“As I was saying,Dad, my absolute cunt of a boss is making us do this garbage, scripted, one size fits all curriculum, and I refuse?—”
Elias raises his hand.
“Yes, Elias?”
“And for those in the crowd who may have a… different level of understanding of education,” he says, both diplomatically and condescendingly, “why is a scripted, one size fits all curriculum a bad thing?”
“Ah, right. Well, it fails to address the diverse needs, learning styles, and developmental stages of individual students, which greatly hinders learning,” I tell those with little to no level of understanding of elementary education. “So I refuse to do it. And I’ve made up my own. To meet the needs of every single child in my class. And my kids are crushing it.”
“And she’s extended it to my classes, too. In P.E. It’s all connected, and the kids are super into it,” Elias beams radiantly at me. “There’s a diabetic kid who’s two hundred pounds in her class, and it gets him up and moving every class.”
“That’s great, Mia,” Leo says sheepishly from around Elias.
I look at my parents, who have shifted from mildly horrified to slightly uncomfortable. I raise an eyebrow.See me. I dare you.
Mom picks up her glass of wine and tips it towards me, a silent ‘cheers’.
Dad clears his throat. “In our line of work, Mia, we would call that a trailblazer.”
The next person I see is Elias, and his eyes are shining at me with pride and something that looks a whole lot like love.
“All right everyone, let’s get started,” Lina says after school that week. “Thank you all for joining us today.”
There are maybe ten of us in the staff room, all excellent teachers who are highly regarded by everyone in the building. Including Elias. Lina’s changed her tune about him after observing a few of his classes since starting the Olympics unit. She’s impressed.
He laces his fingers through mine and puts our hands in my lap.
“We’re here to talk about Words of Wonder, and to pool all of our knowledge and resources and data we’ve collected to present a strong case to Principal Thomas to remove the program from our curriculum. I’m thinking we make an entire presentation. Let’s start off by assigning some jobs. Who wants to be the note taker?”
Elias raises his hand. “I brought my laptop. I can type.”
Lina nods at him. “And we need an Excel wizard to collect data and make some graphs.”
Georgia Baker raises her hand. “I’m on it.”
“Can someone get to work on a shared slide deck and send it to all of us so we can work on it all together?” Lina asks.
“On it,” a fifth-grade teacher says.
I brought my personal laptop into work today, so I can actually do things.
“I think we should break into groups to work on different parts of the presentation. There should be a data group that’s with Georgia so she can graph it all on Excel. PS 2 test scores, screener scores, all that stuff. Make sure you put that data on the slide deck. There should also be a group that tackles research. Papers, articles, studies. That group should be with Mia and Elias, because they’re going to have all the materials and notes from the conference they attended. Lastly, there should be a Words of Wonder group. Basically, a group to rip through the curriculum and tear it apart. Find specific examples of why it sucks and is detrimental to our student population.”
She pauses to let everyone digest.
“Does anyone think we should add anything else?” Lina asks.
I raise my hand. “I think we should consider who’s going to do this presentation. Are every single one of us going to take a slide? That seems like a bad idea.”
She tilts her head, thinking. “I agree. Well, I’d like to be one of the people giving the presentation, but mainly because I want to be able to take the heat for you all. Because you know Thomas is going to freak.”
We nod.
“I nominate Lax Bro Captain America to be the second person giving the presentation,” Emmanuel says. He elbows Georgia in the side. “See how good I am at using the Tier 3 vocabulary of your people?” he whispers.
I think about this, and it’s actually brilliant.
“I kind of agree,” Elias says from next to me. “She’ll listen to me. It’s annoying that she will, but she will.”
