Missing Previous School Quotes

It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true but just put on, I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days. Three weeks later Sybil reaffirmed her belief in the existence of her other selves in a letter to Miss Updyke, the school nurse of undergraduate days.

Six years previously, Miss Brodie had led her new class into the garden for a history lesson underneath the big elm. On the way through the school corridors they passed the headmistress's study. The door was wide open, the room was empty. 'Little girls,' said Miss Brodie, 'come and observe this.' They clustered round the open door while she pointed to a large poster pinned with drawing-pins on the opposite wall within the room. It depicted a man's big face. Underneath were the words 'Safety First'. 'This is Stanley Baldwin who got in as Prime Minister and got out again ere long,' said Miss Brodie. 'Miss Mackay retains him on the wall because she believes in the slogan "Safety First". But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first. Follow me.

even the formidable deputy seemed lost for words – or was saving them for later. Maths followed a similar pattern. While the others struggled over algebra, Janet spent the first half of the lesson hidden behind her ponytail of tangled hair – ‘looking for split ends,’ she explained to Edie afterwards – until Mr Robinson, a nervous young teacher who had joined the school the previous term, invited her to come to the front of the class and write an answer to the question he had just chalked up on the board. ‘Why are you picking on me?’ Janet asked sulkily. ‘Because I don’t think you’ve been paying attention,’ Mr Robinson replied. Janet scraped back her chair, and walked to the front of the class with her shoulders swaying. ‘What’s the point trying to work out the answer when the question doesn’t make sense?’ she said, and proceeded to insert a missing bracket into Mr Robinson’s equation. ‘That was awesome,’ said Belinda later, over tea. ‘He looked so embarrassed! Oh, Janet, you should have seen him when you were walking back to your desk – his face was like strawberry jam!’ ‘I felt sorry for him,’ said Anastasia. ‘He’s so shy, and sometimes I think he’s frightened of us. Do you remember that time he was on supper duty last term and

Marc Prensky, author of Teaching Digital Natives, describes the current educational crisis: “Engage me or enrage me,” today’s students demand. And believe me, they’re enraged. All the students we teach have something in their lives that’s really engaging—something that they do and that they are good at, something that has an engaging, creative component to it.... Video games are the epitome of this kind of total creative engagement. By comparison, school is so boring that kids, used to this other life, can’t stand it. And unlike previous generations of students, who grew up without games, they know what real engagement feels like. They know exactly what they’re missing.6

Your parents attend every practice and game and communicate regularly with your coaches and teachers. Outside of the internet, there is no place for you to mess around or experiment without their knowledge, encouragement, cheerleading, and feedback. Your grandparents live far away. You don’t know them very well, and chitchat, never practiced, isn’t easy. Your parents obviously prefer you to get your direction from the adults they’ve hired, who report to them. Each day is activity-jammed, presided over by a series of adults who judge your progress. They tell you when you are improving and also when you are not. They communicate the delta to your parents: “Her handsprings are crisper, but we still need to work on the balance beam.” You are always, in everything you do, monitored by anxious adults. You get less sleep than any previous generation of teens—far less than you need.[2] You are so tired some days, it feels as though you are missing a layer of skin. Worries invade unresisted. Many of your friends have tried cutting or some other creative form of self-harm. Whenever you’re down, self-harm surfaces as an option. It’s part of the vernacular: a way of saying, Ask me how I’m doing. Suicide hotlines are advertised more conspicuously around your school than prom. It’s painfully obvious that the school counselor is always sniffing kids for suicide like a German shepherd on the hunt for plastic explosives.