On Monday 6 January Hugh Mullins was getting ready to teach 8D. The young English teacher was newly qualified, and 8D was the most challenging class in Moreland School.
Back in at the deep end, he reflected, emptying his bag. Year 8 English: texts and approaches (A teacher’s handbook) weighed a ton. He looked around the empty classroom and sighed nervously. Maybe Samir would be off sick. A loud bellow from the corridor made him jump. Mamadou, aka Motor-mouth, was warming up his vocal chords.
Here we go again, Hugh groaned inwardly, burying his face in his hands. But he pulled himself together when Aisha and Nouria walked in.
“Happy new year, sir!” they giggled.
On second thoughts, the girls in 8D weren’t such a lost cause… Hugh wished them a happy new year too, in what hoped was a formal voice. His more experienced colleagues had warned him, “Don’t get too friendly with your students, or they’ll eat you alive.”
“That’s nice sweater, sir,” said Nouria. “Was it from father Christmas?”
Hugh blushed. It was a present from his mum. 8D always caught him off guard.
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Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okay..well this is an interesting one. I'm not entirely sure what exactly this is meant to be as far as sort of if its a standalone little scene or ifs meant to be something bigger, but oddly enough I can totally see this piece fitting right in with both scenarios, and doing so fairly well, although it is a little less effective in terms of standing on its own.
At any rate I am loving this little interaction bit with this teacher and the student. The touch of the teacher's inner monologue there is wonderful and I think the dialogue here really comes off quite nicely as being pretty natural and really does take you right back to how a classroom can go here. I'm loving the play with the emotions there and I honestly would love to see more of this, but of course a couple of lines there is all we have.
I think the introductory bit to the class is a little clunky and is maybe the one part of this that I don't really like the look of too much, but besides that particular situation, this is a nice piece, and I honestly would love to see more of these characters here.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Yes, If you don't call some of the kids by their name, and just say 'said one girl' it would make more sense.
Appart from that, I liked it. There seemed to be a storyline there, but I don't get where this piece is supposed to go. Is it a prologue, or a first chapter, or is it just a randonm piece of writing?
RR*
ok but i think for the first time it is ok but yes i do agree. yes there is too many characters. thanks
from GRIM-SLEEPER
This made absolutely no sense to me. It was too short to understand anything. It was about a paragraph and you already introduced five or six characters. If you expect us to evaluate your work honestly, then you need to post something that we can actually evaluate. This is much too short to do anything with.
Beyond that, the writing was so-so. You had some flow going, but the lack of sense made it impossible to get anything from it.