Joyful! A Novel: Part 1.2

At the risk of sounding rancorous, the best word to describe the various social circles among school staff is cliques. Not only for its denotative meaning of being an exclusive group; I also mean it in the etymological sense, cliquer, to make a noise. That’s what these pedagogues do, create a constant din in the background.

In many ways, they are like groups of high school children that have physically aged but forgo...