Mrs. Olinski Quotes

“For the first few weeks of the new school year, Nadia hardly spoke. All the sixth grades -like Mrs. Olinski herself - were new to Epiphany MIddle School, but Nadia -like Mrs. Olinski, herself - seemed most disconnected. Both were watchers and waiters, cautious about being friendly, about showing themselves.”

“It was afternoon by the time they go to the last round, and Mrs. Olinski sat shivering in a windowless room in a building big enough and official enough to have its own zip code. This was Albany, the capital of the state of New York. This was the last Saturday in May, and some robot -human or electronic- had checked the calendar instead of the weather report and had turned on the air conditioning.”

“How has Mrs. Olinski chosen her sixth-grade Academic Bowl team? She had a number of answers. But were any of them true? How had she really chosen Noah and Nadia and Ethan and Julian? And why did they make such a good team? Mrs. Eva Marie Olinski always gave good answers. Whenever she was asked how she had selected her team for the Academic Bowl, she chose one of several good answers.”

Mrs. Olinski, returning to teaching after having been injured in an automobile accident, found that her Academic Bowl team became her answer to finding confidence and success. What she did not know, at least at first, was that her team knew more than she did the answer to why they had been chosen.