
“They don’t exist in the same universe, as each is defined in absolute terms, so they each define a universe of their own.”
“He knows that one,” said another.
“Do you have any more of these kinds of questions?”
“What is the definition of a segment of the circumference of a circle with a radius of infinity?” Ian asked.
The class was enthusiastic except one: Dianne. She was not interacting with any of the others. She was hunched sideways in her seat, and it was the beginning of the day.
“A big, curved line,” volunteered another.
“It is a straight line.”
“That’s a good one,” she said as she opened her notebook and wrote it down. “I’m using that one on Ms. Edward when she comes back.”
Everyone in the class, except Dianne smiled and nodded. Dianne remained quiet and isolated. Dianne didn’t have the same tidy look of her classmates. Her blouse was pulled out one the left side, and her hair wasn’t drawn back in either a pony tale or held with a band, or burettes.
The day included English and art before noon. In the English class the girls had time to work on their stories, which they shared as each one wanted to create narratives unlike anything they heard before.
“How’s your story?” Ian asked Dianne. She looked up from a blank page.
“I wasn’t told what to do,” she said.
“You have the assignment right there,” Ian said.
“It just says we’re supposed to choose one thing we like to do and write a story about it.”
“That is clear.”
“No, it’s not. It should ask us what we did on the weekend, or where do our grandparents live.”
“You have to tell a story about something personal, different,” Ian said.
“I just don’t like that. Why can’t they have us all do the same thing?”
“It should be easier, because you can write about what you like.”
“That doesn’t work,” said Dianne.
“Write down some things you like and choose one.”
Dianne sat back in her chair and shook her head and waved her hand—a go away gesture.
Her classmates nearby shook their heads. Ian made his way to the opposite side of the class.
“She doesn’t get it,” said a girl as she moved her head in the direction of Dianne. “For the rest of us, it is like we’re on the same team. We help each other and get along.”
“Thanks, I didn’t know that,” Ian said.
“This is better than any other school I’ve been in.”
In art, the assignment was to draw or make a collage showing what you cherished the most. Some had a collage of cats or dogs, while others drew pictures of their parents and grandparents. There was a chatter among the students, as they worked. Dianne sat at her desk with a blank poster paper and waived off all those who tried to help her.
The afternoon was time for the class to work on completing their science fair projects. The time was spent completing their display boards, writing up the results of their explorations.
The class was louder as they worked with their partners.
They had sketched plans for the panels for their display boards. Dianne sat alone looking at her charts of data.
Each time a student needed to leave the room they wrote it the back pages of their agendas with the description of what they had to do, date, and time. The agenda entry was presented to Ian for his initial. They carried their agenda with them as it provided the authority to be outside the classroom.
The students would get everything they needed from color paper to the dies to cut the letters for their display boards. There were some getting different glue from the art supply room. The rush of agendas to initial increased in pace. Soon, Ian was not reading what they had written. The girls would tell him what was written; there was a note, date, and time and Ian would initial it.
“I’m just getting …” they would call out, initials urgently written.
Students rushed in with paper die cutters on trollies, others arrived with paper sheers on trollies, boxes of staples, red, blue, green, and black graphic tape arrived and were shared. There were instructions and responses were called out by team members and negotiations to share everything.
Dianne stepped up and said, “I need to go …” Her agenda was initialled quickly, it was good to see her getting on track, Ian thought. She rushed back to her desk, closed her book, and put her pencil case in her desk.
Ian noticed that she took her binder with her as she hurried out of the room. Another student needed her agenda initialled and another, before two more students walked to where Ian was standing.
“You need to look out into the hall right now,” one said.
“I need this initialed,” said another behind me.
“No,” said the girl who had stepped in front on him. “He needs to look out the door now.”
Ian walked to the door and looked out. There was Dianne at the far end of the empty hall with her boots and coat laying on the floor. She glanced at him and continued to push her books into her pack.
“Come here for a moment,” Ian said.
She glanced at him and shook her head and continued putting the contents of her locker into her pack. Ian rushed up the hall as she stood up with her pack. Markers and books fell out of pack and onto the floor. As Ian stood beside her; she kneeled and picked up her agenda. “What are you doing?” Ian asked.
Dianne opened her agenda and pointed at her note Ian had initialled.
Dianne is allowed to leave the school at 2:21 pm and stay at home one week.
“That’s not what you said to me,” Ian said as an Assistant Principal walked up.
“I can leave now, because you initialled my agenda,” said Dianne.
“What’s going on here?” asked the Assistant Principal.
Dianne stood silently and handed the agenda to her.
“There is a note that she wants to talk to you about,” Ian said.
“Don’t worry, nothing new here,” she said to me. “Let’s go,” said the Assistant Principal as she took the agenda.
About the author
Peter Conrad’s work was a winner of the My Dream Writing Contest 2024 and appeared in Wingless Dreamer Publisher's 2024 anthology Summer Fireflies 2. His work appears in Bare Hill Review, the Quillkeepers, Folklore, Half and One, and The Prairie Journal. Peter had two short stories on CBC radio.
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