"The MIss Dennis School of Writing" R

Hi, I am Dorothy Singer. I am the student that “hadn’t paid attention” in Miss Dennis’s ninth grade English class, as mentioned by Alice Steinbach. I do not understand why Alice idolizes this woman. She considers herself “one of the lucky ones” for being in Miss Dennis’s class? That is the most absurd thing I have heard yet. Miss Dennis was an absolute pain! She was always yelling and forcing us to describe our mornings. How stupid is that, right? She even had the weirdest sayings that she would preach to the class when she attempted to make a point, and I had no idea what she meant by them. She was a very stern woman who, instead of being placed in a classroom as a teacher, should have been placed in a boot camp as a sergeant. Ugh! Her constant yelling got on my last nerve! She made it impossible to focus because almost everything that came out of her mouth was uttered about 5 decibells higher than the average person. I mean, come on. Would you be able to learn and stay attentive with some lady screaming at you? I didn’t think so.
Possibly, the reason that Alice was enamored by Miss Dennis was because she and her formed a special bond with each other. In class, Miss Dennis would scold Alice because she was writing like Colette, Mark twain, or E.B. White. I didn’t even know who any of these people were, let alone be able to mimic their writing styles. Alice obviously had her forte’ in English and Miss Dennis favored her because of it. It made me sick. All of Miss Dennis’s attention would be on Alice, and when it wasn’t on Alice, it was on yelling at the rest of the class for minor grammatical errors. I even happened to notice that Alice would stay after class and talk to Miss Dennis. Now, I don’t know what they were talking about, but that is not my point. The point is that Miss Dennis preferred Alice over the rest of us and this is proved by the twos secret friendship demonstrated after class.
I do not view Miss Dennis nearly as admirably as Alice does. And I guess I do understand now why Alice praised her so highly. Alice had a bias view toward Miss Dennis because the two of them were like best friends. Sure, if some teacher gave me extra attention and ‘chilled’ with me after class to talk about stuff, then ya, I would consider them pretty cool. This is exactly the case with Alice Steinbach. “The Miss Dennis School of Writing” is not an accurate account of the freshmen English class because Alice received only the ‘nice’ side of Miss Dennis. I am offering my own experiences to show that Miss Dennis is not all that Alice ‘cracked her up to be.’ Miss Dennis was just a regular High School teacher, nothing special, besides the fact that she hated me and would always be yelling.
Steinbach, Alice. "The Miss Dennis School of Writing." The Norton Sampler. 6. New York: Norton and Company, 2003. Print.