Ms. Priya Nair sat on the wooden bench outside Principal Harmon’s office and checked her watch: 9:04 a.m. She had a class starting at 9:30, which gave her plenty of time. She wasn’t nervous.
She had known this meeting was coming for three weeks, ever since she handed back the oral defense grades, and she had spent that time making sure she was ready for it. The folder on her lap held nineteen pages of documentation: rubrics, emails, timestamps, and one audio file she’d transferred to a USB drive and labeled in black marker.
Through the frosted glass of the principal’s door, she could see two shapes — the Holloways, she assumed, sitting very straight. She recognized that posture. It was the posture of people who expected to get what they came for. Ms. Nair set the folder flat on her knee and waited. She had learned, over fourteen years in Room 9B, that patience was not a passive thing. It was a strategy.