Patricia Ellyn Powell
Looking at the apple from every possible angle, Patricia Ellyn
Powell has created a book that masquerades as an analysis of the American education
system, but in actuality, explores the living problems that all of us face in
this new millennium.
“The cycle of educational injustice” is in full
spin and will not stop until the very lifestyles of U.S. families change drastically.
Filled with humor and common sense, this new genre of “faction”
stuns the reader with real-life accounts from down in the trenches of education.
Powell sounds the alarm for the current crisis of the national teacher shortage,
insisting that the public school system in this country is now defunct.
Drawing from her own experience as a mother and teacher, the
author elevates the duties of parenting and educating to philosophical responsibilities
that must now be faced to avoid impending doom.
Professor Powell’s apocalyptic account reaches into the
ordinary to extract the phenomenal. Her ability to facilitate logos, pathos,
and ethos in everything from race relations to Ronald McDonald is uncanny.
If raw and refined can exist together, here in Rotten Apples,
they do. Her love of education allows her to take no hostages… and polish
no apples!
Patricia Ellyn Powell began writing in the woods of Paradise,
Louisiana. Inspired by her grandmother’s “paper box,” she
followed in the footsteps of her aunt, Corrine Saucier, who taught at the Sorbonne,
publishing historical works in her native French. Motivated by injustices that
plague America’s dysfunctional education system, Powell uses her distinct
and assertive voice to proclaim the societal dilemma and prophesy its ill- fated
future.
A descendent of General Stonewall Jackson, this lifelong teacher
shows courage, tenacity, and wit as she chronicles her career in Central Louisiana,
that is forever altered when she is fired.
Professor Powell studied fiction with best-selling American
author, Earnest Gaines. She is published in The National Writing Project Quarterly,
UC, Berkeley.
Our eighth grade classroom was a no-man’s land where
the dumb boys slept in the back of the room. Sister Hell-To-Pay spent her long
math-oriented days stalking the back row, nudging, popping, and slapping people
awake. When she got tired of patrolling, she would open her perfectly organized
drawer, grab a nub of chalk that had been retired and beam one of the offenders.
Their heads all had different sounds. Albert Boudreaux’s would ring like
a dull bell, Ray Coniff’s thudded like a watermelon, and Arthur Ball’s
produced no sound at all, because his hair was long and greasy.
Sometimes, when there was no particular target, but everyone
seemed listless and inattentive, she would throw an eraser into the crowd, or
ping the chalk off the globe. She stayed angry. We didn’t dare ask her
to explain anything. It was just a game of survival. If you got out that day
without wounds, you were successful.
At night still, when my bedroom gets really quiet, I can hear
the swishing of whatever that was under her black garb. And it is more than
frightening. In my mind’s eye I can see her mole with the little hairs
growing out of it, and I can feel the fear of the numbers themselves.
It was the time when we worked with reading kits and paper
folded into four columns for conjugation purposes. It was the time that I became
what people called, “popular.” It was also the time of my greatest
despair.
One afternoon, after the million-year-old nun had given me
my guitar lesson, I returned to class with my red guitar. Though she had worked
with me for an hour on Chipanaecas, I just had to show off four notes that I
had recently taught myself. I stood in the front of the room without permission
and played the first four notes of And I Love Her. I didn’t get
to see the adult reaction, but the students screamed and cheered. I became popular
that day. But the glory was short-lived.
As my popularity grew, I found it necessary to return the favor
of being invited to the nice homes of the other children whose dads were doctors
and lawyers.
My barefoot party was a great success on the concrete slab
in the back of the house. Mama even let me rent Chinese lanterns from the rental
company around the corner. And the most popular boys, Johnny Waller and Jack
Bird were there. I vowed never to hose down that concrete slab again.
But the sad evening that foreshadowed my demise came when I
had a slumber party. The house looked okay and the food was all ready. The girls
came in one at a time and though it was a little stiff, each had a seat somewhere
in our big, uncluttered living room.
Then, Mama came through the door to get something off the shelves.
She was wearing her homemade washrag slippers. I didn’t care. My mother
could sew well and the rags were brand new. But I will never forget when Lily
turned to Suzanne and whispered something ugly that made her look at my sweet
Mama’s feet and start laughing. It broke my heart.
I knew I could not compete. I knew the street where I lived
was a little close to the wrong streets. But I did get invited to a party at
a neighboring church parish. Word had spread about how fun I was and I went.
Bad mistake. I never dreamed the girls at our parochial school would be jealous.
We had a séance where we called back dead singers and
then I told a joke. When I returned to school on Monday, I was presented with
a petition. It was signed by all the girls in the crowd, but two. It stated
that because I was “too wild, nasty, and boy crazy,” I was being
thrown out of the crowd. I wish I had known then that being thrown out was a
good thing, that it was something that happened to all prophets. But I didn’t
know that. And my life became a temporary nightmare.
