Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille

MRS. HATCHER’S EVALUATION

Yesterday’s conversation with Principal Wahr kept Vice Principal Salas awake all night. “We need to cut the dead weight, Salas. Those teachers who aren’t on board with the new curriculum will be moved out, and I want them moved out immediately.” Wahr, a skinny man with just the barest wisps of white hair on an otherwise bald head, kept one hand on his keyboard and the other on his phone. As he talked, he studied his computer screen which Salas couldn’t see. “Hatcher’s the worst. She ignores the lesson plan template we instituted last year. She doesn’t write her objectives on the board for the students to see, and I’ve sat in her class. Lecture from the tardy bell to the dismissal bell. She’s a dinosaur. I’m adding her to your evaluations. Vice Principal Leanny has ignored Hatcher’s performance forever. We need fresh eyes on her.”

“I haven’t heard anything bad about Hatcher,” said Salas. “She earned teacher of the year two years ago.”

“Popular student vote. Doesn’t mean squat.” Wahr leaned forward. “Here’s how I know she needs to go. My son is going to be a freshman next year, and I don’t want him in her class. Best practice, Salas. We’re a ‘best practice’ school, and all the studies say lecture doesn’t work in social studies.” Wahr turned his attention back to the computer screen, then tapped a couple keys. “Watch her. I’ve got to eliminate a teaching position, and now that the state has removed tenure protection, she’s the best candidate. Here’s two other possibilities. You’re doing their evaluations now.” Wahr dropped file folders on the desk between them. “Evaluate and choose. Somebody’s got to go. Budget, Salas. Budget and best practice.”

He knew Hatcher, a pleasant, older woman, tending toward fat, who looked like Salas’s grandmother. He’d never observed her teaching, though. That night, as the moon moved a tree’s shadow across his bedroom wall, Salas realized he’d have to start Hatcher’s evaluation immediately. He’d get notes from Leanny, then drop in to Hatcher’s last period American History class.

Vice Principal Salas organized his day by piles. The tallish one on the left contained discipline action sheets for students in trouble, many for attendance issues, but also for cell phones in the classroom, smoking, drugs, insubordination, and one for a Theodore Remmick, a freshman who’d brought a small propane torch to school in his backpack. Parent contact sheets made the middle pile. He spent most days on the phone talking to parents, often about the first stack. Teacher evaluations made up the third pile. Much of the time he avoided the third pile. He’d been vice principal at Hareton High for fourteen years, and he knew all the teachers. If they weren’t sending kids for discipline (which meant they weren’t good at classroom management), then he limited his contact with them to drop in visits while they were teaching. Salas evaluated the N-Z teachers. Leanny handled the other half of the alphabet.

Salas dreaded evaluations. Before he’d taken the vice principal job, he’d taught four P.E. classes and one Remedial Reading (his minor had been English), so he felt silly trying to evaluate the academic disciplines. He’d gone into P.E. because he liked sports and kids. He’d been an indifferent student himself.

“Hi, Salas. What did you need?” Vice Principal Leanny leaned into his office without stepping in, her gray-rooted dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She’d started teaching French and Spanish the same year Hatcher joined the faculty, but moved into administration after ten years. With Jack Quinn’s retirement from tech ed three years ago, the two women were the longest tenured employees in the building and old friends.

“What can you tell me about Mrs. Hatcher?”

Leanny grimaced. “Wahr’s after her, isn’t he? It’s not the first time. Best teacher we have. I don’t know why Wahr wants to mix up the evaluations. I’ve been giving her exemplaries as long as I can remember.”

“No one gets exemplaries!” Wahr had directed them not to give teachers the highest rating. He had said, “Everyone can get better. Besides, if we give a teacher the highest rating, it’s hard to fire him.”

“I know. Wahr has a fit.”

Salas said, “I heard she ignores the curriculum and just lectures. That doesn’t sound good.”

“You haven’t observed her, have you? Don’t do a drive by. Give her a half hour.”

“Can you send me your notes on her for this year? I need to get up to speed.”

“Sure. Check your e-mail later.” Leanny rubbed her forehead, as if she had a headache. “Theodore Remmick is waiting outside. Is he for you? His family lives on my street. They’re a piece of work.”

Salas sighed. “Yeah, send him in.”

“By the way, I heard you’re Wahr’s hit man now.”

“What?” He glanced guiltily at the folders the principal had given him.

“Wahr hands that duty off. He’s never fired anyone. The last time the school lost teachers, he gave it to the head counselor. Sorry it’s you. The counselor quit the next year. He worried he’d be asked to do it again.”

Salas shrugged. “What are you going to do? Send Remmick in, would you?”

Theodore Remmick has to be the smallest boy in the freshman class, thought Salas. The boy’s feet hovered above the floor as he sat in the chair by the round table where Salas talked to the discipline problems. Remmick’s nose was narrow, and his hair hung over his eyes as he looked down.

“Why a propane torch?” said Salas. “What were you going to do with it?”

Remmick said, “Did you know a cow didn’t kick over a lantern in the O’Leary’s barn to start the Chicago fire in 1871? Some newspaper guy invented the story to sell papers.” Remmick smiled without looking up. “Like a fire that killed 300 people needed a fabrication to be more interesting.”

Salas paused. Sometimes a kid would deny the accusation. Sometimes he rationalized or defended, or he wouldn’t speak at all. Talking nonsense introduced a new tactic.

“You know, a propane torch is a safety issue.”

“The fire burned so hot the roofs blocks away caught fire before the flames reached them. The fire jumped the Chicago River. That’s a big river. And it kept going. Started on Sunday morning and didn’t stop until Monday evening when the wind died and it rained.”

“What does this have to do with a propane torch? Were you going to burn something?”

Remmick brushed the hair off his forehead. His eyes were brown and clear. “From Lake Michigan’s shore, the sky above the city turned orange. Thousands of people fled to the lake. I saw flame tornadoes rising through the smoke, and it roared like a train.” He closed his eyes as if feeling heat on his face.

“Son, why’d you bring a propane torch to school?” Salas put the torch on his desk. It was tiny, a hobbiest’s tool, not much larger than a cigarette lighter.

“Project for class. Can I go now? I’m missing band.” He squirmed in his seat.

Salas looked at the boy thoughtfully. “They don’t have torches in the shop?”

“I’m not in shop. History. It’s a group assignment. I volunteered it.”

The discipline guide for the district didn’t list a propane torch in any category, so Salas decided to lump it under “item inappropriate for a school setting” on the action sheet. “A week lunch detention, and any project in the future that involves flame or explosions, assume you can’t do it.”

Remmick hopped from the chair, and then offered Salas his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Salas. I’ll keep it in mind.”

When the boy left, Salas shook his head. I could write a book, he thought for the umpteenth time in his education career.

The History department head, Mr. Young, really was young. The wall posters still hadn’t yellowed, and he flinched when he saw Salas at the door: a classic, inexperienced reaction. He had become the department head by arriving late at the meeting last spring, when the history teachers voted on who would attend the extra meetings and take charge of the departmental paperwork.

“According to the district pacing guidelines, the American History classes should be looking at the causes of WWI. If she’s only to 1871, she’s almost a half century behind.” Young ran his finger down the teaching objectives for the class. “They should know mutual defense alliances, nationalism, militarism and imperialism, and from the unit they will be able to discuss America’s emergence as a military and industrial power. They only get a week. We have to be to the Cold War by April’s end or the first week in May.” He thumbed open a section in the notebook. “We have two required benchmarks for the unit: a multiple choice test and a short essay question. I have the rubric for the essay if you’d like to see it.”

Salas tried to look interested. He remembered being 15 himself and his own tour through American History. He recalled biplanes from WWI, but nothing else, which made him think about Snoopy vs. the Red Baron. Of the classes he’d hated, history bored him the most. If it weren’t for sports eligibility, he’d never be motivated to pass.

Salas almost asked Young what he thought of Mrs. Hatcher, but he didn’t want to start rumors.

From the back, Hatcher’s classroom looked like most social studies rooms. She’d covered one wall in maps. Presidents and historical scenes covered the other wall. A long whiteboard stretched across the front. Book-filled cabinets stood behind him. He smelled dry erase markers and carpet cleaner as he leveraged himself into a student desk the right size for a 6^th grader, maybe, but not comfortable for an adult.

Mrs. Hatcher stood beside her desk at the front, straightening papers—she’d waved when he walked in. Salas filled in the preliminary observations on the evaluation check list. Although Hatcher did have writing on her white board, Salas didn’t understand it. In one column were names: “DeKoven, Meagher, Catherine, Barber.” Then some presidents: “Harrison, Jackson, Adams, Monroe” Then some states: “Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Ontario.” Salas was pretty sure Ontario was in Canada. She’d written one sentence on the board: “It ends at Fullerton Ave.”

What Hatcher had not written were the class learning targets, which were required. Somewhere she should have posted what teaching standards the students were addressing for the day, and what they should be expected to do when the lesson ended. Salas had the WWI standards Young had given him, including, “I will be able to explain why America became involved in the First World War.”

Students trickled into the room, taking desks around Salas. Theodore Remmick came in, nodded in Salas’s direction, then found his place. A dark-haired girl who clearly didn’t know the dress code, dressed showing too much skin, sat in the desk in front of him. “You look pretty mature to be a freshman,” she said.

“Just a visit,” said Salas.

The tardy bell rang. Salas waited for tardy students so he could record Hatcher’s procedure with them, but students filled all the desks, and there were no tardies. Conversation buzzed in the room.

Hatcher started speaking without asking for the students to quit talking. Salas gave her a low mark in the “Commands student attention before beginning instruction” category.

“We’ve moved the Chicago Fire project to Saturday.” By the time she said “Saturday,” the room had grown quiet. “Can somebody bring a big box fan? I’ll provide the extension cord.”

A boy sitting underneath the covered wagons poster raised his hand.

“Thank you, Sean. Remember it’s at 10:00 in the back parking lot.” She stepped behind her podium. “We’re going to jump four years to 1876 today and talk about the Battle of the Greasy Grass, which some might recognize as the Indian name for the battle better known as Custer’s Last Stand.”

Salas flicked through the required social studies scope and sequence guide for American History. He couldn’t find the Chicago Fire, and the class should have covered Custer’s Last Stand a month earlier, and only in passing. The district’s guidelines emphasized teaching the industrial revolution into the 1870s, and to be “cautious” in discussing “controversial” topics, which included the “resettlement of indigenous natives.”

“Five years after Chicago’s devastating fire, the city was rebuilding and recovering to become one of America’s busiest commerce centers. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away, in the Montana wilds, General George Armstrong Custer led the 7^th Calvary in an attempt to return Cheyenne and Lakota Indians to their reservations.”

Most students were not taking notes, and although they weren’t talking, they didn’t seem to be paying attention to Hatcher, either. Her soft, almost melodious voice lulled him, and within a few minutes, he lost track. The dress code violation slumped into her desk so her shoulders lowered to the chair’s top. He wrote a comment on the evaluation sheet, “Straightforward lecture. No attempt to engage students’ attention.” He also noted she hadn’t given the students a task, like taking notes, nor had she handed out any aids to guide their thinking, like a graphical organizer or an outline template.

Hatcher droned on and on. Salas looked up at the clock. Only ten minutes into the class. He thought about leaving and then returning to watch what she did in the last five minutes, but the room’s warmth relaxed him. Several students had closed their eyes. Besides, the waiting papers in his office weren’t going anywhere.

His thoughts drifted to what he knew about The Battle of the Little Big Horn: almost nothing. He’d seen a movie with Dustin Hoffman in it years before, Little Big Man, that had the battle in it.

Hatcher’s voice rose and fell in the background, like a breeze. Salas listened, and he found himself imagining the sun setting behind the low Montana hills. He pictured sitting on a horse blanket, back from the cooking fire. It had been too hot during the day for him to want to sit closer. He leaned against his bedding, his mind drifting. They’d been told not to set up tents, which meant they’d do a night march, another long, stumbling trek in the dark, walking from one desolate spot to the next.

Salas twitched, then looked around the room. Had any students noticed he’d almost gone to sleep? None appeared to be looking at him, though. Some were in the exaggerated slump mode like the girl sitting in front of him. A couple rested their heads on their arms. Some propped their elbows on their desks and cupped their chins.

Still, Hatcher continued talking. “Single-shot Springfield carbines jammed when overheated,” she said, and then went on to horses used as breastworks. Twenty minutes passed. Salas closed his eyes. The pencil in his hand grew heavy, reminding him of a gun stock, how it would feel, its solidity. He propped the gun across his knees, sitting on the ground. In the distance, gunfire, the heavy pop of Springfields filled the afternoon air. Custer’s forces, he thought. Custer would drive the enemy back and join them. There were so many hostiles! Even their women were in the battle, waving blankets, scaring the horses away. Did Reno and Benteen know what they were doing?

He took a long, warm drink from his canteen. Other soldiers sat around him, exhausted, frightened. They smelled of dust and horse sweat and days of travel. More gunfire to the north, but the sounds didn’t appear to be getting closer. A horsefly landed on his neck. Bit him. He slapped at it, too tired to care.

Behind the muffled battle sounds and the tired horses’ breathing, he heard a bell. He cocked his head. Who would be ringing a bell on the battlefield, in the sun and dirt and waving grass? He regripped the rifle, and it became a pencil, and the dismissal bell rang, ending class.

“Tomorrow we will cover the aftermath,” said Hatcher. “Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the others make for an interesting story.”

Salas looked around, confused. Some students appeared dazed too, but they shook it off before heading into the hallway.

Before going home that afternoon, Salas stopped in the school library to pick up a book on Custer’s Last Stand, but the books were gone. The librarian said, “It was a massacre. Every source checked out before the first bus left the parking lot. Kids were on the computers doing searches like crazy until we closed.”

That night it took a long time to fall asleep. What had happened in Hatcher’s class? The experience unnerved him a bit. Had he suffered a fugue or a blackout? He scratched at the spot on his neck where the horsefly had bit him. The insect must have been in Hatcher’s room, and he incorporated it into the Custer hallucination, because it left a distinct welt on his skin. When he did fall asleep, screams and gunfire and arrows haunted his dreams.

At the day’s beginning, Leanny leaned into his office the same way she’d done the day before. “Did you watch her yesterday? What did you think?”

Salas nodded. When he’d gone over his observation sheet from the day before, he had a hard time remembering what he’d seen in Hatcher’s class. If he’d drifted off while evaluating her, it wouldn’t be fair to the teacher.

“I’m not sure.” He swallowed. “I’m not sure what I learned.”

Leanny nodded knowingly. “But you learned, didn’t you? Did you know that more Hatcher kids go into education than any other teacher in the building? Talk to counseling. They’ll tell you. I’ll bet half the history teachers in the district are Hatcher’s former students. You want to know something else interesting? Look up Theodore Remmick’s grades for this year. He hasn’t had a mark above ‘D’ since sixth grade.” She laughed. “I saw him in the lunch detention room yesterday after you talked to him, reading.”

Salas checked his to-do list. He needed to observe the other two teachers Wahr had added to his evaluations, plus handle today’s parent contacts. He hoped he wouldn’t have a schedule buster, but he ended up spending the morning talking to a junior who had started (and ended) a fight in the locker room. Fighting drew an automatic suspension, but the other student’s parents also wanted to press assault charges, so the campus police officer visited his office several times, as did the district’s lawyer, both boys’ parents, the teacher, and witnesses who couldn’t agree on even the most basic details.

At one point, the parents who wanted to press charges started yelling at Coach Persigo for not supervising the locker room “in a professional manner.” They said they wanted to sue him and the school district.

It took Salas a half hour afterwards with Persigo to convince him the parents weren’t going to sue. “I’ve been in the district too long to put up with this shit,” said Persigo. “We got a real chance to make the playoffs this year. I don’t need the distraction. I can’t teach classes, coach baseball and worry about lawsuits at the same time. No respect. There’s no respect. ”

A false fire alarm cleared the building ten minutes before lunch, which took forty-five minutes for the fire department to respond to, so Salas spent almost an hour wandering around the practice football and baseball fields with the students and their teachers, waiting for the okay to reenter the school.

Leanny caught up to him as he followed the students back into the building. She walked beside him for a minute without talking. Finally, she said, “Do you have an opinion about the new evaluation forms?”

“They’re clear. Fill in the rubric. Add up the score. Teachers know what’s expected. Evaluators know what to look for.”

“Did you notice there’s no measurement like ‘Instills a love of learning in students’? It doesn’t say, ‘Changes students’ attitude about the subject’ or ‘Enriches students’ lives’ or ‘Provides a meaningful adult role model’ or “Creates an environment for student self discovery’?”

Salas put his hands behind his back. Most students were entering the building through the gym doors. They’d piled up to squeeze through the bottle neck, and they weren’t in a hurry to get back to class. He and Leanny stopped behind the milling heads. “You can’t evaluate those areas. They’re subjective.”

“Exactly,” said Leanny. “How much do you remember from high school? I mean, if you had to take a subject test in any class you took, how would you do?”

Leanny smiled at him, which made Salas think she was leading him to a trap. “Not well, probably. I haven’t studied for the tests.”

“Exactly, so if you don’t remember much, and you can’t pass the tests, what was high school’s point? Did you get a measurable experience from it?”

Mostly Salas remembered being on the baseball team during high school. He remembered sitting in Algebra, keeping one eye on the clock and one on the cloud cover out the window. If it rained, they’d go to the gym to throw, which he didn’t like. In the winter, he did weight room work and he ran. By late February, he started marking the calendar, tracking the days left until spring training. He loved it when the coaches trotted with them out to the field, wearing their sweats and ball jackets. He loved wheeling the trashcan full of bats into the dugout. He remembered stepping onto the freshly swept infield and how satisfying a grounder thumping into the glove’s pocket felt.

“I decided to major in P.E. in high school.”

“So other subjects for four years were worth it. You discovered what you loved!”

The crowd shuffled forward. In a few minutes he would be back at his desk, trying to do a full day’s work in the half day he had left.

“I don’t know. Where are you going with this?”

“Just saying the evaluations aren’t the whole picture. Maybe high school is more than observable, measurable achievement.”

Wahr waited for Salas in his office. “We need to move up the schedule on these evaluations. The superintendent wants preliminary staffing done by next week. I’m putting out a note to teachers who are quitting, transferring or retiring. We still have to cut a position, though. How’s Hatcher’s evaluation? Did you watch her?”

Salas didn’t know where to go in his own office. Wahr partially sat on the desk, so Salas didn’t feel like he could sit in the desk chair. He felt like an intruder. “She looks bad on paper. She lectured for the whole period.”

“Just like I said. You need to do at least two more observations. We can’t move on a teacher without three full observations. Collect her lesson plans and check her students’ benchmark test scores to complete the packet.”

Salas thought about the class he’d watched. He could still smell the horses at Greasy Grass. “She gave an… interesting presentation. Being in her room felt… different.”

“I don’t care if she delivered the Sermon on the Mount. You can’t talk to fifteen-year-olds for that long and be effective. She’s an expensive, entrenched fossil who’s teaching like it’s 1950. I can replace her with a first year teacher whose salary would be half as much and who would know the latest trends in education.”

“She might not be our best choice to cut.”

Wahr snorted, pushed himself up from the desk, and said, “I need a name by next week. It ought to be Hatcher, but somehow we’ve got to trim a position. Make a choice.”

Hatcher started the afternoon class with Sitting Bull, but by the end had somehow moved into the Alaskan gold rush. Afterwards, when he looked at his observation sheet, he had written “last American frontier,” “Jack London,” and “Klondike.” He hadn’t written how she began class, whether the students’ learning objectives were on the board, or if she had varied her teaching technique.

As he walked away from her room, though, he rubbed his wrists. They ached and his hands were icy cold as if he had been holding a heavy gold pan in the frigid river’s rolling water, swirling and swirling and swirling the nondescript sand at the pan’s bottom, hoping for telltale color, hoping for a nugget to make the weeks in the wilderness worthwhile. Moving through the hallway, jostled by students going to class, he thought he could still hear the mosquitoes’ incessant buzz, and smell the wind coming down from the frozen mountain tops, still snow-capped in the summer’s middle.

After school, the librarian said, “Sorry. We had a rush on gold mining books. You missed out again.”

Coach Persigo called Salas that evening, just after Salas had settled in front of the television with a sandwich and a beer. The public broadcast station scheduled an interesting sounding documentary on the Alaskan Gold Rush.

“That kid’s parents hired a lawyer. He called me to schedule a deposition. Thirty-five years teaching school, and my techniques are called into question because one immature kid can’t settle an argument without hitting another immature kid. Is that my fault? Kids get into it some time. Is that my fault?”

Salas gripped the phone tightly. He never knew what to say to a teacher in full rant mode.

“I’ve got grandkids, Salas, and I don’t see them enough. My gutters need painting. I don’t have time to waste on a stupid lawsuit.”

Salas gave him the school district’s lawyer’s number. “I’m sure it will come to nothing, Coach. The parents don’t have a case. You know how folks can get. A week from now we’ll be laughing about this.”

Persigo didn’t speak. Salas could hear him breathing. The television showed a snow-covered mountain range, and then zoomed until it focused on a lone man leading a burro up a rude trail. A pick and shovel were strapped to the animal’s back. Salas longed to turn up the sound.

“You’d better be right,” said Persigo. “Life’s too short.”

Salas met with Mrs. Hatcher at lunch to go over his observations, a mandated step in the evaluation process. She dropped her lesson plan book on his conference table and sat in the same chair students who were in trouble used. Even her hands are plump, Salas thought. She personified softness, like a teacher-shaped pillow, but she gazed at him sharply, and when she smiled her face broke into laugh lines.

“Your lecture interested me,” said Salas. “You clearly know your subject area.” (“Subject Area Knowledge” was another area on the evaluation, but he wasn’t sure how to evaluate her there. Did she really know her subject area? He’d fallen into the weird daydream both days, and he didn’t know what she’d said.)

“I love history. I think what I’ve learned most as a teacher in all these years is a passion for my subject.” Her voice was just as gentle in person as in the classroom, and she smelled of lavender.

“Yes, that’s clear.” Salas took a deep breath. He ran his finger down the check-sheet identifying her shortcomings, which were many. But he couldn’t force himself to make a criticism. He had thought this conference would be perfunctory. He’d point out that she ignored the district’s guidelines and policies, allow her to say whatever she wanted in her defense, and then be able to say later they had had a meeting, which the union required. He’d done numerous evaluation meetings in the past with other teachers that were no more substantial.

The truth, he thought, is I don’t have any idea what’s going on in any teacher’s classroom. I’m in them such a small percentage of the time. He remembered his first assistant coaching position. The head coach had sent him to the practice field with the freshmen boys who wanted to play infield. He was supposed to show them technique and evaluate who could start for the first freshmen game coming up in a week. Ambition and idealism filled him. Any boy can learn to play better, he’d thought. They just needed time and the right instruction. He worked with the group for two hours, but just before the practice ended, the head coach stopped by to watch. He said to Salas as he left, “Bad technique. It’ll be a miracle if they win a game this year.”

Salas had been dumbfounded. He thought, But you should see how far they’ve come! You should have seen them two hours ago!

“Can I see your lesson plans?” Salas asked.

Mrs. Hatcher pushed them toward him. She’d written little in individual days. This week, for example, included the Chicago Fire, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the Alaska Gold Rush. Hatcher had written “1850-1900” and drawn an arrow through the week.

“Not very detailed,” said Salas.

Mrs. Hatcher laughed. “Detail’s in the head, Mr. Salas. I know what to cover.”

“But I don’t see your learning objectives. You haven’t written the standards you’re teaching. You don’t write them on the board either. I’m supposed to be able to ask any student in your class the learning objective for the day’s lesson, and they should be able to tell me. That’s best practice.”

“Did you ask them this week?”

“Uh, no, but you never stated an objective. They wouldn’t know it.”

Mrs. Hatcher picked up her lesson plan book. “The goal is always the same, Mr. Salas. When they leave my room, they know a little more history than when they came in, and they want to find out more.”

“It’s hardly measurable.” Salas felt miserable. This wasn’t how he’d planned this meeting. He was on the defensive, while Mrs. Hatcher seemed confident and self assured.

“Come in tomorrow. Ask the kids at the beginning and the end. You might find it interesting.”

“What’s the lesson?”

“It’s a good one. The wizard of Menlo Park. Did you know, at the same time Custer made his fatal pursuit at Bighorn, Thomas Edison was working on the idea that would become the phonograph? History is seeing connections. Little Big Horn occurs in 1876, the same year H.G. Wells, the guy who wrote The Time Machine turned ten. H. G. Wells dies in 1946, the year after the atomic bomb. Albert Einstein will be born in 1879. So, three years after Custer’s men have to use their single-shot carbines as clubs because they can’t clear jams from their guns fast enough, the man who gives us the math for the nuclear age comes into the world. Einstein died in 1955. I was a year old in 1955. Einstein, a man who lived when I lived could have talked to people who remembered Little Big Horn. History’s a big story, Mr. Salas, but it’s not incoherent. Everything touches everything. That’s the lesson.”

Salas checked on the lunch detention kids after Mrs. Hatcher left his office. Theodore Remmick had taken a seat in the back, where he read quietly. He had propped the book up on the desk. At first, Salas thought it was a Japanese anime so many kids liked. A bright cartoon image splashed across the book’s cover, but when Salas took another step closer, he could see the title: The Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The illustration showed a fireman handling a fire hose. He looked panicked.

Principal Wahr met Salas in the hallway outside the detention room. His words echoed in the empty hallway. “Persigo’s in your half of the alphabet, right?”

“Yes, I meant to talk to you about him.”

“No need. He turned in his resignation. Some nonsense: lawyers, kids fighting in the locker room, and no respect. He’s going to finish the year, but he’s done. One less evaluation on your plate. Phys Ed averages 54 kids a class. We’ll replace him, but we still need to eliminate a position. Put your action plan on my desk Monday. I don’t want to be messing with staffing while graduation is coming up. Here are the forms you’ll need.” He handed Salas a multi-page packet. “Have you observed the other teachers I suggested?”

“This afternoon, if I’m not interrupted.”

But the drama teacher reported someone had stolen her purse from her desk, so Salas spent the time going over surveillance footage with the campus police officer. After two hours, they noticed the teacher didn’t have her purse when she came into the building from the parking lot.

He only had time to get to Hatcher’s class as the bell rang. Students left her room more slowly than they did most classes, and they had the somewhat dazed expression he now recognized.

“I’m going to the library,” said a boy wearing a rock band sweat shirt. “What else did Edison do?”

“Had you ever heard of Tesla?” said his friend. He rubbed his hand through his hair as if to quell static electricity. “Or Henry Ford?”

They both blinked at the lights in the ceiling like they’d never seen them before.

At home that afternoon, Salas studied the teacher release form packet. Since the state had eliminated teacher tenure several years earlier, all he needed to remove a teacher was documented malfeasance, which he’d compiled during the week. He’d complete his third observation tomorrow, during the class’s weekend meeting.

According to the evaluation sheet, he’d written damning truths. By observable standards, her teaching failed. She didn’t provide learning outcomes. She didn’t follow departmental or district procedures. She ignored “best practice,” and lectured instead. Wahr had been right.

Salas tapped his pen against the papers, then looked out the window, a little sick to his stomach. The afternoon sun slanted across his front yard. He recognized the 5:00 light, the last light Custer and his men saw. Their heavy fighting started maybe an hour earlier, and as the sun beat down, the men were overrun. He remembered Custer, unhorsed, among the remaining soldiers atop a low rise. No cover. No place to run.

Salas couldn’t remember Hatcher talking. He remembered the battle itself. He’d been there. He remembered holding an empty revolver, and he remembered a terrible sadness as men fell, but he wasn’t scared. The world grew peaceful at the end, beneath the shouts and gunfire and screaming horses. He became calm when he realized the long fight was over and he didn’t need to be scared anymore.

And he remembered, too, riding away, back to the village, triumphant. A warrior among thousands, a warrior to make his ancestors and sons proud.

On Saturday, Salas walked across the parking lot toward the students. They’d parked their cars near the school, and were now in the graveled overflow parking, far from the building. He heard someone laugh, and they chattered among themselves.

Mrs. Hatcher and Mrs. Leanny, both wearing overalls, were helping the students arrange display boards on the ground. When he reached the crowd’s edge, he could see the boards laid out in grids, like city streets, complete with small structures glued to their surface.

“Hi, Mr. Salas,” said Theodore Remmick. He wore a ball cap backwards, clearing all the hair from his face. “I’m not going to bring it into the school.” He held up the propane torch from earlier in the week. “I’m the fire marshall.”

“What’s the project?” Salas said.

“We need your equipment at the south end, Sean,” said Mrs. Hatcher. “When we’re ready, start the generator and fan. Theodore will tell you when. Careful you don’t step on West 18^th.”

“I saw so little,” said the girl Salas had sat behind his first day in Hatcher’s class. Today she wore a bikini top and cutoff jeans. “So much smoke. It choked me.” She rubbed her throat unconsciously. “I didn’t picture the scope…” She waved at the miniature city.

She stepped to the side, and now Salas could see the entire display.

Mrs. Leanny joined him. “Each board represents a half mile, so it’s 12 boards long and 3 boards wide. There’s 34 kids in the class. Two boards short. Hatcher and I got to do one too.”

Theodore Remmick crouched at the south end, then fired up his torch. A couple kids pointed cell phone cameras. “It’s near 9:00 a.m., Sunday, October 10 in a city of 335,000 people. In two days, 100,00 will be homeless. The fire starts in the O’Leary’s barn.” He let the flame wash over a tiny building, which caught fire immediately. Several students gasped.

“I saw the fire coming,” said a boy holding a camera, but he stopped filming. His hand fell to his side, and his focus drifted. “I was walking home from church with my daughter. At Beach and DeKoven, I smelled burning wood. Smoke rushed up the street. We ran and ran to the Polk Street Bridge to cross the river.”

Tiny flames blackened the board’s end, crisping the miniscule buildings. The students had labeled the streets. Salas recognized them from the lists in Hatcher’s classroom: DeKoven, Meagher, Catherine, Barber. The Chicago River, a blue ribbon, meandered the diorama’s length. He saw the bridge at Polk Street.

“Turn on the fan,” said Theodore Remmick.

Salas stepped back. The students leaned forward intensely. Talk ceased. Someone sobbed. The box fan pushed the fire across the display. In a few minutes, six scale miles caught fire and burned. Stores, offices, warehouses, homes, bridges, schools and hospitals. When the fire reached the far end, Theodore intoned, “On Monday evening, the winds died. Cut the wind, Sean.” The fan rattled to a stop. “And it began to rain.”

Students pulled out squirt guns. They were silent at first, and the water streams hissed when they hit the board, but soon they laughed as they put out the fire, squirting each other just as often as soaking the burned city.

“I want to know more about fire fighting,” said a girl. “What did they learn from this?”

“Did they change the fire codes?” said another.

“How long did it take them to rebuild?”

“Did the mayor get blamed?”

“Did other cities have fires?”

“How much did it cost?”

When Salas left, they were still talking, asking questions, eager to learn. Eager to share what they knew.

Mrs. Hatcher didn’t give a lecture. She hardly spoke, Salas thought in wonder. She never taught at all, but it was the best lesson he’d ever seen.

On Monday, Salas handed his recommendations to Principal Wahr. The bald-headed man studied the one-page report silently. Salas let his gaze wander around the room. Organizational charts covered the walls: arrows pointing to boxes, boxes containing names, names associated to duties. It all seemed impersonal. Standards. Goals. Wahr had framed the school’s mission: “To lead all students to reach their individual potential by rigorously pursuing and evaluating achievement of high academic and ethical standards in a disciplined, nurturing environment.”

Wahr cleared his throat. “This plan cuts your position. You cut your own job.”

Salas took a deep breath. “Coach Persigo turned in his retirement papers. Leanny is willing to do the extra work to save a teaching slot, and I think it’s time I went back to the classroom. P.E. is where I belong.”

Wahr looked baffled. “What about Hatcher? What are your recommendations?”

“You said your son will be going to school here next year, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I need to keep an eye on him. Hates school right now.”

Salas tried to picture Principal Wahr’s boy. Maybe Wahr’s son resembled Salas when he was in school. Maybe he acted indifferent and lazy, just as Salas had.

“Put him in Hatcher’s U.S. History class.”

“Really.” The disbelief reverberated in Wahr’s voice. “She’ll lecture him into a coma.”

“I don’t think so.”

Salas remembered the day’s end at Greasy Grass. A desperate people, for a moment, triumphed, but it was a “last stand” for both sides, a proof you fight even when the campaign looks lost. He closed his eyes to see an image that had returned to him since he’d sat in Hatcher’s room. The sun set on a swell in the land they would later call Custer Hill. A growing dusk, filled with velvety shade covered the grass and brush until the details disappeared. No bodies visible now. No dead horses. No broken lances. No battle remnants. Just the stars and the rolling hills and a treeless horizon. The wind pressed his back. A coyote yipped in the distance, and the village dogs yapped in return.

He had lost friends, warriors all, but the enemy had lost many more. They would sing songs about today. They would tell stories to the childrens’ childrens’ children so no one would forget. The victory at Greasy Grass would join the great tales told back to back, the unbroken voice of people speaking.

It had become history.

What happened in Hatcher’s room? Hypnotism, magic, time travel?

Salas rubbed the goosebumps off his arms and faced Principal Wahr.

“You won’t be sorry your son is in Hatcher’s class,” he said. “She’s exemplary.”