Summary

On the first day at her teaching job, Penelope recalled her time at art school at RISD. She had been critiqued while she was there, told by her teachers that she was drawing with paint. She was distant from the other students, save her roommate. Although Penelope had not grown up poor, she could not recognize the lives of the other students, spending “summers on various shores” (50). Penelope had dropped out after a year.

During her first day of teaching art class, the class went relatively well with the children being loud but doing their work. She noticed the variety of students, categorizing them in her mind as “poor, wealthy, new, not sure” (54). The old black female teachers attempted to befriend her as did the group of young white teachers. Both groups “seemed to think she was one of...