The Mare

Ginger

I thought the visit to the school was good. But after, things got worse. Velvet still did her lessons with me. She worked hard: First we would discuss the book she was supposed to write about, getting her focused on what she wanted to say about it. She would then write a draft and revise it after my critique. But every time I asked her what grade she got on it, she said she hadn’t gotten the paper back yet.

Finally I called Ms. Rodriguez, who told me that Velvet had stopped doing any homework at all. She said her discipline problems had escalated too. I could hear the irritation in her voice; she sounded irritated with me as well as the girl. “You have to understand, you can only have a very limited impact. It’s really up to her, and if she doesn’t want to, there’s nothing you can do. Ma’am, this girl has a lot of problems.”

“But she’s doing the work,” I said.

“I’m not seeing it.”

I talked to Velvet and she said the same thing she’d said before, that the teacher hated her and lost her papers. She continued to do work with me on the phone, good work. So after a few weeks, I called the teacher again.

“You need to understand something,” she said. “This is a very manipulative kid.”