The Other Math Bitch

The Other Math Bitch
Sister Celestine
Merion Mercy Academy
Merion Station, PA
1970-71


She was tall, rigid and purposeful in all of her movements. She had porcelain skin and jet black hair.  She was attractive in a stern way. She was a nun so her looks were not necessarily important to her (or so I thought).

She taught Geometry to the 10th graders.  She enjoyed math and she tolerated her students.  Sometimes she was so oblivious to us it felt as if we were not even in the room with her as she explained one theorem after another.  She never checked for any understanding.  Getting through her lesson was her only priority.  In hindsight, she may have been labeled with Asperger's Syndrome by today's standards.

She learned our names but never took an interest in anything else about us.  She didn't greet us or ask how we were doing. She marched in everyday, opened her books, instructed us to stand for a prayer, instructed us to sit down and then began her lesson; all in one sentence.

Every day we had a quiz. She stood in front of the classroom and dictated 10 problems to us. Then she would instruct us to pass our sheets to the girl behind us and collectively we corrected each other’s papers. Around the third day of school we talked amongst ourselves at lunchtime and decided that we would help each other with these quiz grades. And so when we each received the others’ quiz, we corrected answers so that all of us passed the quizzes.

It baffled the nun to see that so many of us could past the daily quizzes but then fail so miserably on the major test. Regardless of our contrasting grades she just didn’t seem to care. She suspected nothing and we continued every day to change answers and grades to the benefit of each other. Finally, one classmate surrender to her conscience and told on us. Sister Celestine marched into class that day shaking in anger. She was frightening. Her face was beat red. Her tone was curt and demeaning. She spoke to us with what seemed like hatred to me. It was ugly.

However, the next day we resumed our daily routine and resumed our responsibility to grade each other’s quiz and we resumed our commitment to help each other. We were just not so obvious anymore.

We had a major test maybe every two weeks. Many of us failed miserably. We had to take this tests home to be signed by both parents. I remember telling my mother about this mandate and she was highly offended. That brought me great delight. I always liked it when my mother didn’t like something about my teachers. She thought the nun’s decree conveyed mistrust within her marriage. She didn’t like the thought that my grades would not be discussed between my parents. With this insight into my mother’s thinking, I somehow talked myself into believing that was okay to forge my father signature on this test and every future test.

Then I started thinking it was a good idea to forge both signatures on every test. That plan worked well for me for quite a while. But then I got caught and Sister Celestine confronted me. I told her that I had signed a test but with my mother’s approval. I told her that my mother was out of town, at a conference for a week and my mother suggested I signed the test on her behalf. The nun believed me and I escaped any consequences for my actions. And her indifference to the truth just fueled my defiance towards her.

She loved to solve theorems. She would stand at the board and whip through a problem in a frenzy. When she finished she would turn to us, delighted with her success and ask "does everybody see that”. Nobody ever responded and she just continued with the next problem. It didn’t matter to her that we often did not understand. She was only interested and getting to her lesson plan. And so the year progressed without any interactions amongst us, without any real understanding of geometry and without any regret of this wasted experience.

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