A Scandal at Burnmarsh Chapter 1

It was a notebook that undid them. Emma Cawthorne, a teacher at Burnmarsh Academy, had been tidying her classroom late one afternoon, when she almost tripped over a composition book splayed open on the ground. Thinking one of her students had left it, she picked it up and started flipping through it for a name. At first the pages were empty. But towards the middle Emma suddenly came upon something strange. There was a list of names, first and last initial, written in a neat hand. And after each name was a brief jumble of other writing, which she assumed was information. For example:

Joe S. – E, king lear, 8p, $48
Tanya R. – H, g. washington, 4p, $24
Mike H. –S, running of bulls, 6p, $60

And then after some of the entries there were green check marks that looked like they’d been made in marker. The entries continued for several pages. Emma thought about a conversation she’d had in the lounge yesterday with some colleagues: about how everyone had noticed an improvement in paper quality the last couple months, about how this current class seemed so bright. She didn’t want to assume the worst, but could this accidental discovery be why? Was this situation actually what it looked like?

It was. Emma had spent the next 24 hours investigating, first tracing the handwriting in the notebook to a sweet redhead in her second period named Josephine. A stern and frank discussion between the girl, Emma, and the principal in the latter’s office was enough to blow the whole thing open. Soon another accomplice, and then a ring leader, were brought to light. The scheme was a classic: papers for pay, recruiting a group of local community college students to write reports on whatever topic was needed. Papers were priced per page depending on the obscurity of the topic; the organizers and the ghostwriters split the profits. Emma couldn’t do anything about the college students who had actually written the fake papers. But the next day, she informed each of the culprits who did fall under her jurisdiction that they would be joining her after class. If it wasn’t exactly clear to each of them at the time why they were being asked to stay, it was certainly clear when they all arrived and saw each other.

Now Emma was sitting in the teacher’s lounge, letting the students squirm in the classroom. She knew they had to be punished. She also knew that how she handled this incident would impact to what degree both her students and the other faculty see her as a source of authority going forward. Emma was barely 27, and this was only her second year at Burnmarsh, her first full-time teaching position. Fortunately, despite her age, she has been raised with a somewhat old-fashioned sense of justice. But to discipline the students properly, she would need to speak with the students’ parents first. Her plans, which she had jotted down, in a neat, fluid hand, on a little notebook she always carried with her, were a bit outside the normal parameters of the school’s disciplinary practices.

Burnmarsh did sanction corporal punishment. It was, in fact, considered the default response to egregious or repeated student nonsense; and teachers as well as the principal were empowered to spank students when needed. The official guidelines for these punishments stipulated that a paddle was to be used (each teacher provided their own), and that no more than ten swats be delivered per infraction. Generally paddlings were delivered either over clothing, or on some occasions, over a student’s underwear. The rules did, however, allow for a teacher to paddle a student on the bare bottom “only when it is determined that such a penalty be absolutely necessary for the success of a disciplinary session.” In practice, teachers tended to administer bare bottom paddlings about a third of the time, though some teachers were more eager than others to take their charges’ pants down. Ms. Cawthorne was not one of the latter, but she wasn’t shy about doing so when she felt it was needed.

The final sentence of the discipline section of the parent’s handbook, where all of the above stipulations were recorded, gave teachers even more latitude when administering what was called “exceptional discipline.” The handbook read: “The Burnmarsh Academy School Board recognizes that exceptional circumstances may call for exceptional discipline; and as such, teachers and administrators are granted the right to administer discipline outside the guidelines herein, provided they obtain explicit permission from a student’s parent or legal guardian, and that such permission is obtained prior to the administration of said discipline” This meant that a teacher, if they called home first, really had the right to punish a student however they saw fit. Far from being abused, however, this rule tended to allow teachers to build a partnership with parents, crafting a disciplinary regime most likely to reach a difficult student. Often this meant simply recreating whatever disciplinary rituals were practiced at home. With the students waiting in her classroom quietly, and the front office already having called each students’ parents once to let them know they would be held back after school, Emma prepared to dial the first parent herself.

Emma had two specific requests. First, in addition to whatever level of paddling she decided to administer, she wanted permission to spank with her hand as well. With the exception of the redhead, Josephine, who had spilled the beans originally, the cheating ring’s organizers, when first confronted with their crimes earlier today, had seemed almost proud of what they’d done. Clearly, they thought their scheme very clever, and had no doubt accumulated some social capital among their peers. This sort of admiration was intensely misplaced, Emma felt, and furthermore, was a dangerous social precedent to let loose among an impressionable student body. In Emma’s experience, on both the receiving and the giving end, nothing brought an upperclassman back to earth quite like being spanked on the bare bottom over their teacher’s knee with a firm, warm hand. To have one’s bottom slowly and deliberately bared, to be gently scolded the whole time, to be put over the knee and then have one’s bare fanny lightly patted and rubbed while the scolding continues, and then, at last, to have the stinging spanking start, merely humbling at first, but then building to an unbearably hot, stinging pain: stoicism was no defense against a punishment like this. While a hard, cold paddling could possibly be endured with dignity, a long, loving handspanking would blow away a young girl or boy’s dignity like milkweed in October. So this was the first condition for which she wanted permission.

Her second request was to be able to keep the students’ bottoms undressed after the spankings had concluded. She had various chores that needed doing in her classroom, and there was also an essay she planned to require each student to write. The first half of the essay would be all about the moral and practical pitfalls of cheating in school. The second half of the essay would be a detailed description of the discipline each student had received as a consequence of their decision to cheat, both in school and at home. And of course, each student would read their respective essay aloud during the next class session, in its entirety. As it happens, the group of miscreants featured one student from each of her three classes, so it should all work out quite conveniently. And how better to focus the students’ attentions, than for them to write out the essays, longhand and neatly, while sitting their sore bare bottoms down on the old wooden chairs of her classroom.

Of course, all the parents she reached were suitably appalled at their offspring’s choices. And they readily agreed to all of Ms. Cawthorne’s requests, promising that whatever spankings they received in her classroom would be just the beginning of their disciplinary journey that day. In fact, one of the student’s mothers had a specific request for Emma. “Can you keep track of roughly how much time she spends with her bottom undressed in your classroom? See, in our household, if you get spanked at school, you get spanked double at home, at a minimum. So however long she spends with her bottom on display with you, she owes me double that amount of bare bottom time at home.” Emma readily agreed. Another parent told her to have her son ask for his spanking “just like he does at home.” And the parent said that afterwards Emma should text her exactly what he said, and if it wasn’t the full question he asks at home, she encouraged Ms. Cawthorne to have him ask again, this time in front of the whole classroom tomorrow. Emma agreed to this as well. In fact, she spent quite a bit of time on the phone with each of these mothers. Then, her phone calls done at last, she stood up, dusted off her dress, closed her notebook, and headed to the classroom to get on with it.