Nicholson Baker - Substitute - Going to School With a Thousand Kids

“That would be a sight — a ginger,” said Brad.

“He’s got some freckles on him,” said Kaylee.

“Obama’s Irish,” said Keith.

Later, when Mrs. Kennett read about a big draft in Andy’s cell, somebody whispered, “Foreshadowing!”

Steve said, “It would be cool to have a scientific instrument that would go off whenever foreshadowing occurs.”

“Or everybody in the room just coughs when we hear it,” said Sebastian, who was making an origami crane out of green paper.

“Who wants to keep going?” said Mrs. Kennett. She read some more pages, but it was just about the end of the class now, and people were restless, getting ready to leave. “All right,” she said. “So you guys have the rest of fifty-eight, fifty-nine, and half of page sixty to read tonight. That’s like a page and a half. We can do this!”

The bell bonged. Sebastian was the first one out of the room. I thought, So this is the life of an ed tech in high school. I thanked Mrs. Kennett and went to history class.

The teacher, Ms. Hopkins, said she was just back from a conference on the teaching of history, and she was tired. She looked pale. “It takes a lot of energy to talk,” she said. She asked me to make some two-sided copies of a worksheet, which I did, using the big copier in the teachers’ break room. She passed out the sheets I’d copied, which had a list of words on them. Next to each word was a blank space to write its definition.

“I can’t even handle the stickiness of this desk,” said a disheveled boy, Marlon. “I spilled grape juice all over it. It’s on my sleeve.”

Cole, the kid behind him, whispered, “Shut your mouth, shut your mouth, shut your mouth, shut your mouth.”

Ms. Hopkins closed the classroom door. “I don’t want to see any technology out, put it away, we don’t need it,” she said. “We’re going to go through these definitions. I’m going to give you pretty simplified definitions, so if yours are not simplified, or close to what I say, then I need you guys to write them down. These terms are like the basis of all this class. Starting with foreign . Can anyone give me a definition of foreign ?”

Josh read from his iPad, hiding it behind his backpack: “Characteristic of a country or language other than one’s own.”

“That’s pretty much right on,” said Ms. Hopkins. “The simplified version that I have is just ‘dealing with other countries.’ When we say foreign , like foreign affairs , we’re just talking about us dealing outside of our own country. Foreign affairs are not going to be unemployment— GUYS.”

Two boys had been talking. “Sorry,” said one of them.

“So if we’re talking about Russia we’re talking about foreign affairs.” She asked for an example in US history where foreign affairs popped up. There was silence.

Finally Nicholas, wearing a red hoodie, raised his hand. “Different languages?” he said.

“Different languages, right,” said Ms. Hopkins. “But tell me an example of the US dealing with another country.”

Bethanne, a smart kid, spoke. “Trade, like when we get stuff from China?”

“Right. So these are examples, and if you don’t have these you should be writing them down. Any trade outside of our country is foreign. The other issue you can put down here is war. World War I, World War II, the Cold War. Any wars that are outside of our country, that we’re involved in, count as foreign.” She paused. “A pet peeve of mine?” She wrote WW1 and WW2 on the whiteboard. “Don’t ever write that, or that. That’s not how you write World War I or World War II . You use the Roman numerals. I get some great essays in this class and they write WW2 , and it just immediately makes your essay seem, like, not as good of an argument, because you don’t know how to write the war. So, random side note, please make sure you don’t do that.”

She wrote domestic on the board and together she and the class defined it: it was the opposite of foreign . Then isolationism , then diplomacy .

“I can think of a case in our history when diplomacy failed,” said Preston, a smart kid. “Nicaragua. That was when we started selling weapons to the Nicaraguans to fight their own battle.”

Ms. Hopkins wrote Nicarauga on the whiteboard and paused. “I’m pretty sure that’s spelled wrong,” she said. She erased it and looked at the worksheet. “Treaty.”

Bethanne read aloud from her iPad, not bothering to hide it. “An official agreement that is made between two or more countries or groups?”

“Yes,” said Ms. Hopkins. “So it’s a formal peace agreement between countries or groups. For this class we’re really going to be talking about countries.” She wrote NATO and North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the board. A student got it confused with NAFTA.

We moved on to affect versus effect . “These terms are confused a lot by students,” Ms. Hopkins said. “This isn’t necessarily like a US history thing, but it is two terms that you need to understand the differences of. Can anybody explain to me the differences between effect and affect ?”

A boy raised his hand. “When you’re saying affect , you’re saying that you’re going to change something. Effect is kind of used more as a noun. Like, ‘The effect of being shot is death.’”

We turned to conflict . Bethanne said, “Even in our own country, we cannot agree on anything.”

“Even in our school,” said Marlon. “We can’t agree on a grading system — we change it three times a trimester.”

The Vietnam War was an example of a conflict, said Preston.

“The eternal conflict between the sexes,” said Josh, with a flourish.

“Any war is going to go under conflict,” said Ms. Hopkins, sipping from a cup decorated with a paisley pattern. They turned the worksheet over to see what the next word was. “War,” said Ms. Hopkins.

“War, a state of armed conflict,” said Josh.

“I have kind of a long one,” said Ms. Hopkins. “‘Organized, and often prolonged, conflict. It usually includes’—you should be writing this if you don’t have it—‘usually includes extreme violence.’ People dying and shooting each other and all that. Social disruption. Economic disruption.”

Some of the students wrote extreme violence on their papers. More disembodied words floated through the still air of the classroom— social, political, economic, isolationism —each of them requiring a definition and an example. We got through these, one by one, but we still had militarism, fascism, nationalism, communism, capitalism , and totalitarianism to go. We were swimming in a warm, lifeless salt pond of geopolitical abstraction. Ms. Hopkins’s throat was hurting more now. She told everyone to work on their own, and she sat down and put on some music: Journey singing “Love Will Find You.” Then she played Joan Jett doing “I Love Rock ’n Roll.” The students copied out the dictionary definitions of the disembodied words until the bongers bonged. I felt sorry for this class, and for Ms. Hopkins. I said goodbye and walked around the corner and down a hall to Financial Algebra, taught by Mrs. Erloffer, a short, tough veteran teacher.

She stood at the whiteboard going through the homework — the students were doing tax problems. For example, if somebody’s taxes were $5,975, how much more tax would she have to pay if her income went from $42,755 to some higher amount? My head lolled and I read the inspirational posters on the wall. Below a photo of Einstein sticking out his tongue, a headline said, “As a Student, He Was No Einstein.” Another poster: “The Best Way to Make Your Dreams Come True Is to Wake Up.” And another: “You Get Out of Life What You Put Into It.”