Meet Miss Saunders

Freak.
That is the first word that comes to Maleeka's mind when she first meets Miss Saunders.
Michael Saunders (never heard "Michael" as a girls name before) has a large scar, a "giant white stain" halfway across her face, "like somebody tossed acid on it or something" (pg. 1). She is the new English teacher at Maleeka's school. When she first meets Maleeka, she says to her: "Maleeka, your ski is pretty. Like a blue-black sky after it's rained and rained" (pg. 3). Imagine this: you're being bullied the whole time at school anyway, partly about the color of your skin, and now there is this new, strange-looking teacher who walks up to you and says these things about your skin. I can understand that Maleeka gets angry and embarrassed, I guess in that age and in her situation you're not yet confident enough to accept this compliment. When you just want to look and be like everybody else, you don't want someone to say these things about you, no matter how beautiful and poetic these words are. And no matter how well they are meant. Maleeka just wants to be let alone, but Miss Saunders seems to be on to her.
In the beginning of her first lesson, Ms. Saunders asks her students what their faces tell about them. Then she shares her story, how she was born with this scar, and how it took her a long time to accept and love herself. For someone like Maleeka, this is the most important lesson she yet has to learn. Miss Saunders wants her students to be able to "look in the mirror and like what you see, even when it doesn't look like anybody else's idea of beauty" (pg. 20). Look at the picture I found about this! Really, what do our faces tell the world about us? And why do we judge people just by the look of them, if we don't want them to do that to us in return?

A friend of mine just posted on facebook: "To be a teacher means to give children wings". What a great saying! And it fits Miss Saunders so well. For a writing assignment, Maleeka begins to write the diary of a girl who is brought as a slave on a ship from Africa to America. Her name is Akeelma (name change of Maleeka). Miss Saunders encourages Maleeka to write this diary even after the assignment is over, and Maleeka proves her talent for changing her perspective to Akeelma's, making her seem real and believable. For Maleeka, writing this diary becomes a way of dealing with her own problems and worries, and to her, Akeelma really comes to life: "Mostly, I'm thinking and writing in my diary - our dieary, Akeelma's and mine. Lately it's hard to know where Akeelma's thoughts begin and mine end" (pg. 96). Miss Saunders encourages Maleeka to turn in her writings in a library contest, and she actually wins.
It is not just this, but many things that Miss Saunders does for Maleeka and says to her, that help her see the good inside of her. She is smart, she is likeable, she has a loving family, and a boy tells her that he likes her and thinks she's pretty - all of these things make her finally accept who she is, and like herself for this. She is able to seperate herself from Char and the other girls, and becomes confident of herself and the skin she's in.