Miss Anne Taught Me About the Wrath of a Woman While She Chucked Chalk at 12-Year-Old Boys
Adventures in middle school
Mr. Goodacre was the first male teacher I ever had. Until my grade four year, it had all been ladies teaching me my A-B-Cs and 1-2-3s. Mr. Goodacre was kind and gentle. Sometimes, he’d call one of the girls, Samantha, up to his desk and have a quiet conversation with her.
From the outside looking in, the conversation was about the world caving in on itself — judging by the horrified look on Sam’s face. Mr. Goodacre would then hold the terrified girl’s hand. Moments later, a fire drill would be blaring throughout our school’s halls.
Eventually, we all learned when the drills would be because Samantha would be shaking in her high-tops at Mr. Goodacre’s desk, holding his hand like her very existence depended on it. Samantha was a surefire giveaway. Another thing about Samantha was her exclusion from the monthly fluoride rinses.
We’d be shooting packets of fluoride rinse and gagging as soon as the stuff hit our tastebuds as she gazed on smugly, thanking her hippy parents for fully believing that fluoride would lower their children’s IQ and cause renal failure.
But this story isn’t about Sam or Mr. Goodacre. It’s not even about the fluoride.
It’s about one of the most memorable teachers I had in my early school education. Miss Anne, like Mr. Goodacre, marked a first in the teachers I had.
She was the first young and interesting teacher I had ever met.
Sure, there were other female teachers, but none were cool like Miss Anne. She was in her mid-twenties, with long dark hair and a premature streak of grey in her bangs. The streak of grey made her look even younger. She was somehow defying the laws of aging by allowing it to remain, framing her wrinkle-free face.
She was a grey-haired 20-something before it was trending.
In Miss Anne’s class, I was introduced to books like The Outsiders and The Giver. It was in this grade 7 class, I found my stride with reading. We’d read these books and then talk for hours about them. Miss Anne was the kind of teacher who wouldn’t bat an eye at skipping math class to continue our talk about the themes in Little Women because talking about how a book made us feel was seemingly the most important thing in the world.
Who needed to learn about integers when you could talk about class warfare after reading The Outsiders?
In every classroom, there are those kids who click with a teacher and those who don’t. In a few years from then, I’d be placed in a French class where the teacher clearly favoured the Hockey Boys and Volleyball Girls.
Unfortunately, I fell into neither of these categories and became an outsider myself. I started acting out in class, yelling out inappropriate jokes when I couldn’t figure out a translation and not giving a shit about whether my homework was done. Having a teacher on your side as a student makes all the difference.
If only I had known that back then, in grade 7, when the chalk started to fly. Maybe then I would have been more sympathetic to the boys.
Miss Anne, despite her young coolness, was a strict teacher. She had to be because no 12-year-old would take her seriously otherwise. She yelled a lot. The fragments of memory I have from that class are a lot of reading and a lot of screaming.
Ahhh, perfect symmetry.
There was a group of boys who were loud and obnoxious. They were constantly crafting armpit farty noises or making spitballs to hurl into the ponytails of the girls sitting across from them. As they sauntered into the classroom each morning in their tiny gang, all of us kids who were excited to read the next chapter of whatever book was going at the time would sigh, knowing there would be countless interruptions ahead.
Then one day, it happened. Miss Anne just lost it.
The boys were snickering about something, and even after several reprimands from the teacher, they still wouldn’t let up. The rest of us were getting restless, looking at the wall clock and counting down the minutes until the recess bell rang.
We weren’t even listening to the story anymore because what was the point? We wondered while turning our world-weary gaze to the troublesome dudes infringing on reading hour.
We were all staring them down now. Even Miss Anne.
Those of us paying attention to the woman in charge were silent. However, the boys were so enthralled in their conversation among themselves that they didn’t notice Miss. Anne staring a laser beam right through their thick skulls.
“I am not going to ask again. You boys need to shut up so the rest of the kids can learn,” she finally bellowed through gritted teeth. Her streak of grey looked more powerful than ever. “I’m so sick of having to repeatedly ask for your attention!”
Miss Anne pointed to the door. She had the same look of infuriated resignation my parents got whenever I “came down with” a flu bug on chore day.
As a grown woman who regularly manages teenage boys at work, I can see her frustration. It’s the smirk. That, and what the fuck are you going to do about it, smirk. Because really, there’s nothing I can do about the boys at work not listening to me, their manager. If I try writing them up for their constant insubordination, they’ll just quiet-quit. And I need those teenage boys to unload the supply trucks!
The sad truth is, I need them more than they need that job. Those boys don’t need a part-time warehouse worker position. They’re still roommates with their parents.
I’m sure, in that moment, Miss Anne felt the same way. There wasn’t shit she could do about it.
I reckon it was when she realized she was helpless in the situation that Miss Anne made the decision to let that first piece of chalk fly.
Our sweet, beautiful teacher’s eyes grew red with fury, and she kept repeating, “Do you wanna listen to me now, boys, do ya?” over and over again, like an old-timey gangster.
Wait. Is this happening? The rest of the class was thinking. Is a teacher whipping actual objects at students now? What next? Will she pull out the meter stick and demand they lay their hands on the desk for a lashing?
I was stunned still until a rogue piece of chalk went wide and nearly knocked out my eyeball. My friend Janelle, on the other side of the classroom, bellowed, “Hit the deck!” and we all did.
I never learned what the consequences were for either Miss Anne or the boys regarding the chalk-chucking incident. Maybe our lovely young teacher was caught trying to physically harm her charges with airborne chalk, maybe that’s why we never saw her around school in the years to come.
What I do know is that the boys maintained a professional attitude for the remaining school year. They certainly listened the first time they were told to hush by Miss Anne.
As for the girls who shared my experience of witnessing the great chalk fiasco of ’97, any time I run into my female grade 7 classmates and bring up Miss Anne, their response is always the same.
“Miss Anne! Oh man, I loved her so much! She was the best teacher ever.”
I don’t think Miss Anne will ever know what she taught us that year. As women, we can be patient and kind and overcompensate to a fault, but once you’ve pushed that one button too far, watch out.
Miss Anne taught me that hell hath no fury like a woman pressed.
Your writing is crazy good
Yeah- I had those kind of teachers. They really helped shape my response to tantrums by anybody.
As you were dealing with an authority figure with that name, it made me think of another, mythical one.
"Miss Ann", for many years, was a code term in the world of Black Americans for their white female employers, used to criticize and parody them behind their backs. (The male equivalent was "Mister Charlie".) The subversive nature of the term was most apparent to me when Little Richard use the title as the name of one of his songs in his 1950s halcyon period. ("I told Miss Ann once...and I told Miss Ann twice...).