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

After lunch my class was hoarse and crazy tired. Three girls said their stomachs hurt. Parker, my “handful,” was making roaring noises near the bookcase, and Jordan was singing “Who Let the Dogs Out.” Cerise said, “Dominic said something not very nice to me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Dominic, do not say not-very-nice things.”

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” said Anastasia.

Four children — including two of the roaring boys, as it happened — left to go to a Title I remedial program.

“It’s time for silent reading,” said Cerise.

“You are so right,” I said, having studied Mrs. Heber’s plans. “Silent reading, guys, it’s time for SILENT READING.”

And then a miracle happened. In a matter of minutes the whole class had pulled out little squarish picture books, or chapter books, or nature books. They all went quiet and they read or looked at pictures. Some sat on the floor. Some had their heads on their desks and their books balanced on their laps. It was so quiet I could hear pages turning. A whole half hour passed without any noise at all, except for once when my cellphone rang, embarrassingly. I was agog. What amazing children. What an amazing school.

Then it was one o’clock, and I peeked at the sub plans, which had grown as finely crumpled as old dollar bills from my having carried them around with me for hours. “Please read another Tacky book (or two),” they said. No! The Title I kids came back. The noise level rose four notches. Anastasia told me that Mrs. Heber had just finished reading the class Charlotte’s Web . I couldn’t bear to read another Tacky book, so we played a game. Someone read a sentence from Charlotte’s Web , and left out a word. “Fern loved blank more than anything.” Charlotte! No, Wilbur! “She loved to stroke him and put him to blank .” Bed!

But soon I felt guilty that I wasn’t following the plan, and I reluctantly embarked on the story of Tacky the Penguin going to a summer camp called Camp Whoopihaha, where they made s’mores. We talked about the way marshmallows burn at the end of a stick, and then a teacher dropped by to remind me that I had recess duty, and to say that I had to be absolutely sure that no kids strayed onto the large, hazardous ice pond that had formed a few days earlier around the swingsets. “Well,” I said, slapping the big book closed. “I guess it all turns out okay for Tacky at camp. Tacky is DONE.” There was a scramble of putting on snowpants and finding mittens, and the bell rang. Ellie and Cerise told me the rules of winter recess: If you had snowpants, you could climb on the snow piles; if you didn’t, you had to stay on the pavement. If you were caught climbing on the snow three times without snowpants, you had to go stand by the wall. But fifth-graders could climb on the snow even without snowpants. I asked them what Mrs. Heber usually did at recess. “She’ll walk around and make sure that kids aren’t throwing snow or bullying,” said Ellie.

Another substitute teacher, Ms. Healey — studious, quiet, in her forties — was on duty with me. She’d been substituting in the district for a year and a half, but she never took assignments at the high school. “High school is harder because they’re full of themselves,” she said. “I don’t have the assertiveness that’s necessary.” Suddenly she called, “STAY OFF THE ICE! STAY OFF THE ICE!”

Two kids ran up to me and said, “Mr. Baker, there’s a ball out on the ice.”

“Yeah, the ball is going to stay there,” said Ms. Healey. “Someday it will be retrieved.”

A nurse came out to let us know that some kids were frolicking dangerously on a second smaller ice pond in the back; it was hidden behind a four-foot mound of gray snow.

“STAY OFF THE ICE!” called Ms. Healey.

“Mr. Baker, there’s a ball on the ice,” said Jordan.

“I know, that’s just the way it is,” I said.

After an interval of running and screaming and snowsuited misrule, all the classes lined up in five lines near the doors. There was some jockeying for position at the head of the lines.

“Mr. Baker, there’s a ball on the ice,” said Benjamin.

“I know.”

“Another tip,” said Anastasia quietly. “You can pick door holders.”

“Thanks!” I said.

“Wait till everyone’s quiet, then pick the quietest line,” Anastasia said.

I let Ms. Healey pick the quietest line — I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings — and I watched the faces fall of the quiet children in the lines who weren’t picked. Anastasia was one of the door holders. We crowded back inside our classroom — snowpants were shucked off, more girls felt sick, Cerise had hurt her chin somehow, and Evelyn held an ice pack on her elbow after a fall from a snowbank.

Tessa, the paper passer, passed out the “Mystery Picture” math worksheets. One sheet was filled with a grid of squares, some cut in half by diagonal lines, with a row of numbers along the side, and a row of letters along the bottom. On a second sheet was a color key: D-8 = G, and G stood for green. I-11 = Y, and Y stood for yellow. The idea was to color in the squares according to the key, and if you did it right, you were rewarded with a blocky likeness of a green four-leaf clover against a yellow background. “Does everyone have a green crayon and a yellow crayon?” I asked. The roaring boys were roaring again by now; somebody was lustily working the crank on the paper towel machine; Tessa was singing “Happy”; and my explanation, repeated four or five times, did not reach as many children as I would have liked.

Cerise, who was an artist, had, while I was across the room listening to a girl tell me about the time she broke her collarbone, embarked on her clover: it had wide, neatly crayoned green and yellow stripes against a white background. Two other girls quickly followed her example. Anastasia and Bryce did it exactly right. I walked around showing the confused kids how the numbers and letters corresponded to the squares. Anthony, who was smart but had some trouble talking, made a scribbly red and blue shamrock. “Did I mess up?” he said anxiously.

“Well, technically you were supposed to follow the numbers and letters, but it’s a fine-looking clover,” I said. “You just got a little carried away. I’ll write a letter to Mrs. Heber saying I didn’t do a good job of explaining the math activity.”

“It’s your fault!” said Anthony, laughing, relieved. “You’ll get a bad note!”

After half an hour of effort on the mystery picture grid everything started to fall apart. The noise reached a sort of thick, chewy consistency, and then there was a string of tiny emergencies and entreaties. Somebody poured out a box full of plastic coins. Carter wanted me to ask him to add some numbers together in his head. Anthony, who was angry about something, found some fossil rocks, which made interesting noises when banged together. Twenty magnifying glasses rattled out onto a chair. Parker scrambled over a desk and had to be talked to. Tessa got hold of some glass marbles, which made a loud clacking sound on the table. Bryce wanted to list for me all the figures of Greek mythology he knew — I asked him who taught him to read; he said his parents had. Ellie showed me the bell the teacher dinged when it got too noisy, and she dinged it repeatedly — but by then Tessa had found a set of metal wind chimes, which also dinged and jingled. I waved my arms and clap-clap-clapped and ordered the class to start cleaning up.

“How’s it going?” I said to Patrick, a quiet, pale boy whose shamrock sheet was untouched. He’d methodically torn the paper off most of his crayons.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t really pay attention that much.”