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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Skin I’m In, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Bullying and Insecurity
Self-Esteem, Support, and Friendship
Writing and Self-Expression
The Importance of Role Models
Summary
Analysis
Miss Saunders asks Maleeka to come to her room at 3:30 p.m., but Maleeka makes her wait until 4:45 p.m. When she gets to Miss Saunders’s room, she’s not there. The janitor tells Maleeka that she’s in the auditorium. When Maleeka arrives, she overhears Tai and Miss Saunders talking confidentially, and Maleeka remains backstage, unseen, to listen in. Miss Saunders says that her students are really engaged, but half of her seventh graders are failing—their test-taking skills are terrible. Tai advises Miss Saunders not to kill their spirits by failing them and making them think that nothing they’ve done counts. She says that tests aren’t the only way to prove what they’ve learned.
Tai reinforces that good mentorship, like friendship, is about supporting students rather than making them feel insecure about the work they’ve done. While Miss Saunders wants the students to live up to their full potential, Tai emphasizes that this may not necessarily translate to good test scores, and that squashing their enthusiasm would only lead to worse performance. As Maleeka has proven, giving students the opportunity to excel creatively—even if they don’t do well on tests—does more to foster their love of learning than anything else.
Themes
Tai acknowledges that the kids have been hard on Miss Saunders, but she says that no one is perfect. Miss Saunders says that she always tried to be perfect: when she was little, she prayed to God to make her face perfect. When he didn’t, she tried to be perfect at everything else she did to make up for it. Tai says that that’s a lot of pressure to put on herself and her students. Then, she reassures Miss Saunders that she’s a great teacher and that the kids will like her no matter what she looks like—it’s her need to be perfect that will ruin her. Just then, Miss Saunders spots Maleeka backstage.
While Miss Saunders doesn’t let the kids’ bullying make her feel insecure, her insecurity fuels another aspect of her life: her perfectionism. This is why she pushes her students so hard on tests and assignments. Yet Tai’s advice affirms that Miss Saunders doesn’t need to make perfect students out of the kids: instead, she just needs to foster their intellect and creativity, as she does with Maleeka.
Themes
