She peered over her laptop screen, wishing that during her youth she had plucked her eyebrows into a thin line like her mother's - they always managed to make her look more stern than she every really was.
Right now, she would have given anything to be able to pull that off.
Somehow she'd managed to get the class quiet and at least convinced them into acting as though they were doing their work. But it had been a hard battle.
It wasn't that she viewed her entire career as a teacher as a war, just this class, and a few others dotted throughout her four years as a qualified teacher, they were a particularly mean brand of stubborn.
The type of class that it was great to be a part of because of the way that they melded into a single unit so efficiently, making everyone feel like they belonged.
She had had been in a group like that once. A-Level history. Her teacher's first A-Level group. She doubted he would ever forget them what with the hell that they had put him through.
This is karma, she thought. And she didn't even really believe in karma. But it definitely felt like universal pay back for all the times she scared her old teacher.
She wondered where he was now and if he was well.
There wasn't much time for pondering and reminscing however, as the boy at the back, one of the ringleaders, threw something quite blatently, too obviously that she could pretend she hadn't seen it.
"Once more into the breach dear friends" she muttered as she returned to battle once more.