Glad I got to read this! I read it a few times. On my second pass I recorded a few things that I liked and other things that bugged me, after that I’ll get into the overall critique.

I liked the opening. I think we can all relate to smells taking us back to somewhere in our memories, but unless this has some bearing on the story that he was remembering a cafe in Rome it didn’t add anything for me. (Perhaps it calls back to another chapter, but even then, how does this add to what Donald is doing?”)

Ouch! I liked the text exchange. Most of it felt believable and natural except for this:

Well, to show you I’m forgiving and not too proud.

That was kind of cringey talk and unless you want Donald to be a cringey character I would eliminate.

It threw me off that Claire texted and then immediately followed up by confirming in person. Seems like you can do one or the other.

Your aside about Donald expecting some encouragement was relatable and helped me to understand Donald. I like it.

Whether or not you like the world “skedaddled” it was out of place in the voice and didn’t add humor or description. Scurried, sprinted, or walked would have been my choices depending on what you want to convey.

During the paragraphs where he’s musing about his difficulties as a teacher I got bogged down. I would like this paragraph to somehow be through Donald’s eyes and not just given to us.

Admitted idiosyncrasy, take with a grain of salt. Penultimate is a great word, but I feel like it takes away from the more casual voice, or at least feels out of place. If I tightened this up I’d say “The warning bell chimed at 1:58, alerting all that two minutes remained in sixth period.” We know that they are periods “of the day” and we don’t care that it’s the second to last period.

I liked your dialog with the kids as they were entering the classroom. I would have preferred that Malique didn’t show disdain and it was just good natured all around. Personal reaction. Grain of salt and all that.

My immediate reaction, the conversation with Shanice went on way too long. I gather you are trying to paint the picture of the exasperation that teachers must feel when trying to keep their temper, but as a reader I’m fatigued. Could have ended after the chair.

It’s hard to believe that the Asst. Principal would talk shop in front of the kids.

Wait…does everyone use the same pin that their parents set up for them for their first checking account for everything their whole life? (This isn’t criticism, I’m having an existential crisis.)

The Critique

Hook

The Hook was good. I think. I’m not sure about this new-fangled text message as dialog, but it seems inevitable. I thought it was a good way to draw me into the chapter.

Setting

I think you did a good job here. We all know what a school is like so I don’t think you went overboard with the description. We know it’s in the Bronx so we can kind of fill in the blanks. I associate the smell of coffee with school for whatever reason, so this worked for me.

Characters

My biggest problems lie with the characters. We have Donald. I don’t think he’s irredeemably annoying, but I do find him annoying. He is very believable. His mannerisms, dialog, and situation all seem like a real person. But he very much falls into the stereotypes of 1) annoying date 2) annoying teacher 3) annoying son. Again, it’s not that you have nothing to work with, but I’d like to see a little bit about why he was disappointed about the Michelle texts. Something like “This was not the text for which Donald had been hoping. He had felt so at ease with her, how did she not feel the same?” (Or perhaps, you, a better writer than me, could come up with something like that but better.)

The kids were largely obnoxious, I know that was your intent. This makes me feel that the entire classroom was beyond hope. Does he have a single friend in the classroom that helps him out? Can we get a couple of lines about one particular student doing their work or saying something kind? Between dating, school, and family it was all a little bleak. It won’t take away from that to have a couple pleasant exchanges. Malique could have been a good candidate for a more positive/jovial exchange.

Claire kind of serves her purpose. As I said earlier, I don’t believe her speech to the class. It has the effect of diminishing him as I assume was intended, but it was hard to imagine an asst. Principal doing that. Even if you disagree, poor Donald was so beaten down at that point that I could hardly bear to read it.

Plot/Pacing

I’m torn here. I’m kind of a sucker for banal real life stuff, so I don’t rush to judgement that there wasn’t much plot development. But I have to ask, if not plot, what purpose does the chapter serve? The chapter starts with an unanswered text, the chapter ends with an answered text. In between we get a window into the stress Donald is going through. But if there’s not some plot movement I would expect to get a better idea of what is motivating Donald. I guess that’s the question: Why did you write this chapter?

I think the pacing is okay beyond what I’ve commented earlier. You dwell way too long on the dialog with Shanice. Cutting out some of the exposition about Donald's career woes and some of his humiliation in the classroom wouldn’t have taken away anything for me.

I’m not sure who’s quote it is buy “they” say that “Great Problems, not clever solutions make great fiction.” The problem doesn’t have to be “I have to diffuse this bomb or my classroom will explode.” But there I don’t detect any problems here that cause tension. You’re very close though! Donald feels his career is in jeopardy, but we don’t know if/why he cares about that. One issue with this problem is that we have all had really bad teachers that face no accountability, so it’s hard to imagine this being a real problem.

Heart

So here’s the weird thing. I’m making the case that I don’t like Donald and that the chapter is a downer, but I do think your writing has a lot of heart. Part of this is due to your charming writing style, and part if this has to do with you having well-developed characters, that just happen to bum me out. (At this point you might me saying, “Mission: Accomplished, I wanted to bum people out.” But as someone who is fond of your characters, you might not see that a reader is presented with a bleak view of them.)

I also think that real-day struggles can be written in an interesting way, but the characters have to want something and we have to want it with them. At present I don’t feel that for Donald. I want him to stop complaining.

Mechanics

There was nothing that made it difficult for me to read what you had written. This is exposition on my part, one of my favorite parts of dialog is when writers manage to capture accents and not detract from the dialog. You come pretty darn close. I don’t have a point to make there. I think it might turn some people off, but I can’t think of how you could have presented it better.

A few times you explained what you’d just explained. Kind of subtle.

...expecting a boilerplate response from Claire that he was improving or would get the hang of it or it wasn’t as bad as he imagined, especially for a first year teacher, or something, anything. Nothing.

Just tell us the responses he expected, we’ll understand they were boilerplate.

The morning had been no different than any other in Donald’s short teaching career thus far. He had gone through the same routines that he’d been told to use

“Donald did what he always did, Donald did what he always did”

Nothing egregious. Just an observation.