“Your papers were terrible,
Awful, and nothing less expected
Then from a class full of freshmen.”
Said Professor Ligon
I resist the urge to argue
But I suppose I can last another 17 minutes of this class
“You see your papers are either
All right or all wrong.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair
And opened my mouth, as if to disagree
“Yes, Miss Drykil, did you have something to say?”
The fracturing of my name
Once again after 7 months as a student
Pretty sad for an English teacher
I resist the urge to say again
But words in thought boil over in the confines of my head
And fly out my mouth.
“But if you carefully look at the text, Ms. Ligon
Were her actions so unwise?
Was it wrong for her to stand up for herself?”

“I knew a girl in my math class
Our chaotic math class
Where the teacher is oblivious to anything occurring behind her back
A paper is passed around the room
Person to person
Until the paper reaches her
It’s a caricature, or so they call it,
Of that girl with large rimmed glasses,
Who plays bassoon in the band
It reads “Add onto this”
She looked at the paper
And glanced at the girl
And then she thought
She thought of her sixth period class
Where someone would hand that paper to the girl
She thought of how that girl
Would cry for the remainder of gym
She thought about how wrong it was
To participate in such a demeaning doodle
Or to embellish the drawing the slightest form
So she stood up
She rose from her seat
Crumpled the paper in her hand
And threw the wad of paper
Into the trash can
Furious glares followed her to her seat
But she stood up.

“I knew a girl in my gym class
The sweetest, nicest girl in my class
But she was teased, and hit on
Which grew to sexual harassment
All because she sat there before class
And she read
She read of Harry Potter, Jane Eyre, and finally Jo March
Before a boy snatched her book
Wouldn’t return it ‘til she’d go out with him
She grabbed her book
And continued to read
Not five minutes later
The boy found a ribbon
Called it a “stripper string”
He rubbed it all over himself
Before throwing it between her face and the book
Another boy stops him
Only to comment
That the string would look prettier
‘If they tied her soft pretty hair up with it’
She feels someone grab a fistful of hair
She’s terrified
Not because they want to tie up her hair with their rough hands
But because of the thought that crosses her mind
‘What might happen tomorrow?’
She just wants it to stop
So she stands up
She rises from the bleachers
And runs to the principal’s office
She tells him everything she endured
She falls to tears
But she stood up

Beneath my feet I find the courage
The courage to say ‘I’m not wrong.’
The courage to preach to my entire English class
Instead of the teacher doing the honors
The courage to stand up
“And now, Professor
I stand up
And say ‘We’re not wrong’
Yet you have to audacity to judge who’s right and who’s wrong
But you know ma’me
I’m probably one of the first of your 273 students
To stand up to you
And now I probably won’t be the last
It my take many people to win an election
But it only takes one to make a change
And find the courage within them to stand up.”
From my seat, I gather my books
And walk out of the lecture hall
Past student’s faces
Some aghast,
Some smiling
The lecture hall broke into mass chaos
As I waltzed out the door
It may not have been the easiest thing to do
To rise up on your shaky legs
But once you stand your ground
And stride on
There’s no looking back now