2nd Assignment (Creative Writing)

Teaching is useless unless you can learn from your students.

by Martin Dansky

           There stands a shabby, gray one-story building next to the abandoned landfill. The star-spangled banner in the schoolyard flaps lonelily in the breeze. The weather is so gray that it is just about to become drizzly. Then a group of students, wearing worn clothes and dribbling basketballs, enters a school building. This is how DeAndre High School, located right beside the slum neighborhood of Los Angeles, normally looks like.

           Katelyn, a 26-year-old young women who have recently become a teacher of Los Angeles Unified School District, are newly appointed to this public school where 60% of students are Hispanic and the rest Black.

“Guys! Watch out!” Katelyn shouted to boys who were standing in front of the main gate.

It is her first day at the school; this young and inexperienced teacher, looking contemptuously at scampish-looking students, tried best to hide her discontent. But it wasn’t easy at all. With such a drawn face, Katelyn entered a freshman classroom B-101.

           “Oh it smells yucky here” she quietly whispered right after seeing a boy with tattoos. Katelyn tried her best to look confident although fierce-looking faces of students were enough to scare this callow teacher.  

--------->so I would like to have a white teacher assigned to a public school in black neighborhood of Los Angeles...so the atmosphere of that school is kind of gloomy and the white teacher is prejudiced about these Hispanic and black students. Then she later learns from one of her students how strongly prejudiced she was.

--------->she assigns a writing homework to students