Gryphon By Charles Baxter

In the short story “Gryphon”, by Charles Baxter, Ms. Ferenczi’s presence in the classroom is beneficial to the students of Five Oaks since she has led the students to be disciplined, discuss amongst each other, and question/research information. To start things off, Ms. Ferenczi has taught the kids to become disciplined in class. In the beginning in the story, the class mocks and picks on Mr. Hibler behind his back, while he is sick. Later on in the story, Ms. Ferenczi’s is introduced to the classroom, and nobody tries to joke around or pick on her. For example, “There was not a sound in the classroom, except for Miss Ferenczi’s voice… No one even wanted to go to the bathroom.” (pg. 10) In this section, the students are settled down and well

She has also caused the students to discuss information/the lesson amongst each other. Before her appearance, the students haphazardly read and learned lessons, mostly loathing the information retained. But yet, Ms. Ferenczi manages to teach them in a way that makes them discuss amongst themselves. Such an example is when the text reads, “At recess the class was out on the playground, but no one was playing. We were all standing in small groups, talking about Miss Ferenczi.” (pg. 11) During this, the children decided not to play around but rather they chose to talk about what they learned. This shows that the students were paying attention, were involved, and thought beyond the lesson and they shared that information between each other. This is fantastic, since before the loathed the idea of learning, but now they are confronting each other about the lesson without being told to do so, showing their independent learning. Following that, Miss Ferenczi’s teachings has also helped them think/learn independently by making them question what they know. Towards the middle of the story Tommy and his friend, Carl, are arguing about a fictional beast, whether or not it was a thing or not, which in the end results in Tommy researching the word