Professor Margaret Davies

“Professor Davies — I am one of the parents. My daughter Alma had you in 2022 and 2023. What I want to say is this: I never had a teacher like you, growing up. I did not know teachers like you existed until Alma came home in October of her sophomore year and read me, out loud, the opening of "Beloved" — because, she said, "Professor Davies read it first, and I want you to hear it the way she heard it." Alma is at Brown now, studying comparative literature. The first thing she did when she got her dorm room was tape your printed-out reading list above her desk. She did not know I saw. I saw. Thank you for being the teacher I needed my daughter to have.”

“Margaret — twenty-seven years we have shared a corridor. Eleven of those years I have been your principal, in the strictly administrative sense of the word. You have, by everyone's honest reckoning, been principal of Room 204 the entire time. I have, in those eleven years, watched four superintendents come and go, two state-curriculum reforms, one global pandemic, and an unbroken procession of seniors who come back to the building, the September after they graduate, specifically to find you. They do not come back for me. They come back for you. I want you to know — for the record, on paper, in the journal — that you are the best teacher I have worked with in thirty-four years in education. The school will, I am sorry to say, be diminished without you. Bring the cake on the last day. I will pour the tea.”

“Professor Davies — I am twenty-five and I am writing this on my phone in a coffee shop in Brooklyn because I started crying when I read the email and I needed to get out of my flat. You taught me in 2017 and 2018. I was the loud one. I was the one who argued with you about "The Great Gatsby" for three weeks straight. I was wrong, mostly, and you let me be wrong, in front of the class, with a patience I did not, then, understand. I understand now. The reason I am crying in a coffee shop is that I am a book editor now, and the way I disagree with my authors — gently, slowly, by asking them what they really meant — is literally, word for word, the way you disagreed with sixteen-year-old me. I love you, Professor Davies. Have the loveliest retirement.”

“Mrs. D — I was in your homeroom class. I was not in your English class. I was the kid you let sit in Room 204 at lunch in the spring of 2014 because the cafeteria was, as I put it then, "an actual war zone." You never made it a thing. You let me sit in the back, eat my sandwich, do my pre-calc homework, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays you would, very quietly, put a paperback on the corner of my desk — never recommended, never asked about — and let me decide. I read fourteen books that year. I had read three the year before. I am now a software engineer and a reader of, my wife will tell you, an unreasonable number of books. Thank you for the door you left open. I know there were others sitting in there with me. I hope every one of us wrote in.”

“Margaret — thirty-one years next September. We started, you and I, in the same week in 1995. You were in 204, I was in 218, we shared the corridor and a coffee machine that was already old then. We have, in those years, watched each other's children grow up and one of mine grow up and leave us. You sat with me in the hospital chapel on the worst night of my life and you did not say anything because you understood that nothing needed saying. The next morning you taught a full schedule. You came home with me at four. Margaret, I love you. The corridor is going to be very quiet next year. I have asked the new English hire, very seriously, to keep the door open at lunch. She has agreed. I think she will be fine. I am thinking of retiring next.”

“Professor Davies — I'm a senior. I'm in your class right now. This is, in theory, a secret because we (the seniors) organised this whole thing behind your back over the last six weeks. We are not great at secrets. I think you have known since April. (You looked at me on the Tuesday after spring break the way you look when you know something, and I went home and told my mom you knew.) I wanted to say, on behalf of the seniors of 2026: we know you are the last great one. We have heard about you our whole lives. Older siblings, parents, the lunch lady (Ms. Gloria says hi). We knew, walking into 204 in September, that we were the last class. We have, accordingly, paid attention. Thank you for the year. We promise we read the books.”

“Margaret — I was your student teacher in the spring of 2009. I was twenty-three and terrified and convinced I would be a terrible teacher. You let me teach "A Streetcar Named Desire" to your AP class. I was, predictably, a terrible teacher. After the lesson — which had, by any reasonable measure, been a small disaster — you walked me down to the parking lot, sat with me on the kerb behind your car, and said, "Priya. The first ten years of teaching are not the job. They are the rehearsal for the job. Do not quit. I would not be the teacher I am if I had quit at twenty-three." I did not quit. I am, now, the head of English at a school in Edinburgh. I have, every year, repeated that sentence to my own student teachers, on the kerb behind my car. Thank you for the kerb. Thank you for the rehearsal.”

“Mrs. Davies — I sat in the back row in 2002. I was a B-minus student in your class. I was a B-minus student in every class. I was perfectly fine. What you did, which no other teacher in my four years ever did, was to give me back an essay in October of senior year on which you had written, "Marcus — this is good. Genuinely good. I want you to know I noticed." I had never, until that moment, considered the possibility that I was good at anything. I went to community college on the strength of that sentence. I transferred. I got a degree. I run a small landscaping company in Asheville now. Three employees. We just bought our second truck. I keep the essay in a drawer in my office. I look at it on hard days. Thank you for noticing, Mrs. Davies. It was a long time ago, and it is, still, the moment my actual life started.”

“Mrs Davies!! I am eleven. My big sister Yara was in your class last year and she said I have to write to you because you are going to retire and you are the BEST. She read me your favourite poem (the one about the road in the woods) and I LIKED IT. I am going to be in your class one day except no I am not because you are retiring. THIS IS NOT FAIR. I am going to write to you when I get to high school anyway. Yara says she will give you this. Happy retirement!! From Lila (age 11) and also from Mrs Hanafi my mum who is helping me spell.”

“Professor Davies — I am writing this from a small office at NYU where I teach a freshman composition course. It is, by a long way, the least glamorous thing I do, and it is the thing I love most. I was in your class in 2003. I remember, specifically, the day you handed back our Hamlet essays. You gave mine back to me with three lines underlined and a single comment in the margin: "This sentence is real. Write more like this." I have been chasing "real" ever since. As a writer. As a teacher. As, frankly, a person. You set me a standard at sixteen that I have not yet reached and that I am still, twenty-three years later, trying to. Thank you for the standard, and for the patience, and for the underlined three lines. I owe you the career.”