By Jessica Cuello
Because he told the teachers to stand and reach as high as they could. Because when the teachers sat down, the man said You thought you were reaching as high as you could until I told you to reach higher.
Because after that the teachers played rock, paper, scissors until only one teacher was left. The man gave her a pen as a prize. Because after that the teachers had to find a piece of paper on the wall and write a word on it. The word had to be a challenge about teaching.
Because he said Everything you think you know about students is wrong. Cellphones are like books. Books will disappear. You are obsolete and you must grow. You are resistant to growth.
Because the next day the teachers went back to their separate rooms where they saw no adults and continued with their teaching.
The social studies teacher taught the students about the middle passage and two girls cried because they hadn’t known.
The French teacher taught the children how to place the tip of their tongues against their bottom teeth and make the sound of the letter R. The girl who was a self-selective mute made the loudest R.
The photography teacher taught in a windowless basement, so she sent the students out to find light in the world.
The writing teacher told them to fill a blank page with descriptions of the places inside them and then to delete all the adjectives. One girl said what was left looked like her newborn sister.
The biology teacher showed the students a video of a baby being born. One of the students threw up. Some were afraid to have children. One learned what kind of woman her grandmother had been.
Because the boy who couldn’t read leaned against the teacher’s leg at lunch while she read a story just for him. Because in that hum of voices he read his first word:
Fly
Jessica Cuello’s most recent book is Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press, 2023). Her book Liar, selected by Dorianne Laux for The 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize, was honored with The Eugene Nassar Prize, The CNY Book Award, and a finalist nod for The Housatonic Book Award. Cuello is also the author of Hunt (The Word Works, 2017) and Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). Cuello has been awarded The 2022 Nina Riggs Poetry Prize, two CNY Book Awards, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. She is poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review and teaches French in Central NY.
