If you asked, my mother would tell you the moment she knew I was going to be trouble in school was when she received a call from my preschool teacher informing her of my announcement; I did not need to learn how to count to ten because my older sister could do it for me, followed by an apparently defiant, “Ask her.”
It was not my ability to learn that was the problem, it was my stubbornness against math and enforced education in general. As the years rolled by, from third grade on I was in advanced classes [except in math] which meant I knew my fellow classmates but also students in the upper grades as well. When I found myself enrolled in Ms. Riordan’s Honors Sophomore Literature class, I knew the rumors, but was still unprepared for her live and in action in front of me. You see, Ms. Riordan was the most feared teacher at my high school, even our principal was known to avoid her whenever possible.
On the first day of class, we turned in our summer reading term papers, that year’s chosen literary tortures were “Les Miserable” [a great book I actually read] and [my downfall] “All Quiet on the Western Front.” I got to page forty -something and decided I had enough. Instead of writing an essay, I chose the other option of a poem — and a dang good patriotic poem I wrote too.
On the second day of class Ms. Riordan returned our graded work. It was also the day I was first introduced to the “Rubric” form of grading, and I stared in disbelief at the bright red 40% emblazoned across the top of my excellent poem. Sure, my “Les Miserable” essay scored high, but that was not the point.
From the front of the room, she rambled on about how none of us read the books and we had until tomorrow to read them because she would be giving us a test worth half of our grade and we shouldn’t even consider Cliffs-Notes because she owned them all…. yada-yada-yada!
What I heard was a challenge. I went home, followed by soccer practice, a shower and bed. What I distinctly did not do was lay so much as an accidental finger on “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
As someone who spent their entire academic career finishing classwork early and thus having too much time on their hands and using said plethora of time to devise ways of getting myself out of activities/assignments I didn’t feel like doing, well, I was unwilling to take this grievance lying down. After all, I was the girl who successfully sold the dog and ate my homework excuse to the most difficult teacher in fifth grade. I not only got the one-day extension I requested, but I was also given an additional week to do an assignment that really boiled down to “I’m bored with this, I’ll just do it later.” She was so very impressed when I turned my masterpiece in the very next day.
No, I decided to set about being the most pain in the butt student in Ms. Riordan’s class that I could be. A matter of principle, I never attended any after school detention summons I did not believe was just, so honestly, what was she going to do about it?
Well, it turns out she was going to fail me — was failing me. It didn’t take long for my parents to discover I was failing and hit the roof [academic failure not really being much of an option in our house]. You can’t really blame them because sixth-grade testing showed my language, vocabulary, comprehension, all the good stuff, to be on par with a person graduating from four years of college back then. The possibility of me ever failing a class not related to math was an utterly foreign and incomprehensible notion for them. When asked, I, of course, put all the blame where it clearly belonged — with Ms. Riordan.
My parents uniquely feel everything is my fault, so Ms. Riordan was unprepared to meet them and find they were on her side, a highly unusual prospect for my high school’s faculty to experience.
After the meeting, my dad came home armed with “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” a book I knew I was supposed to be reading but had thus far neglected to mention needing to my parents — complete with my name written in it so I could not suffer the good fortune of plausibly losing it.
I immediately commenced reading Baroness Von Orczy’s fabulous book — a book Ms. Riordan said was her favorite — with a whole new attitude that very night.
From that day forward I continued to develop respect for Ms. Riordan until she became my favorite teacher. A glutton for punishment, I voluntarily took every class she taught.
She was the toughest teacher I knew with a standing policy that not even being on one’s deathbed is an excuse not to turn in work when it is due. Once, we were supposed to have two weeks to complete a poetry project. A student complained it was not enough time, so Ms. Riordan decided we could have until the next day — when we’d only been working on it for three.
My classmates and I had to stay up creating, typing and illustrating two weeks’ worth of poetry, all before morning! By 3 a.m. I was writing delirious poems about alien abductions, but I finished it! My kind neighbor turned it in for me and I went back to bed.
A few days later I got my grade. Ms. Riordan took a point off for every poem I put inside a plastic sleeve, which was all of them, when she really should have been adding a point for my proactive forethinking as I had gotten a papercut putting the project together and literally poured my blood, sweat, and tears all over it. The agreement to disagree on this matter did not change my grade.
Ms. Riordan taught me a lot about what to expect from the “real world.” She was the first and only teacher to ever call me out on my writing and once I got over being butt hurt by it — I respected her. She would never blindly slap an A on anything and because of her I learned how to be a better writer, and most valuable, a better person. Unlike my other teachers, she was not wowed by the pretty words I strung together in a matter of seconds, nor did she accept them. She challenged me to write better.
A story for another day, Ms. Riordan is the only person to ever make me promise never to write books for children. Also because of her, “The Scarlet Pimpernel” is now in a three-way tie with Sylvia Plath’s “Bell Jar” and Jane Austin’s “Pride and Prejudice” for my favorite book. You remain the greatest teacher I have ever known, thank you, Ms. Riordan!