Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum Read Free Book Online

don't you?” Because suddenly there was th possibility that she didn’t. "You like being a teacher. And you were good at school.’'
    They said it with confidence. They treated it as a commonplace, an assumption that needn’t be challenged. But the fact that they had said it, the fact that the issue had arisen, H the midst of this tour through Ms. Hempel s offenses, suggested that somewhere, in some part of themselves, they knew differently. It was astonishing, the efficiency with which they arrived at the truth. This was probably why children were so useful in stories and films about social injustice, like To Kill a Mockingbird. But Ms. Hempel didn’t think that this ability was particularly ennobling. It was just something they could do, the way dogs can hear certain high-pitched sounds, or the way X-rays can see past skin and tissue down to the ghostly blueprint of the bones.
    Ms. Hempel sighed. A real one, this time.
    "My school—it was demanding, academically. They had very high expectations of us."
    “So you were a really good student?”
    “No,” Ms. Hempel said. “I wasn’t.”
    And this, finally, impressed them.
    "I did well on all the standardized tests-—like the ERBs?—I scored very high on those. Anything with bubbles I was excellent at, or multiple choice. Even short answer. But it was hard for me to develop my ideas at length. You know, stick with an argument, weave different threads together.
    "And my school placed a lot of emphasis on that. On essays, term papers, the final question on exams. It’s not because I didn’t have anything to say or because I didn’t have any ideas. I had lots of them, too many of them. My papers were hard to make sense of.
    “Has anyone ever told you that you have lots of potential?
    But that you aren’t fulfilling it? That's what I heard all throughout high school.
    “So I would get terribly nervous before a paper was due.
    I would tell myself, I’m really going to fulfill my potential on this one. I’m going to make an outline, do a rough draft, write a paragraph a night. I’m going to plan my time effectively.
    And I would spend two weeks telling myself this, and there I’d be, three o’clock in the morning, the paper’s due in five hours, and I can’t get my ideas to sit still long enough for me to write any of them down.
    “That’s why,” Ms. Hempel concluded, “I make you turn in your outlines. And your rough drafts. Even though you hate me for it.”
    But the attempt at levity went unremarked. Her class gazed at her soberly.
    “So how’d you become a good student?” Cilia Matsui asked. “How did you get into a good college, and become a teacher?”
    “I don’t know,” Ms. Hempel said. “Worked harder, I guess. What do they say?—I buckled down.”
    It wasn’t until high school that all of this unfulfilled potential was discovered; up until then she had been simply great; great kid, great student. A pleasure to have in class. But beginning in the ninth grade, she felt her greatness gently ebbing away, retreating to a cool, deep cistern hidden somewhere inside her. I think it’s there! her teachers hollered down into the darkness. It is there! her father insisted. But where? she felt like asking. Because there was something faintly suspicious, faintly cajoling, about the way they spoke to her, as if she alone knew the location, and was refusing to tell them for the sake of being contrary.
    Dear Parents,
    You recently have received an anecdotal about your child. Although it might not have been immediately apparent, this anecdotal was written BTyour child, from the perspective ofone of his or her teachers. In response to the students’ entreaties, I did not include a note of explanation. They wanted to explain the exercise to you themselves, and / hope you have had a chance to talk with your children about the letters they wrote. At this point, though, I would like to offer my own thoughts about the assignment and provide a context in