[Week 3] Storytelling - Sara and Mahaffey

Author’s Note: This story is based off of Arachne and Minerva from the Ovid II. As I’ve been doing all along, I wanted to make the story lightly more realistic. In the original, Arachne refuses to praise Minerva unless she can beat her in a weaving competition. Tragically, Arachne ends up hanging herself and turning into a spider. So instead, there is a competition in my story but the girl who is based off of Arachne (Sara), leaves in a less dark, metaphorical sense. That is, she leaves her class instead of killing herself.

I was inspired to write this about a teacher and a student because I feel like one of the most unfortunate things that can happen to young people is for them to have to deal with a bad teacher. And of course, I picked Japanese because it's my second language! I do want to say, though, that I generally love my teachers! Truly terrible teachers are rather rare in my experience. But I think that in such situations, it’s important to fight for your education.

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(Photo of Japanese writing system by mkhail on Flickr)

                It was Sara’s first day of college, and of all her classes she looked forward to Japanese the most.  She had studied the language by herself for four years and was excited for the chance to be properly taught and tested. Unfortunately, it was only fifteen minutes into the class and Sara knew she wouldn’t be able to tolerate her teacher.

                Because she studied so hard, Sara managed to test out of the first year of Japanese classes at the university. The second year classes seemed a bit easy, but she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss any important content. The teacher for this second year Japanese class was a woman named Angela Mahaffey, and she was also new to the school. While many of the students were disappointed that they would be learning from a non-Native speaker, Sara was excited to be taught by someone who would be more empathetic to the students since she would know about the difficulties of the language.  This optimism was quickly snuffed when Mahaffey sensei’s(teacher) true nature was revealed.

                “First of all, I expect all of you two obey me one hundred percent.” said the teacher. “There will be times when you have questions. You’ll wonder why some aspect of the language works the way I told you. Well, the key for this class is not to question me. Just know that everything I say is right. If you do question me, I’ll annoyed. And if you annoy me then I’ll kick you out. Simple as that.”

                Sara, who had picked a seat at the front of the class, scoffed loudly. This teacher had to be joking, right? Nobody could possibly be like this, much less a teacher.

                Mahaffey’s head immediately snapped to Sara. “Find something funny, girl?” she asked with a sneer.

                “Before you demand that the class obey you unconditionally, you should prove that you’re really so good at Japanese. If you are, then I promise to do as you’ve said. If not, you should probably rethink your attitude.” Sara replied with unwavering confidence. “As the word suggests, a teacher’s job is to teach. Not to intimidate students into submissiveness. So, go ahead. Let’s see if you speak better Japanese than I do.”

                Mahaffey was not amused. “Really? You think you speak better Japanese than your sensei?” She then began to insult and berate Sara in Japanese. Her accent, while not terrible, was not good enough to set an example for the students. But compared to her use of vocabulary and grammatical structures, her accent was heavenly. Mahaffey stumbled her way through her curses, awkwardly combining the wrong forms until she said something equivalent to, “a cow the mother of you student are being,” rather than the intended insult.

                Sara was appalled but slightly amused. How did this woman get a job teaching Japanese?

                “Well, good. Thank you for telling me not to trust anything you say.” She said with a smile as she packed her bag to leave. “I think people in power need to take more responsibility than they sometimes realize. And you are definitely one of those people.” And with that, Sara left the classroom.

                 It was later discovered on Angela Mahaffey’s Rate My Professor page that she was a notoriously bad teacher. She had jumped around from school to school, filling in positions where Japanese teachers were desperately needed and somehow lying about her skill level. Sara and other students complained to the head of the Japanese department, and Mahaffey was eventually relieved of her position. 

Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000)