Your support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)The classroom was spotless as Marcus Olson poured over the projects and tests which were strewn across his desk. His lips curled into a smile and a predatory gleam sparked in his dark eyes as they ran over the very first project that this student had brought in. A family tree assignment designed to help the students see the ways that their own lives connected to the history they would be learning throughout the year. In truth, the one sitting before him had been the best one in the entire class on its own merits. However, more importantly, the assignment had included pictures of all of this student's many relatives. Front and center of the board was a picture of the young man's mother, an intimate photo which she surely had not intended for him to even have, let alone share with his teacher. It was not truly a nude photo, but it revealed details of her enticing, curvy body and an expression which no man who recognized would ever get out of his head. It was not what any woman wanting to make a professional first impression would want. And yet the young man, clearly not yet having had a sex ed class or discovered pornography, had glued it to the center of his board and turned it in to Marcus on only the second week of class.
Spread across the desk were every project, every homework assignment, and every examination that the young man had taken since handing in his mother's photograph. The crisp fall air coming in from the slightly opened third floor window, carrying with it the scent of pumpkins and the crunch of brightly colored leaves, announced the impending end of the first of four grading periods that the school went through. For freshmen like Marcus' students, this was the first point at which their competitive potential in the race for college began to set into shape. There were almost a dozen analytic writing journals, three more projects besides the family tree, and four exams which lay in front of Marcus. Each had work that was truly exceptional for a 14 or 15 year old student, insightful, well written, citing to actual research sources, none of which were wikipedia. And yet, every last paper in front of him had a score below a 60%, etched in Marcus' own hand with red pen. The nuanced, intelligent essays that made up this student's exam answers were liberally sprinkled with terms such as 'debatable' 'overbroad' and 'generality'. Comparable projects which had put much less thought, talent, and effort in were hung around the walls of the room with glowing A and A+ marks publicly adorned as examples to aspire to. There was not a single one of the undersized public school desk chairs which could not clearly see some lesser work than what this student had achieved which had nonetheless been bestowed a laudatory mark. As a result, the gradebook he had sitting at the corner of his desk had that student's name highlighted in red. His current mark was only a 63% overall. Two percentage points below the required threshold to avoid an F being permanently etched on his transcript for his first semester of world history.
Marcus glanced up as the warm light of sunset poured through the window, accompanying the echoing click of shoes walking down the empty high school halls. It was close to 8:00 already, and even the last of the athletes and theater kids had torn down and headed home. He had let this student's mother believe that he agreed to such a late conference as an affordance to her job, but in truth, he didn't want anybody to be around to hear the indecent proposal he was about to make to the woman. He waited until he heard the knock on his classroom door, before standing and walking slowly across the room. His stride was short, deliberate and languid, making her wait for him just to set the tone of the relationship dynamic they were going to have. As he curled his muscular fingers around the doorknob, he took in a breath, and pulled the portal open, revealing him in his full six foot, three inch, broad shouldered, muscular glory to the young indian mother waiting on the other side. His tight white dress shirt left almost nothing of the well-maintained military physique to the imagination, and the unbuttoned spaces at the top of the garment allowed her to see the smooth caucasian skin beneath. Khaki slacks and a set of dressy-looking sneakers completed the business casual public school teacher uniform.
"Please. Come in." His voice was a full baritone with just the first hints of a raspy scratch to betray years of screaming himself hoarse in military exercises, deployments, and public school instruction. Those dark eyes still carried their predatory gleam as he made direct eye contact with the woman, turning his body to invite her into the classroom. There was one of the tiny desks already set up in front of his much larger, much more stable and authoritative office furniture. Waiting for her to enter past him, he slowly pushed the door closed, sliding the deadbolt subtly closed behind his back to lock the two inside the room together. This time, he crossed the classroom with decisive, powerful strides, overtaking her and coming to sit behind his desk before she even had a chance to sit down. "Before we get started with specifics, I'd like to know... How involved are you in your son's homework and projects? I need to knew what the current practice is before I can suggest improvements." He smiled a fake, customer service smile as he awaited her response, knowing full well that her answer was meaningless to the arrangement which he would be insisting upon if her son were to have any hope of attending a well-credentialed university, or even gaining entry to a history or social sciences program which matched his apparent skills so well.
Spread across the desk were every project, every homework assignment, and every examination that the young man had taken since handing in his mother's photograph. The crisp fall air coming in from the slightly opened third floor window, carrying with it the scent of pumpkins and the crunch of brightly colored leaves, announced the impending end of the first of four grading periods that the school went through. For freshmen like Marcus' students, this was the first point at which their competitive potential in the race for college began to set into shape. There were almost a dozen analytic writing journals, three more projects besides the family tree, and four exams which lay in front of Marcus. Each had work that was truly exceptional for a 14 or 15 year old student, insightful, well written, citing to actual research sources, none of which were wikipedia. And yet, every last paper in front of him had a score below a 60%, etched in Marcus' own hand with red pen. The nuanced, intelligent essays that made up this student's exam answers were liberally sprinkled with terms such as 'debatable' 'overbroad' and 'generality'. Comparable projects which had put much less thought, talent, and effort in were hung around the walls of the room with glowing A and A+ marks publicly adorned as examples to aspire to. There was not a single one of the undersized public school desk chairs which could not clearly see some lesser work than what this student had achieved which had nonetheless been bestowed a laudatory mark. As a result, the gradebook he had sitting at the corner of his desk had that student's name highlighted in red. His current mark was only a 63% overall. Two percentage points below the required threshold to avoid an F being permanently etched on his transcript for his first semester of world history.
Marcus glanced up as the warm light of sunset poured through the window, accompanying the echoing click of shoes walking down the empty high school halls. It was close to 8:00 already, and even the last of the athletes and theater kids had torn down and headed home. He had let this student's mother believe that he agreed to such a late conference as an affordance to her job, but in truth, he didn't want anybody to be around to hear the indecent proposal he was about to make to the woman. He waited until he heard the knock on his classroom door, before standing and walking slowly across the room. His stride was short, deliberate and languid, making her wait for him just to set the tone of the relationship dynamic they were going to have. As he curled his muscular fingers around the doorknob, he took in a breath, and pulled the portal open, revealing him in his full six foot, three inch, broad shouldered, muscular glory to the young indian mother waiting on the other side. His tight white dress shirt left almost nothing of the well-maintained military physique to the imagination, and the unbuttoned spaces at the top of the garment allowed her to see the smooth caucasian skin beneath. Khaki slacks and a set of dressy-looking sneakers completed the business casual public school teacher uniform.
"Please. Come in." His voice was a full baritone with just the first hints of a raspy scratch to betray years of screaming himself hoarse in military exercises, deployments, and public school instruction. Those dark eyes still carried their predatory gleam as he made direct eye contact with the woman, turning his body to invite her into the classroom. There was one of the tiny desks already set up in front of his much larger, much more stable and authoritative office furniture. Waiting for her to enter past him, he slowly pushed the door closed, sliding the deadbolt subtly closed behind his back to lock the two inside the room together. This time, he crossed the classroom with decisive, powerful strides, overtaking her and coming to sit behind his desk before she even had a chance to sit down. "Before we get started with specifics, I'd like to know... How involved are you in your son's homework and projects? I need to knew what the current practice is before I can suggest improvements." He smiled a fake, customer service smile as he awaited her response, knowing full well that her answer was meaningless to the arrangement which he would be insisting upon if her son were to have any hope of attending a well-credentialed university, or even gaining entry to a history or social sciences program which matched his apparent skills so well.
