Roxanne Wallace was my homeroom teacher in 7th and 8th grade. The previous one had to leave for medical reasons and Miss Wallace (as she preferred to be called) had stepped in as the replacement. When she simply materialized at the teacher's desk after the opening ceremony, we all gawked at her. Not that she looked peculiar or anything.
  She was probably in her late 20s and her straight mousy brown hair was tied in a high ponytail. You would say that her hazel eyes looked kind and gentle. If you didn't see the little smirk playing on her lips, that is. She was pretty short, only 5 feet tall, but she had an athletic built. What surprised us was the fact that she wasn't dressed to the nines like most teachers, she was wearing the most casual of clothes. Miss Wallace introduced herself and then she gave this weird speech about how school was supposed to provide kids with the fishing rod and not the fish. She didn't finish it, though, because she changed to a different topic for no reason. We instantly liked her, when she said that she would never scold or lecture us for getting bad grades or not studying. We knew we were going to get along just fine.
  Miss Wallace was also our English teacher and my classmates and I were surprised to see that she seldom followed the syllabus. We worked on grammar because that's necessary, I guess, but we also talked a lot about movies, books, events or whatever subjects we suggested. Most of the kids weren't paying attention and yet she was smiling and telling jokes. But then she gave us an unannounced quiz and the only person who got a half-decent grade was the "nerdy" kid. In homeroom, we were all gloomy, but Miss Wallace was totally unscathed by the furious glares she was getting. For the entire duration of the class, she looked so smug that we considered throwing chalk at her. But we had learned the lesson: school could be all fun and games, but we had to show interest and study. Otherwise, our parents would kick us out of the house (probably not). That first embarrassing grade prodded us into doing our best the next time. We all hit the books and at the end of the year, we could take pride in our achievements.
  We felt like we owed this success to Miss Wallace, but her change in behavior over the summer break confused and hurt us. She started openly pointing out our flaws with little remarks that stung. The class had admired and respected her, but they didn't know what to make of the situation. For example, one day, she criticized my deskmate's essays, quite brutally, and he just left the classroom, slamming the door on his way out. The teacher shrugged and went on with the lesson. A week later, the boy returned with some much-improved compositions and Miss Wallace showed her approval with a smile. I finally caught on: the painfully honest criticism was meant to force us to improve. I found it strange so I asked her why she had chosen the hard way to go about it. She replied, "Why do you assume I see 2 options?" I was dumbfounded and I spent a great amount of time pondering. Only when I thought back to that period of my life did I realize how much I had changed because of her. Near the end of 8th grade, Miss Wallace gave another marvelous speech about the tools and values we had acquired, ending it by saying that she felt extremely proud to be considered our teacher. We all hugged, somebody took pictures, some even shed a few tears, later blaming it on allergies. We were ready to tackle high school, then university and all the problems they hid behind the brick facade.
  When the day of the closing ceremony came, everyone was nervous, but saddened by the fact that we would soon leave the group we had known for 4 years and join another. Miss Wallace, however, threw us a curveball: she didn't even show up. But we were expecting that because she was never fond of this sort of event. The problem was that she had just vanished, never to be seen or heard from again. As I stared wistfully into the distance, I thought of how I had loved and loathed her, whilst she was teaching me so many things, not necessarily English-related. All I hoped was that one day we would meet her again and we would share stories, real or not, while eating the fish that we had caught.

Last edited by Cristina.without.h (2019-03-25 20:19:43)