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Great Writing





 







An essay I love is "An Ode to Mrs. MC," by Summer Pierre.  https://medium.com/spiralbound/an-ode-to-mrs-mc-1c09a53a0b08


This is an essay in pictures. The speaker is recalling her son's Kindergarten teacher. Yikes! Kindergarten. The son in question--Gus--struggled with transitions....and Kindergarten seemed daunting. But Mrs. MC worked wonders.


Mrs. MC--with her hippie-ish gray braid--beamed at the children and said, "1....2...3...Eyes on me!" She re-branded homework as "fun work," and she made sure the children knew what they were doing before they unpacked their bags. She used humor, so that Gus would often burst into laughter, inexplicably, at the dinner table; he would recall a private joke. 


What makes the essay special is the details. Gus--I imagine him in Park Slope, somewhere--wears a necktie with his tee shirt. The anxious mom throws up her hands at the idea of K "homework." School administrators, trying to describe Mrs. MC, settle on some questionable English: "She's like....SESAME STREET!" "She's....VERY...unique...."


The story builds to a big, sentimental ending, which is entirely "earned." The closest comparison I can make is to the smart, "domestic" essays in Michael Chabon's book "Pops." I'll continue to think about Pierre's essay, and about Gus and Mrs. MC, as my son makes his way toward the Age of School Attendance. I'm inspired by Pierre's story.

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