Parent-teacher interviews: a teacher’s worse nightmare. Especially with a parent like Alison Young.
Can this teacher find a way to solve this problem without getting everyone off side?
A slipstream sci-fi story that reminds us all that we control our own fate.
Nature vs Nurture
Sasha reclined indolently in the chair opposite my classroom desk, cracking gum behind strawberry-bright lips, dark eyes staring from under her bottle-blonde hair through the window to the carpark beyond (loved my classroom view, so comforting and natural, nothing like having the best room in the whole school, ha).
Never had a school uniform looked so disreputable.
Sasha’s mother Alison leaned forward to make sure she had my full attention (which, it was impossible not to hold someone’s attention with hair that obviously fake, but hey, who am I to judge). “I’m sure it was simply a mistake,” she said in that saccharine shade of politeness that went right out the other side to rude.
I managed to contain a sigh, and valiantly restrained myself from rubbing at my forehead. “I assure you,” I said, straining for politeness as I shifted in my wheelie chair, “there’s been no mistake. I’d be happy to provide you with copies of Sasha’s assessment tasks if you’d like to see them. The ones she handed in, anyway.”
Alison glared down her perfect nose and drummed her perfect, inch-long, scarlet nails on my chipboard desk. “What do you mean, the ones she handed in?”
This time I did sigh. “Mrs Young, surely you received the”—numerous—“emails I send home, and the letters, about Sasha’s essay in first term and her creative just this month?”
“You should have kept her in,” Alison pronounced.
Oh, yes, because I have nothing better to do with my lunchtimes than babysit your brat while she does nothing. I smiled thinly. “We tried that. For a week. Nothing was forthcoming, if you recall.”
Further glares. “My Sasha is a good girl.” Alison put her hand on Sasha’s shoulder.
Sasha’s glance flicked ever so briefly to her mother’s hand, then to me.
When she realised I was looking straight back at her, she held my gaze, as if daring me to comment.
I filed that one away for future examination. Sasha was usually the touch-me-and-die type, and she didn’t strike me as one to make allowances for her parents.