The means they had available to pass time productively had improved dramatically because of the iPad. In the old days, they would have made spitballs, or poked their neighbors — now they could watch mudding videos, which actually interested them, or take pictures of each other, or play chirpy video games. The iPad had improved their lives.
Nobody expected most of them to do academic work, it seemed, because long ago they’d been labeled as kids with “special needs”—even though in fact they were, judging by their vocabulary, their temperament, and their fluent way with irony, normal American high schoolers. They weren’t masterminds, but that wasn’t why they were in this room — they were here because they quietly refused to do work that they hated.
At the very end of the day, just before the bell rang, everybody gathered by the door. I began putting the computers away. (There were, in addition to the ubiquitous iPads, carts full of old Apple laptops.) Lydia, a girl with braces, in a pink sweatshirt, came in, very keyed-up and wild. She began throwing a pen around. I said, “Hey, hey, hey.”
“Stop it, or the substitute won’t come back,” said her friend Shelby.
“I’ll be back,” I said. “I enjoyed it.”
“See, he enjoyed it,” said Lydia.
I felt like a figure of fun, but not so like a figure of fun that I didn’t want to do it again. I hadn’t helped anybody learn anything, I’d just allowed them to be themselves; I was there for a day to ensure that room 18 didn’t descend into utter chaos. My role was to function as straight man, to give these kids the pleasure of avoiding meaningless schoolwork. And that was maybe a useful role.
The final six bells bonged and everybody surged out and the room was empty again. I wrote a note to Mrs. Prideaux saying that the kids had been good-natured and funny, and that I was grateful to have had a chance to fill in. As I was driving home, I remembered something Clyde, the snowplower, had said. “You’ve got your good kids and you’ve got your bad kids. And sometimes your bad kids can be your good kids.”
And that was the end of Day One.
DAY TWO. Monday, March 17, 2014
LASSWELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, SECOND GRADE
MYSTERY PICTURE
THE PHONE PLINKED AT 5:40 A.M. on Monday, St. Patrick’s Day. Lasswell Elementary School needed someone to teach second grade, said Beth, the sub caller. “I’ll do it, thanks,” I said.
On the way there I bought two glazed donuts and two medium Turbo cups of coffee — one cup for later. The elementary school, a few miles away from Lasswell High School, was a low brick building in the middle of a wooded patch, with a playground out back: swingsets and a climbing structure sitting in a white field of ice. A jolly, pink-cheeked secretary signed me in and gave me a badge that said STAFF, which I clipped to my jacket pocket. The room was warm; I was already beginning to sweat.
In room 7, Mrs. Heber, the teacher who’d called in sick, was sitting at her desk, under garlands made of looped construction paper. She had a bad cold and looked as if she hadn’t slept well; even so, she’d come in before school started to write up her sub plans and print out some worksheets. “You look like you have some experience under your belt,” Mrs. Heber said. “Have you been a teacher?” I told her it was my first time teaching at the elementary level, but both my children had been through Maine schools.
“Well, there you go,” she said. She stapled some pages together and handed them to me. I read a sentence: “Have the kids add ‘I Found a Four Leaf Clover’ to their fluency binder’s table of contents.” Mrs. Heber showed me the math activity worksheet, a grid of squares with an accompanying color key. “This is a little confusing,” she said. “The kids won’t have seen this before but it’s really fun. As long as you get it, they’ll get it.”
“I hope you feel better,” I said. “Thanks for preparing everything so well.”
“Good group of kids,” Mrs. Heber said. “I haven’t told you about my little handfuls. My two handfuls are Parker and Benjamin. Keep an eye on those two — they’ll try to get silly.” She wished me good luck and left.
I drew up a seating chart to try to learn the children’s names beforehand, gave up, and looked around, trying to get my bearings. The desks, made of wood-grain Formica, were tiny, arranged in a large square, with handwritten names taped to the tops — I’d forgotten how small second-graders were. The chairs were made of maroon plastic and they were stacked around the edges of the room, which had gray carpeting. The walls were crowded with a bewilderment of sights — calendars, headphones on hooks, yellow cardboard clocks with movable hands, a number strip that went around the ceiling, letter diagrams, a cartoon of parts of the body, a poster saying “How Do You Feel Today?” with pictures of children in various states of emotion, hand-crayoned figures of “ROOM HELPERS” mounted in plastic pouches against an electric-orange background. There was a bright yellow bookcase stuffed with a kaleidoscope of kids’ books, and a green chalk blackboard superimposed with pastel Post-its and charts with primary-colored stickers going down the side. Behind Mrs. Heber’s desk hung an intricate “Taxonomy of Educational Objectives,” colored pink, aqua blue, pale green, and violet, with sub-objectives spelled out in rectangles. Under “ANALYZING KNOWLEDGE” was a box that said:
Analyzing Errors
in Reasoning
Identify logical
or factual errors
• Question the validity of
• Listen to insure
• Assess
• Expose fallacies in
Listen to insure? I started to get nervous — I couldn’t take it all in, and I didn’t know where anything was. Just then the teacher next door popped in to say good morning. “If you need anything let me know,” she said. “They’re a good group of kids, but they’re very social. They love to talk.”
“If you hear an uproar coming from this room,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you’ll hear me, too,” she said, which made me feel better.
A bell rang — an old-fashioned bell with a real clapper — and children began arriving in ones and twos. I said hi and they shyly said hi. Backpacks were hung on hooks, snowpants were removed, chairs were unstacked and distributed. “You guys really know what you’re doing,” I said.
“You’re really tall,” said one tiny girl, Anastasia — she was wearing several strings of green plastic beads in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. Bryce, a tiny freckled boy, pulled out a chapter book from his backpack and told me he’d finished it last night—The Lightning Thief. I congratulated him. I’d forgotten that kids could have freckles. I found a stub of chalk and wrote “Mr. Baker” on the board.
I asked Anastasia if now was the time when I should pass out the four-leaf-clover poem for their fluency binders. “You have to ask the paper passer,” she said. I asked who the paper passer was. “Tessa, but she isn’t here yet.”
Some children’s voices came over the PA system, reading the date and the weather forecast in singsong unison. They told a knock-knock joke that I couldn’t make out. The principal came on to announce several birthdays and to congratulate a team of Lasswell Elementary students who’d won an Odyssey of the Mind tournament over the weekend. Nobody in the class listened. Then, on cue, everyone grew quiet and serious and put their hands on their chests, and we said the Pledge of Allegiance together.
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