“Miss Caroline… had bright auburn hair, pink cheeks and wore bright crimson finger-nail polish. She also wore high-heeled pumps and a red=and-white striped dress. She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop.”
When, as an early teen, I read this description of Scout Finch’s teacher in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the image which sprang to mind was of one of my own teachers. Scout’s Miss Caroline and my teacher had something else in common: neither Scout or I got along with them particularly well.
A recent family clear-out has brought my ‘Miss Caroline’ to mind, because one of the items unearthed has been my high school report. Teachers’ comments were gathered on little slips and then stapled together into a folder. Miss Caroline’s report for the year I turned 15 has (accidentally? on purpose?) come loose and slipped out before I could even decide if I wanted to take a look at the contents. This is what it said: “MotherSoup works very hard, producing some commendable pieces of work. I hope this continues. However, I am not happy with MotherSoup’s attitude to staff - she must learn to draw the line between being friendly and being rude/cheeky.”
Well over half a lifetime later, and I’m still trying to splutter a reply to that one. I’ll freely declare that I have an unfortunate habit of being too free with my mouth (I even mentioned this in my very first blog post) - but I’d still like the chance for a rejoinder here.
First off - what did she mean ’staff’? She’d not been asked to give a view relating to the whole staff. It’s up to other teachers, in their reports, to represent their opinions of me as appropriate - and I can promise you that Miss Caroline’s view was not universal. If she meant my attitude to *her*, then maybe she should have said so. Maybe she didn’t recognise whether the issue with me was general across the board or particular to her, although I feel that self-examination may not have been her strong suit.
I did have issues with Miss Caroline. I did not respect her very much. She did not know her subject. She was unfamiliar with our astonishingly simple textbook. She repeatedly made fundamental errors with important facts. Her grammar was appalling.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus helps Scout deal with her poor opinion of Miss Caroline by encouraging Scout to consider things from her point of view. I don’t know why my Miss Caroline was the way she was when teaching to the class. I can guess I was a formidable handful, though. I found it almost impossible to listen to her howlers, and I can guess I must have spoken up at least once - with the best of intentions, at least at first. Not likely to endear any pupil to a teacher, though I felt that the class deserved a chance to avoid misinformation.
Thing is, I have no memory of Miss Caroline ever raising this issue with *me*. She could have kept me behind, had a quiet word with me. I’d have been instantly cowed. If she felt unable to do that, she could have spoken to the head of department or with my form teacher, who could then have spoken to me - but they certainly never did. Instead, she chose to write it in my school report, the one path which gave me no right to reply - I wasn’t even guaranteed the prospect of reading it.
As pupils, we had no recognised process for raising concerns about a teacher. I could have mentioned the issue to my parents, but although they cared about my education, it’s unlikely that they would have taken this matter forward. I, too, could have spoken to the head of department or with my form teacher - but certainly never did. I could have stayed behind and had a quiet word with her myself - I just can’t imagine that happening: it was absolutely unheard-of, and I’d have been terrified of the consequences.
So I guess I just carried on. She doesn’t say a dickie-bird about this issue in the next year’s report - just criticises my exam technique (I was one of only three in the class to get the top grade later that summer). I was never taught by her again, but further up the school, studying the same subject, we had to go on an overnight trip, and Miss Caroline was required to come along as the female chaperon for us girls. At this stage I was taken on one side by the (male) teacher and asked to be nice to Miss Caroline as “she was frightened” of me. I can still remember my astonishment. I was good as gold though - I had no issues with her when she wasn’t directly involved my education. Though I do remember not been hugely impressed with her choice of Geoffrey Archer novels as travel reading…
So, Miss Caroline, I’m sorry you were frightened of me. I wish you’d been able to do a better job, and I wish you’d found a better way to deal with me. I wish I’d found a better way to deal with my concerns. I must have been an intolerably gobby, cocky wee pain in the bum: I could run rings round the subject at that level, and I knew it…
I’d love to know: what could either of us really have done, in that climate, to deal better with each other?
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