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

I put him to work picking up crayon wrappers off the floor. Benjamin announced that he was one of two designated scrap-monsters, whose job was to pick up stray scraps of paper. Carter said his task was to check inside people’s desks to be sure they were neat. Jordan was the supply shelf helper. “I tidy up there,” he said. He began neatening the plundered box of sparkly stickers. “Great, excellent, I love it!” I said. I told Tessa to stow the marbles.

Dominic asked, “Have we been good today?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “At the end it got kind of chaotic.”

“Because if we’ve been good Mrs. Heber puts a marble in the jar.”

I laughed. “You’re kidding — the marble jar that Tessa poured out onto the table?”

“Yes.”

More cleaning, some chair stacking, and then a voice came on the PA system — time for the first bus run. Half the class hustled off, backpacks bobbing. Some of them had a long bus ride to look forward to. “Bye!” I said. More chair stacking, and a second bell. More students left. A few last kids left for after-school class, which was held in the cafeteria. “Bye!”

And then the room was empty and still. I slumped in my chair. While I was writing a note for Mrs. Heber, the custodian came by and emptied the trash cans. I apologized for the disorder, especially for the blizzard of tiny paper circles from the three-hole puncher.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said. “I have a backpack vacuum. This is not that bad. I’ve seen it worse than this. I’ve got eighteen classrooms, twenty bathrooms, two hundred and fifty desks, worktables, and so forth.”

I whistled.

“Yep, I do that in under eight hours, five days a week. I’ve been doing it for eleven years. You have a good day.”

Anastasia came by with her mother, who was, as it happened, a fourth-grade teacher at the school. “How did it go?” her mother asked.

“It went well,” I said — half lie, half truth. “They’re really nice kids.” Which was truth.

To Anastasia I said, “Thanks for being in the class. You were great, very helpful.”

“She said to me, ‘I wish he could be a sub forever,’” said Anastasia’s mother.

I thanked them and waved goodbye. I turned out the lights, washed my hands, and splashed water on my face. I felt like crying, from exhaustion or despair or joy, I’m not sure which.

At the office, as I handed in my STAFF badge, the jolly secretary said, “Are you ready for a nap?”

“Yep, it’s nap time,” I said.

She laughed. “So did you like the little people?”

“They’re good people.”

“Would you come back again?”

“Absolutely.”

“Awesome.”

Driving home, I again wondered if I’d managed to teach anything useful that day. Suddenly I remembered that I’d shown Anthony how to spell found when he was working on his leprechaun story. That was something. Found is a good word to know how to spell.

So ended Day Two.

HACKETT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, FIFTH GRADE

I SUCK AT EVERYTHING

“I DON’T KNOW if you’re interested in subbing today,” said Beth, at 5:35 the next morning. I wanted to sleep, but I said yes. “Great,” she said, sounding relieved. I was to report to Hackett Elementary School, where I would be holding the fort for Mrs. Browning, who taught fifth grade. Fifth grade — that didn’t sound too bad. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, and then I made some coffee and brought a cup up for my wife, filled a thermos, fed the dog, fed the cat, made two sandwiches, and drove to Hackett, a small, unprosperous town some miles down the road from Lasswell. I passed a pizza shop and a for-sale convenience store, then a trailer park, and then some woods, and then a low sign in a snow pile that said Hackett Elementary School. I parked in a far corner of the lot and sat. It was a quarter to eight. A teacher got out of her car, hunched against the wind, carrying a full canvas bag, and made her way to the school entrance. Every morning a million elementary school teachers go to school to do their jobs. It was ferociously cold out, but clear — all the clouds had been blown out of the sky.

The school was almost identical to Lasswell Elementary, with a cozy, glassed-in office and a friendly secretary who showed me how to slide the magnetic strip on the door of my classroom in case of a lockdown drill. Mrs. Browning had left two pages of instructions and a stack of worksheets. “Students know that you will be keeping track of their dojo points,” it began. “No peanuts allowed in my room ever. We have a student that is allergic to them.”

Mrs. Browning’s walls were crowded with signs and posters, including the same taxonomy-of-learning poster that Mrs. Heber had taped up. There was a good deal of advice about writing, carefully hand-printed in several colors of marker: “Reread all entries about seed idea, ‘draft’ in your mind.” “Any sentences or words repeated? Can I think of different words or phrases to replace them?” “Is the first word of every sentence capitalized?” “Polish your work so it is ready for publication!” There was a lovely child’s colored-pencil drawing of a desk that said “What Does a Clean Desk Look Like?” with pointers to important features: “Name tag left alone.” “Only tissue box, water bottle and sanitizer on your desk.” “Backpack hung up on rack, emptied and neatly put away.” “All school supplies in box/bag in between books, or on top of them.” There was a photograph of a penguin leaping up out of the ocean near a cliff. It said:

I MUST GO

MY PEOPLE NEED ME

Several lists of standard operating procedures were up on the whiteboard, including one SOP on tattling that said:

Being mean, trying to get someone in trouble

Making up things that are not a big deal

I heard a long, low buzzer that sounded like something from a prison movie. “What the hell was that?” I said aloud.

A reading specialist dropped by to warn me that the class could be rowdy. “They have a lot of energy,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll put your thumb right down on them.” Then a hearty bald man appeared — Mr. Holland, the music teacher. “You’re not Mrs. Browning,” he said. I asked him if they did a lot of singing in music class.

“This time of year it’s all singing, because they’re preparing for a concert,” he said. “We also do a lot of dancing and other types of movements.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said.

“Oh, we have fun in music,” said Mr. Holland. “The only reason to do music is because it’s fun. If it’s not fun, don’t waste everyone’s time.”

A few minutes later, the PE teacher showed up to ask me to tell the class to wear sneakers, because gym was inside today. “We did snowshoeing last week, but we’re not doing snowshoeing this week,” she explained.

Students began arriving and hanging up their backpacks. They were supposed to practice handwriting the letter P on a worksheet. I met Nash, Zeke, JoBeth, Rory, Danielle, Zoe, Carlton, Larissa, and two girls named Amber, and I made some headway with attendance. There were twenty-two kids in all; the noise level rose with each new arrival. “Put your hair up, Zoe,” said Danielle. “I’m NOT PUTTING MY HAIR UP,” said Zoe, in a remarkably loud, penetrating voice. An elegant, dark-eyebrowed girl wearing red lipstick, Nadia, sighed sadly. “It’s usually crazy in the mornings,” she said to me. “Especially after St. Patrick’s Day. Top o’ the morning to you! I just love saying that.” I asked her how dojo points worked. “If they’re being crazy, write their name down, and put a check next to it meaning they lost a point.” Carlton was already being crazy, slamming his backpack around and making sudden screams and climbing on the chairs. He wore black pants with red stripes down the sides.