Behavior Unbecoming a Grade Schooler

Dear Mr. Dunst:

Please call me at your earliest convenience about arranging a meeting to discuss Pancakes's recent behavior in class. I don't mean to alarm you; she hasn't been misbehaving, exactly. But some of her responses of late have indicated that she may require a higher level of interactive teaching than we at Opal Anderson's Charter School for the Creatively Accelerated are prepared to give.

For instance, she has begun to incorporate what I believe some might interpret as performance art into her show-and-tell projects. Recently, the object she chose to share with the class involved a garish statuette of Bacchus that she had taken to various downtown office buildings and tried to get admitted for meetings with CEOs of major corporations. The photographs she took of baffled security guards and personal assistants confronting the ceramic figure were well executed, especially for an eight-year-old, but next to Billy Tompkinsonstein's new Tonka truck, her contribution seemed inappropriate and avant garde.

Additionally, she has been answering roll call by standing at attention by her desk, then offering up a quick aria. I congratulate you on her well-developed intelligence and fine singing voice, but I have to consider the disruptive effect such behavior has on the other children. It either baffles them entirely, or it spurs them to adopt such methods themselves. Melanie Grantalano answered a question about a story we were discussing with a few lines of gangsta rap last week. When I tried to admonish her for it (I should mention that the language she employed was entirely unsuitable for school-age children), Pancakes defended her by saying that she was merely “attempting to employ her skills across disciplines.”

These are just the most recent examples of what I'm afraid has become fairly regular and untenable behavior at this institution. I urge you to call me as soon as possible so that we may sit down to discuss better options for Pancakes's future than we here at this school are equipped to supply.

Sincerely,
Edna St. Vincent Carruthers Baxendale-on-Heath
Second Grade Instructor