#the teacher chronicles

[babyseraphim]

the best part of being a music teacher is that i get to teach a 12 year old kid to play video game themes on the piano and then teach an amazing 70 year grandma to sing jazz standards all in the span of an hour and a half

and then i had, like, 4 last minute cancellations, so now i get to sit and work on writing while still getting paid to be in the studio

[this-is-lit]

The Teacher Chronicles

by Abi Black

Meet Jane Austen and her three friends — Megan Thyme, Daisy Rhyme, and Alexandria Lions — dedicated educators. Jane, passionate about teaching and journalism, faces a crisis when Adrian Darcy threatens to dismantle the school's thriving journalism program. Determined to save it, Jane enlists her friends' support, but each are grappling with personal challenges of their own. As pressures mount and friendships are tested, these four women must navigate love, loss, and the complexities of their careers. With resilience and unwavering friendship, they discover that sometimes the greatest lessons are learned outside the classroom.

The Teacher Chronicles by Abi Black is the story of Jane, Daisy, Alex, and Megan, four teachers who experience turmoil on the job and in their personal lives over several months during the school year. The narrative is an ensemble cast, but Jane Austen, whose storyline loosely mimics her namesake’s, is the A-plot.

Black’s tale is an idealized fantasy version of teaching and follows the camaraderie of four friends during adversity caused by the school board and their own misunderstandings. Chronicles is a bubblegum pop, twee narrative that would make an excellent adaptation for an original Hallmark movie. The women have stereotypical relationship drama, there are a lot of tears, and storylines are wrapped up tidily with the promise of happily-ever-afters. Jane, Daisy, Alex, and Megan are interchangeable as characters who haven’t matured much past high-school mindsets and give the impression of listening to your friend vent about their problems and realizing they are the problem. Much of the interpersonal conflicts in this tale could be easily solved with basic communication, and bigger conflicts are solved more so with deus ex machinas and less so with the characters taking the initiative to fix their own problems. Emotional beats fall flat with characters telling their feelings instead of showing, and several plot points that would have benefited from detail to engage the reader and convince them of relationship building are glossed over with time jumps. The women’s love interests don’t exist much past providing plot points and are solid examples of “women writing men,” and there are one too many sage older mentors who only exist to pop in with kernels of wisdom. The reader must keep in mind at all times that this story is meant to be a fantasied telling to suspend their disbelief.

Readers who love soapy dramas with happy endings and aren’t looking to put too much thought into a quick book may find this novel good for a light read during a commute or a waiting room. Readers who love Austen, are real-life educators, or are used to a bit more substance even with their fun reads may want to give this a pass.

I received an ACR from Reedsy Discovery

[armed-with-a-waffle-iron]

"Who'd think... Little voices... Could sound so loud": Helena Bertinelli the Teacher.

This is my reading of a short, little-known Huntress story: Rapscallions from Batman Chronicles #19. She isn't at war with the Mafia or fighting Vandal Savage, but who's to say she's not up against something just as difficult? Helena has to deal with lost kids repeating the same old mistakes as others before; meet Helena Bertinelli the teacher.

I've added all 10 pages of the story. The art can be questionable, but the story is thematically very interesting.

"I'm listening for... a smoker's cough or the cracking of men's joints as they spring from the shadows to fight. Not for this."

The title of this grim crime story is "Rapscallions", teasing that loss of innocence theme; playfully, allusively referring to the story's unfortunate but still felonious kids. The title doesn't let you forget that they're just kids, even if they grew up too quickly.

Harris and Battle give the "Rapscallions" quite an introduction; the kids aren't alright and they will not be ignored. Helena is on the trail of an organised drug trade so neither she nor we, the reader, suspected a bunch of kids and we "never heard them coming". I have a bone to pick with the art but it is deliberate and important how humbling a defeat The Huntress suffers to a couple of kids. Our formidable urban avenger is taken by surprise and wakes up hanging by her ankles, restrained and quite literally left speechless by the Rapscallions. No world-threatening supervillain has ever got to Helena like these kids did.

Harris reminds us that society (and I'd add the state) often fails to treat children as people. Society underestimates and even neglect kids; allowing them to slip through the cracks and that becomes our undoing, as it was Helena's here. "Who'd think little voices could sound so loud" is such a powerful line to paste over the image of the subdued Huntress looking up at her pint-sized captors. We forget about kids until their problems consume us too. Harris gives these children agency; their stories matter too. "No man's an island" and that doesn't just apply to "grown-ups".

"They thought they had it all figured out."

Right after the kids have shown us what they're capable of, we are reminded how they're still just lost kids; directionless, desperate, and scared. Helena, who herself is an orphan mixed up in the world of organised crime, quickly catches onto who the kids are. They're street kids with nowhere to go who thought they could pull a fast one and came up short.

You can see the uncertainty and fear in their faces but to me it's best illustrated by Tommy, the apparent ringleader, angrily interrogating the visibly gagged Helena. He knows she couldn't say anything even if she wanted to; he doesn't actually want her answers to his questions. If you think about it, the kids had no real need to gag Helena, they're clearly past keeping quiet yet make this choice. The gag the kids put on Helena represents their mistrust of adults. The kids assume Helena's probably another one of the nasty adults that exploit and prey on them.

Another important device is Helena's crossbow, it represents force and so authority through coercion, and Harris uses it like the conch in Lord of the Flies. Helena begins the story with the crossbow but when she's captured, Tommy picks it up. Ringleader or not, he's still just a scared kid who loses his head and makes a break for it, leaving the crossbow and a power vacuum. Helena knows this and you can see it in her face in the very next panel, where she's got her eyes fixed on the out-of-reach crossbow.

"Lucky me. Lucky us." That last panel has Helena drawn as a silhouette; at this point still a passive observer of the broken lives of these doomed kids. Luckily, pedagogy requires a bit of listening.

"I shouldn't get involved… But I'm a Teacher… It's what I do."

If Helena's crossbow represents force, Helena's voice represents persuasion, pedagogy, and authority through trust; she's a teacher. The reason Helena spends half the story gagged is that even the best of teachers require their students to be willing to listen. Kris declares herself to be such a student by putting a name to herself and freeing Helena from her gag, extending her trust. Kris needs a solution and turns to Helena for it.

Meanwhile, Billy picks up the crossbow to reestablish control, antagonising Helena. He again asserts only the Rapscallions have anything to offer themselves, but desolation begins to set in.

This is where our protagonist utters her first words, making her active choice. Those keen survival instincts tell her to escape and walk away but her heart breaks for these kids and she just must get involved. It's also revealed that Helena was cutting her binds loose this whole time. She doesn't need to save these kids, she's choosing to.

There's this great line from, don't laugh, The Godfather novels where Michael insists: "It’s all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it’s personal as hell." And I think there's a lot of truth in that. She was once a orphan who was just as lost as these kids. Witnessing the loss of their innocence before her eyes, she's driven to help them. Whether she got a crossbow in hand or a stick of chalk, it's personal to Helena. Getting involved is "what [she] does".

"I try to talk sense-- the kind Miss Bertinelli talks every day she teaches school." "I'll help you, if you trust me."

Billy holds the crossbow but Helena finally has her voice back. There are those great panels depicting the struggle for power between these two symbols; coercion vs persuasion. Being the teacher she is, Helena is able to get through to the kids. She establishes authority through their trust, symbolised by Billy dropping the crossbow, now willing to listen. The kids then confess, however implicit, to Helena about their own crime; the Rapscallions had murdered their abusive "employer" Karros. You reap what you sow. And unfortunately, the Rapscallions would learn this the hard way.

"Outside. Footsteps. The big kind, this time."

It all happens a little too late however, just as Helena is able to escape her restrains. Our teacher is yet again the avenger.

"Everything's going to be all right, Sweetie." But I don't believe that. And neither did she.

Helena scares off the assailants, taking one out, but Billy is fatally caught in the crosshairs. While Helena secures the perimeter, Kris takes off, scared and alone. There's a lot to take in. It's so painful that Helena admits her "everything is going to be all right" is an empty promise, but it's important she still chooses to say it. It's her duty, as a protector and a teacher. You could add that Helena knows a thing or two about the importance of faith.

The burns on Helena's cape and her final "I shouldn't have gotten involved" speak to how much of a toll vigilantism and teaching have on her. She has to watch kids make the same mistakes as people before, even the same mistakes she made, knowing that so much of the time there is nothing she can do about it. That's her burden as The Huntress and as Miss Bertinelli. You can't save everyone but this story shows how willing Helena is to try. "It's what I do," she told us. And despite that final line, the unreliable narrator she is, you just know she'll wake up tomorrow and keep on trying.

For Helena, for Miss Bertinelli and The Huntress, "it’s all personal, every bit of business".

[wall-maria-around-ba-sing-se]

“I hate Tatsu, he’s the worst character in Xenoblade X”: boring, cliché, 50/50 chance the person saying this simply picked it up off the internet. he’s not even that bad, really

“I hate Bozé, he’s the worst character in Xenoblade X”: sublime, informed, 100% chance the person saying this has not only played the game but likely has also beaten it and completed all of the affinity quests

[i-am-trying-my-best-okay]

(Tentatively) 477 days till The Wicked Powers (Until Further Notice)

[the-gods-and-me]

update to the Cool Christian Religious Studies Professor Chronicles

showed him my Hermes devotional bracelet and my Athena devotional necklace, he was super curious about them and loved that i honour my Gods just by walking around!

OH and there was an Odysseus of Ithaca sticker on my other RS teacher's journal, she was so happy i knew who he was! she has a degree in ancient history, too!

[queerstudiesnatural]

my school is having children tell the principal when they feel like adults are being unfair or mean or disrespectful to them or to other kids, and i think that's awesome. like for example this man who looks after them during lunch time allegedly went through the teacher's desk to look at their homework and then proceeded to comment on how some kids did really badly, and compared kids and made mean comments about their school abilities. and they're being listened to and the man is being questioned and might get sanctioned. i think giving kids this voice and this ability to tell other adults they trust when they feel like they're being treated unfairly is so important. children in schools are in such a vulnerable position, with so many different adults who have some kind of power over them, so to have this allotted time to share how they feel about the adults around them can make a huge difference.

[hazellevessque]

IT CAME!! IT FINALLY CAME!!

…the big one

[emerdoodls]

wishing i was good at writing bc theres a concept thats been bouncing around in my head of like. an outsider pov fic about the campbell family throughout all five books. or like a bunch of fics. idk.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Who's the better healer?

I want to start a bloodbath. Between Katara vs Atuat vs Yangchen vs Korra, who's the better healer. *grabs popcorn*

[heronchildlove]

What if... a modern AU where James is Lucie's much older brother, like, he is in college and she is still in pre-school or kindergarten, and one day both his parents are busy so James needs to take lil Lucie to school...

Only to be met with Matthew, the most handsome and most adorable TA ever, greeting kids and parents for this class and making James completely flustered when he says "Oh, so you must be the awesome older brother Luce is always talking about, it's so great to finally meet you, Jamie!" to the point he completely forgets anything else in the world while he listens to Matthew talk about Lucie and what a hoot she is in class just because he doesn't want to stop listening to his voice and then James is very, very late for class that day.

And he starts taking Lucie to school on his way to college muuuch more often after that.

[babyseraphim]

one of the other vocal teachers i work with (literally one of the best singers i ever heard) told me my laugh is infectious and she wants me to teach her to sing opera 😭 she says she’s obsessed w/ my voice im literally gonna pass out

[fenicenera83]

I'm uncomfortable with this. People who totally quietly and without a lot of fuss talk about being abused, online, and to lash out at a fictional character and his fans. It doesn't seem to me to be the place or the place to expose such sensitive topics, let alone use them in this context. And beyond that I don't find it fair to use topics like this to impose one's own view on a ship or a character and claim that it is the 'only way and the right way to confront that. Perhaps you should realize that it is not. TVA is in some of its parts a dom/sub relationship with sexual kinks. If you want to talk about abuse you have to talk about the part of TVA where the coven is present or the 'beginning where there is the abduction by the Turks. But of course it is not that interesting because the former is religious trauma and the latter is too short! Second of all, if you are so bothered by the Marius/Armand because you think it is abuse then you should also be bothered by the devil's Minion because, in fact, this relationship in the books on one hand is abuse. If somenthing so horrible have happen to someone you deserve respect and all the love, support and care in the world, you don't need to lash out online about your personal things, for make a point. Just take care of yourself instead.

[akkivee]

saburo is such a hater no matter where he is LMAO

[onceuponaoneshotfanfic]

Everyone tell me how cute my Narnia poster is

[libelulalil4]

I wish there could be an iwtv and english teacher crossover with claudia as a substitute history teacher