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A Tale of Two Teachers

An Illustrative Dramatic Dialogue for College-Bound HS Students

Zach J. Payne
3 min readMay 9, 2018
“Equations written in chalk on a worn-out blackboard” by Roman Mager on Unsplash

Originally written for TA 114 at Victor Valley College,
Playwriting with Prof. Ed Heaberlin.

[AT RISE: A vaguely academic setting. There are two teachers. KATHY[1], a saccharine and over-enthusiastic high school English teacher, and BUTCH, an astrophysicist in sweats and a Grateful Dead t-shirt, who looks like he’s more familiar with rolling papers than a superconducting supercollider.]

KATHY: Good morning! I’m Ms. Johnson, and I’m your Freshman English teacher.

BUTCH: Hi, I’m Butch. This is Astro 7A, Intro to Astrophysics.

KATHY: I hope that you all are here on time and ready to learn, every single day. I expect you to be in your seats, ready to learn, precisely when the bell rings at 8:05, every morning.

BUTCH: So this 9 AM thing isn’t going to work for me. I keep telling the dean not to schedule me for anything before noon, and she never fucking listens. So, this is literally the only time we will have class at the scheduled time. Get here sometime around noon, and we’ll be golden. My TA records the lectures and uploads them to iTunes U, so if you can’t be here, you can find them there.

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Zach J. Payne
Zach J. Payne

Written by Zach J. Payne

(He/They) Poet. Thespian. YA Novelist.

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