Back in my childhood, which thankfully happened before the Internet explosion and before everyone was “connected” online, bullies were few and far between. I vaguely remember each class having usually one bully, and the bullying happened in person so that other students were witnesses and so that few secrets were kept from teachers or parents. […]
Browsing Posts in The Scarred Letter
Battle of the Books This year, I was honored that Loudoun County Public Schools chose my novel The Scarred Letter as one of its ten Battle of the Books selections. Battle of the Books is a competition in which students at all high schools across the county compete by reading all ten books and answering […]
…or “Why I Wrote The Scarred Letter” Background A high school English teacher, I taught The Scarlet Letter year after year. For some students (too few), it became a favorite book that they remembered even years after graduating. For others, Hawthorne’s sentence length, ornate language, and complicated concepts made the reading too difficult to complete […]
When I was in school, I had a bizarre experience involving cheating. As a preface: most of my classes were useful, and most of my teachers were dedicated. However, in a class which I shall not name, I remember an answer sheet being passed around during a ten-question quiz. The answer sheet literally went around […]
