Pygmalion

Three more precious letters from my last block to run the letters-to-teachers exercise:

·      Dear Ms. W, I really thank you for the opportunity for me to learn in this class. Last year, I took this class and I failed it. I didn’t have the motivati

Huh. Seems ironic that you trickled off there.

·      Dear Ms. W, I am a student in your class. I am a good student. I love coming to your class. I love the way you teach, I think you’re a good teacher. I have a “B” in your class. Well, anyways, I am Cherokee Indian, White (not a lot), and Black. When I come to school I want to learn something but these kids distract the teachers so much the teachers just stop teaching and that makes me upset because I told myself I set a goal to have As and Bs this semester but I just get so distracted. From, yours, you know who. I do. I only have so many students who would write this one, and the rest signed their name.

·      To the teachers. I wish you all didn’t exist. 

               He didn’t sign his name either, but like the above, he didn’t need to. I know who you are. I know where you sit. I know how to get you to work, too.

Your teacher is not impressed

My kids wrote dialogues imagining a conversation between Leonardo Da Vinci and the Mona Lisa. About half of them reinvented Pygmalion without knowing it. One of them took it to really inappropriate levels:

Mona Lisa: I want you. I need some d***.

Da Vinci: You got a condom?

Etc.

Still, it is another Pygmalion. Crass, crass, crass, but Pygmalion nonetheless. He told me he was making it funny, and checked that he wouldn’t get in trouble before he turned it in because parts were inappropriate—when I checked his writing there was just one f-bomb, nothing like this. I told him to bleep out the bad words, but he seems to have added a bit. And now I get to introduce him to the concept of vulgarity in all its Georgeliotian glory.