I was one of Phoebe’s teachers in the beginning of the year we talked a lot. She was an incredibly intelligent girl who just moved to the US from Ireland in September. She was an excellent student who had excellent work ethics, and, unlike the school she attended here, students where she came from were proud of getting good grades, not slacking off. She was picked on and bullied 1st because she always did her homework and got good grades. In order to be popular, or be befriended, she felt the need to stop doing homework and start doing poorly in class. She was a freshman, and the slackers were upperclassmen. She just wanted friends. Unfortunately, either way she was bullied. She was beautiful, so she was bullied by girls when she was playing the ‘dumb’ girl and boys were then attracted to her. It was nonstop. When I turned in girls who stepped into my own class to threaten Phoebe, I never even heard any feedback. I wish I could have saved her. The last day she was in school, she didn’t have my class. Her last walk out to the bus a girl screamed expletives at her just as she was getting on her bus. Then she went home. We will never see her again. All she ever wanted was to go back home to her cows in Ireland.
