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Show ^y It didn't take the sophomores long to learn how easy it was to distract Miss Petrov from teaching grammar. If someone asked a thoughtful question in the first half hour, Miss Petrov could be counted on to forget the lesson and talk on and on until Professor Dowling arrived to teach algebra. By the end of the first week they found out why she wanted to know their birthdates. Her primary mission, she explained, was to persuade them to stay in high school until they graduated, rather than to leave school the day they turned sixteen. "Nothing benefits a person more than education," she told them. "It took me seven years to earn my degree from the University of Pittsburgh, because I often had to stop attending classes to earn money for tuition. But I was determined to graduate, and it was worth the wait and the work." "How did you earn the money?" Esther Berkowitz asked. "By taking whatever jobs I could get. I worked in a glass factory, etching designs on lamp chimneys. Once I sewed feathers on ladies' hats. Another time I bottled pickles in the Heinz plant in Pittsburgh." "Gee whiz," Virginia Ward said. "I'd hate to bottle pickles." |
