Summary Of The Sanctuary Of School By Linda Barry

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School is a vital necessity for kids all around the world, it challenges them, gives them a place to learn, and offers them social interaction with kids their own age. Along with that, it can also be a place where students experience a feeling of love and care from their teachers, which in some cases, is a feeling that they don’t receive at home. Situations similar to this are exemplified in the essay “The Sanctuary of School,” which was written by Linda Barry with the intent to make the readers aware of child negligence. Barry describes this as an issue that doesn’t get enough attention, and she believes if it doesn’t garner more then neglected kids are going to get left behind. School is also a place where one can gain many valuable opportunities. …show more content…

Jones creates a fictional tale in which he describes the events that occurred on a little girl’s first day of school. To begin his essay, Jones uses vivid detail by having the girl describe the color of her clothes, the amount of time her mother spent on her hair, and what she ate on that particular morning. The girl suspects that something isn’t right when she doesn’t see any of her friends on the way to school that morning. The girl and her mother then arrive at Seaton Elementary School, which is where the mother wants her child to attend because it’s right across the street from the church they attend. When they enter the building, they are greeted by a woman who the girl explains by saying that “she acts as if she had known me all my life, touching her hand under my chin” (110). When this woman finds out that where the mother and daughter live she gives them the unfortunate news that they’re at the wrong school. After receiving this news, the girl describes something that she learned about her mother, saying that “the higher up on the scale of respectability a person is— and teachers are rather high up in her eyes— the less she is liable to let them push her around” (110). After these events, they arrive at the girl’s new school and start to register her. The mother soon has to admit her flaws—not being able to read and write— to another parent to ensure everything is done in the appropriate manner for her daughter. She pays the other parent fifty cents for helping her fill out the forms, and then her daughter is sent class. The mother is obviously shaken about leaving her daughter, and Jones concludes the essay by having the little girl describe being able to hear her mother’s footsteps over everything else that

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