A Writing Class

I was in my third year of teaching writing at Ralph High School in New York, when one of my students, 15-year-old Mike, gave me a note from his mother. It explained his absence(缺席) from class the day before.

“Dear Mr. McCort, Mike’s grandmother, who is eighty years of age, fell down the stairs and I kept Mike at home to take care of her and his baby sister so I could go to my job. Please excuse Mike and he’ll do his best in the future. P.S. His grandmother is OK.” I had seen Mike writing the note at his desk. I said nothing. Most parental-excuse notes I received were written by my students. The writers of those notes didn’t realize that honest excuse notes were usually dull: “Peter was late because the alarm clock didn’t go off.”

The students always said it was hard putting 200words together on any subject, but when the produced excuse notes, they were excellent. So I decided to type out a dozen excuse notes and gave them to my classes. I said, “They’re supposed to be written by parents, but actually they are not. True, Mike?” The students looked at me nervously.

Now, this will be the first class to study the art of the excuse note – the first class, ever, to practice writing them.” Everyone smiled as I went on, “Today I’d like you to write ‘An Excuse Note from Adam to God’ or ‘An Excuse Note from Eve to God’. Heads went down. Pens raced across paper. For the first time ever I saw students so immersed(专心的) in their writing.

The next day everyone had excuse notes. But suddenly I saw the headmaster at the door. He entered the classroom, looking at papers, and then said, “I’d like you to see me in my office.” When I stepped into his office, he came to shake my hand and said, “I just want to tell you that the lesson was great. Those kids were writing on the college level.”

What did the headmaster think of the author’s way of teaching?