“Look kiddo you need to keep trying instead of giving up.” Florence smiled earnestly after pulling her out of class and trying to get through to her. By the roll of her green eyes she could tell she wasn’t getting far. “Please Katie, I know you’re behind on the scoreboard but doing the extra work for the challenge will help improve your school work. I know you care about that.”
A smirk rose on her face as she simply said, “My work is just fine.” Florence’s left eyebrow twitched - which Katie clearly saw as her smirk morphed into an amused grin.
“Your work is fine, but it could be so much better. You have such an amazing imagination and heaps of creativity,” Florence’s mind flashed back to her latest prank, Katie performing a parody song about the school faculty at the talent show. She’d written the entire thing and it had Florence trying so hard not to laugh that she’d nearly combusted. Unburdened by the rules a teacher must follow, the audience had erupted into laughter and many had been in tears.
“I truly believe you could be an author or songwriter but getting by on,” At this point Florence rose her hands to form quotations, “just fine” then clasped them together as she continued “won’t be enough. I have faith in you Katie, please try to have a little faith in yourself. If you put the same effort into your next english assignment that you put into your pranks I can guarantee you’ll see an improvement.” Florence could feel her face redden as she finished her speech.
Katie’s grin had changed again, this time into a shy smile, as her teacher spoke. Once the speech was over she looked down at the floor, startling when a hand fell onto her left shoulder and making her look up in reflex. Miss F’s smile was soft as their eyes met and made Katie trust that what she’d said was the truth. She took a deep breath in, shrugged her shoulders and brought back her cocky smirk before replying, “I guess I could give it a go,” and walked back into the rowdy classroom behind her.
One week later a paper sat on Florence’s desk having just been marked.
‘Comparing the writing styles of my classmates Thomas Smith and Adrianna Cowdun by Katie Pickett.
Both authors were asked to produce a poem on their feelings about rubber ducks. Mr Smith’s poem shows…’
A large ‘A’ was stamped in the top left with two circles round it.
