Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

DAY THIRTEEN. Monday, May 5, 2014

LASSWELL MIDDLE SCHOOL, SIXTH-GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES

THERE’S NOTHING EXCITING OR FUN HAPPENING TODAY

I TOOK SOME TIME OFF to write, and then I was back at it, driving to Lasswell Middle School on a Monday morning in May to take the place of Mrs. Lebartus, a sixth-grade social studies teacher on Team Rhine.

“Everything you need is right on the desk,” said Mrs. Ricker, the language arts teacher next door. “They’re a good group, but they do take advantage. The hairy eyeball is always good.” She told me that I should be sure to eat in the teachers’ break room and not in the classroom, because there were two kids with allergies. And she whispered a last bit of information: Rebecca, in a baseball hat and camo pants, looked like a boy but was in fact a girl.

A small boy, Jonas, sat down. I asked him what kind of things he liked to do.

“I just stay home a lot,” he said, in a flat voice. “I like to play video games, because there’s nothing to do. But normally up at camp I ride my bike.”

I said hello to two more students.

“Did you like to ride?” Jonas asked.

I loved it, I said, I took my bike on trips through the mountains. “It’s a feeling of freedom.”

“Yeah,” said Jonas.

I skimmed a chapter of the Prentice Hall World Explorer textbook while the children hauled chairs off the desks. “I need the broken chair,” said Lexie. “My friend’s going to sit here and she hates it when I give it to her.”

Sunlight poured in on new-seeming tables. Maps and defined terms and learning targets were all over the walls. I said, “This is kind of a nice classroom. You’ve got carpet.”

Lexie said, “We just had to have our carpet re-renovated, because we have peanut allergies, and right after we got the carpeting perfectly all done, like the next day, someone puked on it. It was awful.”

Two girls came in, Ida and Amelia. Ida said she rode her horse over the weekend. “I fell off and almost broke my back,” she said. “That’s why I’m not sitting down.”

“I almost broke my tailbone,” said Amelia. “Somebody dared me to go on a swing and jump off the swing and over my bike. I did it, and I landed on the bike. And then yesterday I fell down the stairs.”

“She’s a disaster just waiting to happen,” said Ida.

“I’ve broken like five bones,” said Amelia. “I drink milk every single day.”

Lexie said, “My dog got her tongue stuck on the doorstep. She had an operation when she was young, and now her tongue sticks out all the time, like this.” She lolled her tongue out with a hangdoggy expression. “She was walking through the door and she got it stuck, frozen, and she couldn’t rip it off. She’s fine now.”

“You’re tall,” said Ida.

There were three bongs. Everyone went quiet, thinking it was time for the pledge. “What happened?” I said.

Silas made a funnel with his hands. “Your attention, please,” he said. “Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance!”

Roxanne took it up. “Then he says, ‘Please stand for a moment of silence. For lunch today, we have yadda yadda yadda.’”

“Could you put your name up on the board?” asked Carl.

“Good idea,” I said.

“Why do they call it social studies if there’s no social studying?” asked Ida.

The principal came on. “Please say with me.” We pledged our allegiance and briefly momented our silence. Lunch was tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich.

“How tall are you?” asked Carl.

I sent off the attendance sheet.

Bong, bong, bong. Homeroom left, except the ones who stayed, and first block arrived. Rafe and Dennis were deep in a discussion about The Hobbit. “Okay, everybody, hello! Welcome to a class with a green carpet. How are you doing today? My name is Mr. Baker, I’m the substitute.” I held up the textbook. “And we’re going to be reading from this book, that matches the carpet. Who’s good at passing out books?” Ten hands shot up. Books were distributed. When it got loud I said, “WOW!” And then I talked in a soft voice. “I like quiet. I love quiet. Everybody loves quiet, because you can think. We’re going to have a guest attendance-taker who’s going to be calling out names from the corner. Call them out!”

Lexie called out the names, nineteen of them.

When she came to Marisa, she said, “She’s not from here, she’s from Norway.”

I flipped around in the textbook, looking for the right page. “Have you been reading from this book before?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think of it?”

“Ugh!”

“What have you learned so far?”

“Landforms,” said Jack. “Like mountains, rivers, like that. We’ve talked a little bit about culture, and we’re on culture right now.”

“You’re on culture, my gosh, you’re flying through life,” I said. “Page sixty-four, guys. Page sixty-four!”

Dennis, in an orange T-shirt, was jumping around. “Gandalf, what are you doing?” I said. He sat down.

“We’re going to be talking about migrating,” I said. “Why do people migrate? What is migration?”

“You move from one place to another?” said Jack.

“Exactly, and why would you possibly do that?”

“Like if there was a war in your country?” said Ida.

“That’s a good one,” I said. “War is horrible and nobody wants to be around it because it causes mass confusion and insanity. So you want to get your kids away from it, your parents away from it, you want to escape it. What’s another reason?”

“To start a new village or something?” said Amelia.

“Brilliant,” I said. “Like the Puritans who came to this country. They were dissatisfied with conditions in their country, they were being persecuted, so they get on a boat. And then they’re in a place that’s unbelievably cold, has no food, has somewhat hostile natives, and they think, Why did we come here? Some of them went back.”

Another hand, from Brady. “You can make a new home?”

“Maybe your earlier home was washed away in a flood,” I said. “And you think, Well, it wasn’t that good anyway, so why don’t we just up and move?”

Marisa said, “I thought only birds migrate.”

“Your parents were in Norway, right?”

Marisa nodded.

“So why did they decide to come to the United States?”

“My dad’s job moved. He works for Ambra, which means ‘ambergris.’ Ambergris is whale vomit.”

Missy said, “I want to work there.”

“All right,” I said, “so let’s fly through the chapter and see what they actually say, because that would be nice, wouldn’t it?” I read aloud from the textbook for a few sentences and came to a bit of history: “From 1881 to 1920 almost 23.5 million Europeans moved to the United States.” I said, “You can imagine: there were wars, there was hunger, there was a lot of desperation, and millions of people came here, and we said, like the Statue of Liberty, ‘Give us your poor, give us your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.’”

“Where are we?” asked Livia.

“We are on page sixty-four of ‘Why People Migrate’ in the green textbook,” I said. I asked for a volunteer to read from a later paragraph, beginning with the word demographers, first explaining what a demographer was. Carl read: “Demographers use the ‘push-pull’ theory to explain immigration. It says people migrate because certain things in their lives ‘push’ them to leave. Often, the reasons are economic. Perhaps people cannot buy land or find work. Or changes in a government may force people to leave.”

“Excellent,” I said. “That was well read, and I didn’t know about the push-pull theory. But it makes sense. Sometimes you’re pulled to another place. It’s like magnetic attraction. You think, I want to live in New York City! It’s so much fun! And sometimes you’re pushed, because things are bad and you want to leave.”

Jack put up his hand. “Two things,” he said. “Can I read? And can I go to the bathroom?”

“Yes,” I said. “But you have to do both at the same time.” Jack shook his head and left.

A boy named Edmond read a paragraph about the Cuban revolution and the Scandinavian exodus to Minnesota. Then another kid, Gus, volunteered, undeterred by the tumbleweed dryness of the prose. “Does she want us to read the whole chapter?” I asked. “Read until we drop?”

“No,” said the class.

I skipped ahead, and asked Dawn, in the back, to take up with the Irish potato famine. She began reading almost inaudibly. “Really blast it out — sing out, Louise,” I said.

“Hunger and starvation pushed people to migrate,” she continued. “Also England ruled Ireland very harshly. There were very few ways for the Irish people to improve their lives.”

I said, “Wow, little words on the page, little sentences. That was very well read, by the way. We’re talking about unbelievable suffering and hunger and famine. And yet it’s just little sentences on a page, and we can sit here happily in our class, and say, Yes, it was kind of sad, there was a big famine, the potatoes got sick, so nobody could eat them, and the Irish starved.”

“What do you mean the potatoes got sick?” said Amelia.

“The potatoes had a disease,” I said.

“The potatoes didn’t have a doctor?” said Dennis.

“No. But the thing was that the British didn’t help the Irish. That’s the real scandal. England is an island. The Irish were starving and the British were right next door and they could have helped and they didn’t — and it’s shocking.”

“Did the potatoes have the flu?” asked Dennis.

“Yes, they did. Flu is a form of virus, right? It makes you sick. Well, there are viruses that affect specific plants, and this was a virus, I think, that made the plants sort of turn black. They became inedible.” (Wrong. I looked it up later. Potato blight isn’t caused by a virus, it’s caused by a fungus-like organism, an “oomycete.”)

Lexie raised her hand. “Why don’t they just chemicalize the potatoes to fix them?”

“They didn’t have certain pesticides,” I said. “But the basic problem is that when you plant a whole country with one kind of potato, then when the disease starts, it’s going to spread and spread.” I glanced down at the textbook. The next paragraph was about immigrants from Vietnam after the war in Southeast Asia. It was long and terribly written. “Let’s not even read the next paragraph,” I said. “In the case of the Vietnamese people who came to this country, is it push or pull? This is a tough one, because I don’t know the answer.”

“It’s both,” said Lexie.

“It’s both!” I said. “Right? There was war. We had ravaged the country. Vietnam was not in good shape. On the other side, America is rich and there’s lots to do here. Has anyone eaten at a Vietnamese restaurant?”

“No.”

“I’ve eaten Chinese,” Amelia.

“I’ve eaten in McDonald’s,” said Dennis.

I said, “That’s close, but not that close. How about over in the corner, does someone want to read about other kinds of immigration?”

“I do,” said Dayton.

“I wanted to read,” said Missy.

“You guys like reading! Is this what happens in every class? People read and read?”

“No.”

“I like talking, not reading,” said Shawn.

Dayton began reading about the nineteenth-century deportation of convicts to Australia. From there the textbook jumped to ethnic groups in Yugoslavia in the mid-nineties. Then it hopped, without catching its breath, to Moroccan and Turkish laborers who leave their families behind and work in Europe. The prose was a time-tunneling parade of disembodied terms, countries without context, and statistics. “When does this class end?” I asked.

“Eight thirty-five,” said Amelia.

“So we have to do a little more high-intensity learning and then you’re going to rip through a worksheet.”

Marisa pretended to tear the worksheet in half.

“Don’t rip it up, just rip through it.”

Lexie announced that somebody had written in her textbook. “It says, ‘Go to page sixty.’”

I quieted the class down. “Lexie has come up with an observation about the textbook. Somebody has written, ‘Go to page sixty.’”

“Then it says, ‘Go to sixty-nine,’” Lexie said.

“Okay, so somebody has made one of those games where you jump around the pages — so what are you doing in that textbook? You are migrating. And that’s what brings us back to ‘Growing Cities, Growing Challenges.’”

“Oh, yeah!” said Dennis.

I read. “One of the biggest challenges to today’s nations is people migrating to cities from farms and small villages. Does anyone play Call of Duty here?”

Practically every hand in the class went up. Rafe said, “Modern Warfare Three!”

“Okay, you remember when you’re in the favela? GUYS! There’s a big, prosperous South American city. And then there’s this place with narrow streets. You’re hiding, and shooting. That’s the favela.”

Lexie said, “What is Call of Duty?”

“Lexie doesn’t play video games,” said her friend.

“That’s all right,” I said.

“In this modern world,” said Rafe, shocked.

“It’s kind of a barbaric experience,” I explained. “You spend your whole time looking through a scope and saying, ‘I’m going to shoot that guy.’ Anyway, the favela was a temporary city that grew up around the main city. So, one of the big migrations is when people think, I’m out here in the country, there’s a jungle plant here, and I’ve got a hammock, that’s about all I’ve got — maybe a few rocks — and instead I’ll go into the city and make money, maybe I can drive a cab, whatever. But instead there’s no place to live in the city, so they build this kind of shantytown, that’s made of stuff they’ve found — sheets of tin, bricks. That’s what they’re talking about in this paragraph.” I read some of it. “In the past, most Indonesians were farmers, fishers, and hunters. They lived in rural areas. They moved to urban areas — and then there’s a bunch of numbers here. What do you guys think about numbers? Somebody says, ‘Eleven million people did fourteen point five seven three!’ How much does that help? Somebody says, ‘It’s a serious problem. Eighteen point seven three people are under the poverty line.’ It doesn’t help that much, does it? It’s just a number. You know what it’s doing? It’s trying to impress you into thinking, Wow, it’s big.”

Amelia had her hand up. “I was going to say that,” she said.

“We both agree. Good.”

Livia said, “I don’t know if this is true, but I heard that the smaller the place is, the more people live there.”

“Maine’s tiny,” said Missy.

I said, “Well, Japan, for instance, is tiny. It’s just an island, and it’s jam-packed with people. Hong Kong is—”

“What about Tokyo?” said Dennis.

“Tokyo! You’ve heard about those hotels.”

Lexie said, “Yeah, they’re just little chambers.”

“They’re like bee honeycombs,” I said. “They say, ‘Okay, sir, you’d like to go to your room?’ They take you to your room, and instead of opening a door and walking in and looking out — there’s your bed, there’s the window, there’s the bathroom — it’s this little sideways telephone booth. You climb in. It’s got a screen. It’s got a bed, you can sort of sit up. You have to put on your pajamas outside, and you go in and sleep. So businessmen who work in Tokyo but live too far outside the city can spend the night for cheap in these strange hotels.”

Dennis said, “I remember watching a Scooby-Doo movie where that happened.”

“There’s nothing in China like that,” said Missy. “It’s not packed at all.”

“Well, it depends on where in China,” I said.

We spent a moment talking about the men whose job was to pack people on the subways in Japan, and Rafe found a picture of the subway pusher-onners on page 55 of the very textbook we were using. I flipped forward and came to a bar graph. “They very badly want to teach us a graph,” I said. I held open the book. “Bottom of page sixty-eight. We’ve got a pretty color, sort of a lavendery shade, and then we’ve got an orange color.”

Dennis looked at the color key. “The orange is ruban,” he said.

“Urban!” said several voices, correcting him.

I asked them what urban meant.

“Populated,” said Lexie.

I nodded. “Urban is having to do with cities. Urb. You know, urb.”

“Herb!” said Dennis.

“And rural has to do with—”

“Desert?” said Jack.

“Not enough people!” said Edmond.

I said, “Farming, outside of cities. Urban is hip-hop, funky—‘urban music.’ Urban is cities, rural is country. So when you look at this chart, what’s going on? The light orange Creamsicle color, for urban, starts off small, and gets bigger. In 1800, which is two hundred years ago, very few people were in cities. Only three percent of the people were in cities. Then by 1960, it’s a quarter, and now almost half the people are in cities. Yes, Dennis?”

“Why do people start living in the cities?” Dennis asked.

“Well, why would you want to live in a city?”

Gus’s hand went up. He stood and said, “Can I say something to the class? Just because we have a substitute doesn’t mean we can talk and be rude.”

I said, “I appreciate your kindness in saying that, but let me tell you something, guys. I want to say something. You have not been rude. I’ve really enjoyed being with you, and I think it’s been fun.”

“Thank you,” said Lexie.

“Can you touch the ceiling?” asked Amelia.

“I can jump and touch the ceiling,” I said. “ALL RIGHT, GUYS! It’s time now to do the review, really quickly.” I went over migration, push-pull theory, and Cuba — they were supposed to know about Cuba on top of every other country that the textbook had fleetingly mentioned. I told them about the corruption of the Batista regime and mobsters with cigars and Castro’s beard. And then we hauled out the double-sided worksheet, with twenty minutes left to go.

While everyone was looking for pencils, Gus came up and apologized to me for the class’s rudeness.

“There’s a certain amount of chaos that’s just natural,” I said. “Everyone who sees a substitute thinks, Oh ho! I expect that.”

“There’s a lot more talking than usual,” said Gus. “It’s starting to give me a headache.”

“I’m sorry, man. I’m really sorry.” I flapped the worksheet in the air. “THE WORKSHEET — the worksheet wants you to use your pen or pencil to explain in words why human beings migrate.”

There was a moment of confusion about which side of the worksheet was page 1, until Jack explained that the holes for the binder should be on the left. “Lexie, hold it like this,” he said.

I turned to Gus. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “GUYS, now total and absolute concentration. Why do people migrate? The push-pull theory. Write something about the push-pull theory.”

In the silence, Missy came up needing a pencil. I looked around the desk and couldn’t find any. “Just use a pen,” I whispered. “And if she gives you trouble, tell her that I couldn’t find a pencil.”

I went around the class helping people formulate half sentences about the push-pull theory. As I explained it over and over, it started to seem like a confusingly pseudoscientific term for something that was self-evident. “People are drawn to go to places that are richer or less dangerous,” I explained. Was that push or pull? Obviously both.

“How do you spell richer?” said Lexie.

Marisa slowly spelled it for her.

“It doesn’t look right,” said Lexie.

Dennis and Rafe, in the back, were saying, “May the Force be with you!”

“No more Star Wars. We’re talking the United States and the rest of this planet. Although you could talk about migration in outer space if there were space aliens.”

“There is!” said Missy.

I said, “Okay, let’s go to Main Idea B. Why do people migrate within a country?” I went around helping individual students with that one. “Why in one country would you go to another place? Looking for a job, maybe?” I checked the clock. “This class ends at — eight-thirty?”

“Eight thirty-five,” said Amelia.

I needed to get them through this worksheet — that was my one goal — and I still had the whole verso page to do. “Guys, basically, lookit, Main Idea B. It’s just a way of making you know this. It says, Although many people leave their own country for others, migration can occur within a country, too. All they want you to do is write down some supporting facts. Like, for instance, uhm — people might—”

Amelia, Lexie, and Marisa grabbed their pencils and sat expectantly, smiling, waiting to write down exactly what I said. I burst out laughing. “Look at you,” I said.

“Why don’t you give us two facts, very slowly,” Lexie suggested.

“Why don’t you give me two facts.”

“Okay,” said Lexie. “One is that McDonald’s isn’t healthy.”

Amelia said loudly, “Did you know they feed chickens so much corn that they collapse on their feet?”

“Nice going, Amelia,” said Dennis.

“That’s from health class,” said Amelia.

I said, “Let’s say you wanted to be a chicken farmer.”

“I would never,” said Amelia.

“I would never, either,” I said. “GUYS, LOOKIT. If you wanted to be a chicken farmer, and you desperately wanted to raise chickens in a nice way, so that they didn’t collapse on their feet the way you learned in health class, but instead could walk around and peck and be happy chickens, maybe you would think, Well, I happen to know that in Maine, there are these nice people who raise chickens humanely, so I’m going to go to Maine and be a chicken farmer, and be near my friends, and we’re all going to be organic together. Something like that. Main Idea B is just that you want to go places in your own country where you can make more money, or have more fun, where you can live your life the way you want to live it. Maybe there’s just not enough food in your village, so you leave and go to another place. So now we’ve got to really move.” I shook the worksheet. “The key terms!”

We worked on a sentence with a blank in place of push-pull theory. Amelia got the answer.

“Oh my gosh, yes!” I said. “Next sentence. A person who bleeps from one place to another is called a bloop.” I wrote migrant and showed them how to tack on the prefix by doubling the m, for immigrant. “Okay, number seven! A city or town is sometimes called a blooping area.”

“Rural area!”

“Urban area!”

“Urban area,” I said. “A less populated village is sometimes called a—?”

“Rural?” said Jack.

“Rural area.” I read the next question. “Uh-oh,” I said, “here’s one I don’t know the answer to. I’m panicking, I’m panicking. Many people move—”

Two chair legs crashed together. I stopped.

“I didn’t do that,” said Dennis.

“You know, sudden loud noises are so unhappy-making, don’t you think?”

Dennis made a fake sad face, and I had to laugh. Sixth-graders were great. Nobody was beating anybody up. Nobody was going to juvie. Male hormones were only just barely beginning to do their nefarious work. I went back to the question, misreading it. “Many small people. No, many big people. Many people move from small towns to cities. This movement is called—”

“My — gray — tion,” said Missy in a bored singsong voice.

“Urbanization,” said Amelia.

I pointed to her. “You got it. It’s called urbanization!”

“No way!” said Dennis.

“Yep, urbanization,” I said. “Have you discovered the secret about school?”

“You learn?” said Jack.

“They want you to learn big abstract words, like urbanization.”

“I don’t want to learn big words,” said Missy.

“What do we do when we’re done?” said Lexie. “I wish we had a class where we learned everything about an animal.”

“That’s a nice idea,” I said. “All right, in the last five minutes of intense and focused effort, you have to fill in words in column one and column two, one of these worksheety things that drive us all nuts. Column one. A person who moves to a new country in order to settle there is—? Is he an urban area? No. Is he an immigrant?” I made a bugle sound.

Pencils waggling, writing down immigrant.

I circulated, checking answers. “I see words forming on the page,” I said.

Gus was having trouble with question 6. Stepping backward to get to the front of the room, I kicked Marisa in the ankle by mistake. “Oh, gosh darn it, what happened? Sudden catastrophe. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said Marisa.

“A question HAS BEEN RAISED,” I said. “In the final seconds of our time together, a question has been raised about question six. Which of the following is an economic reason why people migrate? Tricky! Economic has to do with money. The answers are They don’t like the government, they can’t find work, they’re fleeing a war, they’re persecuted for their religion. Which one has to do with how much money they make?”

“B!”

“B. Does everyone agree? B?”

Question 9, about migration to Southern and Southwestern states, also confused people. I said, “Number nine, question about number nye-hyne!” Did they go to the South and Southwest to find better transportation, to find better schools, or was it C, to find better jobs and a warmer climate?

“I think it’s C,” said Dennis.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “The South is generally warmer. Of course, in Florida you have flying cockroaches, so that’s not so good. Seriously. They’re big.”

Lexie raised her hand. “I went on a sleepover at my friend’s, and it was her birthday, and we were outside — and there was this cockroach that was in their trunk, that they had transported from Florida? It jumped on me, and I screamed and I broke it in half, and the bottom half was walking this way, and the other half was walking this way. After that, a moose came over.”

“And that is life in Maine,” I said. Everyone launched at once into their own moose-encounter stories.

“OKAY, FRIENDLY PEOPLE. Pass in your textbooks, pass in your worksheets.” It was time for them to go. Or no, it wasn’t. Class ended at 8:35, said Amelia, not 8:30.

“Shhhhhhh!” said Gus.

“What should we do?” I asked.

“Maybe we can share something we did on the weekend,” Lexie suggested.

“Ah!” I clapped once. “We’re going to do an interesting unit right now on what I did over the weekend.”

“I don’t want to talk about food,” said Amelia.

Rafe was up and thrashing. “GUYS! NO! SIT! SIT IN THE CHAIR! IN THE CHAIR. Physically in the chair. Physically in the chair. Physically in the chair. Very good. You are going to lead off with what you did this weekend. Listen.”

“Uh,” said Rafe. “I had my friends over.”

“Wooo,” said several girls.

“For a rave party,” said Rafe.

“Okay, he had a rave party this weekend.” I pointed to Shawn, in a blue polo shirt.

“I went fishing,” said Shawn, “caught nothing, and lost my favorite lure.”

Brady’s hand. “I went to my little cousin’s birthday, and they got him a dirt bike, and I was jealous, but I got to ride it.”

Livia said, “Yesterday I went to the fairgrounds, and they were doing ATV racing. There were four-year-olds racing, and my grandfather raced.”

Marisa said, “I had a dance competition and I won first prize.”

“Congratulations!”

Missy said, “Okay! Outside I did twelve hours of softball. I did two games, three practices, and then I had a softball reunion. And my friend Sally slept over that day, too.”

Lexie’s hand went up, and she told the class the story of her dog’s tongue freezing to the doorstep. “We had to kind of pull her off of it, and it was bleeding, and we got it wrapped up. That was like five in the morning. I went back to bed and I woke up at nine, and I worked at my riding place till twelve.”

“Good. The tongue is okay, the dog is okay, guys, you’ve got to go, thank you all!”

Lexie continued her story as everyone left. “We call her Munch but her name is Tara. We call her Munch because she’ll eat everything. She had a pyometra, an infection in the uterus, because she never had babies and we never got it removed, and even though she had an infection and couldn’t eat, she still wanted everything. Everything, she’d eat.” She walked to the door. “She even ate a stick!” She was gone.

—

WHEN I EMERGED FROM the teachers’ bathroom, Mrs. Ricker stopped to say that there were some snack options in the teachers’ lunchroom. “We have leftover chips and water bottles. Help yourself.”

“Seriously?”

“Absolutely,” said Mrs. Ricker. “We just ask that you eat it in the lunchroom because of the kids who have allergies.”

Several cartons of snack-sized bags of potato chips sat on a side table in the lunchroom. There was nobody there. The copier was busily copying and stapling an assessment packet all by itself. The phone rang. I answered it. Nobody there. I hung up. Nothing like potato chips in the morning. I read an ad from Progressions Behavioral Health Services tacked to the corkboard: tutors were needed to help kids with developmental problems for twenty hours a week. The pay was ten to twelve dollars an hour. “We will train the right person,” it said. A high school diploma or GED was required. I called my wife and told her about the push-pull theory of immigration, and then I went out to the drinking fountain and had a long drink of cold water. “Oh, yeah,” I said. Back in class, I read more of the textbook. Many minutes passed. Eventually I heard lockers banging in the hall.

Roxanne came in with a boy. “That’s Mr. Baker, our substitute teacher,” she said.

“Hi,” said the boy, whose name was Lester.

“We had a very lovely conversation with him this morning,” said Roxanne.

I said to Lester, “Are you good at passing out textbooks?” Turned out he was. I took attendance. Hattie, here, Noelle, here, Jarrett, here, Cathleen, here, Foster, here, Jake, here, Sandy, here, Margo, here, Brett, here, Marylou. Marylou?

“I like to be called Lou.”

“Lou. Are you here?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Roxanne, here. Kimbra, here. Jarrod, here. Haskel, here. Noah, here. Trent, here. Dean, here. Robert, here. Barbara, here. Andre, here. Lisa, here. Jerald. Jerald?

“He’s absent.”

“Oh, no, and I made a checkmark,” I said. “What am I going to do?” I signed the form. “Anyone want to take this—”

Five hands up.

“I’m just going to go to the one closest.”

“Aw, you walked past some people,” said Sandy.

“Well, they weren’t in front of me,” I said, “but they were very well-intentioned people, and I really appreciate the enthusiasm. MIGRATION!”

“Vibration,” said Noelle.

“That’s what butterflies do,” said Estelle.

I gave a little speech about how I liked talking and conversation, but not all at once, and loud sudden noises and explosions of merriment weren’t allowed. “Everybody’s got to get frowning and serious,” I said. “Page sixty-four. Six four! Sixty-four. What is migration?”

Barbara, in a sweatshirt that said “Established 1987,” said, “I don’t know the exact definition, but when it’s cold in one area, they move to a warm area.”

“That’s exactly right,” I said. “Birds migrate. Butterflies migrate. Every year. When people migrate, it’s a different thing. Say you were in a country that was ravaged by war. There’s mud, broken vehicles everywhere, little fires. And you said, This is ridiculous. I don’t want to have my family here anymore. You get on a boat, or you hike across a mountain, and you migrate somewhere. To escape something. And you might not do that every year, because you wouldn’t want to go back. So let’s read this chapter. Is that what you guys do sometimes? You sit and read it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you sing it?”

“No.”

“We do not sing it!” said Cathleen.

“Do you chant it?” I read the first line of the chapter in a hip-hop rhythm. Silence. “Okay, I’ll start it off and then we can see how it goes,” I said. “Roberto Goizueta was the former head of Coca-Cola, one of the largest companies in the world. Yet when he came to the United States from Cuba, in 1960, he had nothing. This is how he described his escape from Cuba. ‘When my family and I came to this country, we had to leave everything behind. Our photographs hung on the wall. Our wedding gifts sat on the shelves.’ Was anyone born in a different country?”

No hands.

“Was anyone born in Massachusetts?”

“I was born in Boston,” said Jarrett.

Lester raised his hand.

“Where were you born?”

“Boston.”

“Anybody else born in another state than Maine?”

Andre said, “Philadelphia.”

“So why did your parents decide, ‘We’re done with Philadelphia, we want to migrate to Maine’?”

“They were sick of the crime,” said Andre.

“They were sick of the crime! We’re going to learn about something called ‘push-pull migration.’ Some people are pushed away from a place because they’re sick to death of, say, the crime, or the hunger, whatever it is. Some people are pulled to a place. Okay, who wants to read? Who’s got a large melodic speaking voice?”

Sandy read: “From 1881 to 1920, almost twenty-three point five million Europeans moved to the United States. Since 1971, nearly seven thousand people migrated here from the country of — Vitnim.”

“Vietnam.”

“Vietnam,” said Sandy. “Over nine hundred ninety-five thousand came from Central America. And over four point two million came from Mexico. More than two point four million immigrants came from the Caribbean Islands.”

“Great,” I said. “So we’ve got this globe, and it’s sort of like waves are flowing over the planet. Why would four point two million people — that’s a lot of people — leave Mexico and come to the United States?”

Sandy said, “I went to Mexico. It’s because the water in Mexico is not very good. They don’t filter their water. So you have to buy bottled water.”

“Well, okay, when Americans go down to Mexico they get what’s called Montezuma’s Revenge. Serious digestive troubles. I mean serious troubles. So that’s one thing. But what’s happening in Mexico is it’s poor, and people have no way to make money. So they sneak across the border, and they come to the United States and they work, say, at a hotel, cleaning hotel rooms. Or maybe they drive a cab. Gradually things go better for them, and they find a new life. There are huge forces that are pushing great masses of humanity all over the planet. Say in ancient Rome. Suddenly the barbarians come down from Northern Europe and take over Rome. That’s a migration — and it’s been happening for tens of thousands of years. Next paragraph, push-pull migration!”

Barbara read the first push-pull paragraph. Lisa, with long thin arms and a shy voice, read another paragraph. I told them about Fidel Castro, and the mobsters, and the wealthy Cubans who fled to the United States. “If you left a country because it was poor, and you went to another country, say Japan, or the United States, because it was rich, you’re both being pulled and pushed. This is what they want you to learn. Push-pull migration. PUSH-PULL. If you know that, you’re going to do swimmingly well on the worksheet. And that’s the aim of life, isn’t it? Anyone interested in the Irish Potato Famine?”

“I’m Irish,” said Jarrod.

“Why don’t you read that paragraph, then.”

Jarrod read about the famine. I suddenly realized that the class had been quiet for a long time.

“So they came here and became Irish Americans,” I said. “They enormously enriched our country. The great thing about America, for a while, was the Statue of Liberty. She said, Come on over! We’ll take care of you. Doesn’t matter where you came from. We had an open-door policy.”

Next was more about Vietnam. I didn’t want to read the paragraph, so I paraphrased it, and asked again if anybody had eaten at a Vietnamese restaurant. No. Chinese, yes. Thai, no. “Do people like sushi here?”

“Blech,” said Robert.

“Caesar salad’s my favorite,” said Noelle.

Brett read from the number-filled paragraph about urbanization. “In 1978, about four point five million people lived in the capital of Jakarta,” he read. “By 2000, its population was about eleven million. And demographers estimated that by 2015, the population will have risen to about twenty-one million.”

“So those are just big tiresome numbers that people are saying to you,” I said, “but all of those numbers represent individual people who had to think about their tiny lives, and say, ‘Where would my children be happier? Where would my aged father want to go? Let’s figure out what we can do.’ And sometimes the best thing for them to do is not to stay put, but to go somewhere. They do it by the millions, if things are really bad. So we go to this graph now.”

“I’m not done reading,” said Brett.

“Well, I think it was darn good. Darn good. And Jakarta is a beautiful name for a city. Jakarta!”

Lou said, “You should sing it.”

Jarrett said, “Don’t give him ideas.”

We got to the orange and purple chart. The word for city in Latin was urbs, I said, which was pronounced “erps.” We talked about people crowding toward the city of São Paulo. Worksheet time. Groans and chattering as the worksheet floated around the room.

“Can we work in groups of two?” asked Lou.

“Yes.”

“Can we work in a groups of three?” asked Foster.

“Yes.”

Trent, who was a tiny mischief-maker, started squirming.

“He’s allergic to himself,” said Foster.

“You guys are evil,” said Trent.

“I’m a unicorn, but I lost my horn,” said Roxanne.

Estelle shushed the class. Everyone went still. I sang the first few bars of the Pink Panther song. “Just try to keep the chat way down, or I’ll have to say everybody work on their own, and that wouldn’t be good.”

“Rox, you’re supposed to write down the meaning,” said Noelle.

I went around nudging, prompting, giving examples, pointing to bolded words in the textbook. You might move to LA because you want to make video games. You might move out of New York because rents are too expensive. You might move to Nashville because you want to be a country singer. It has to be a powerful force, pulling or pushing, because it’s a lot of work to migrate. Somebody who migrates is an immigrant, and you double the m.

Haskel told me about Skyrim, a video game. “Once you kill a dragon for the first time, you literally just absorb its soul.”

I gave a three-minute warning for the first page. “Just scribble something down!” I said.

We slashed and hacked through the questions on the reverse side. Question 8 again gave problems. “Many people move from small towns to cities,” I read. “This movement is called FUNKADELIC. No, what is it called?”

“Migration!”

“Immigration!”

“Urbanization!”

“You’re moving from small towns to cities,” I said. “You’re urbanizing.”

I collected a few finished sheets. Jarrod found an inflatable world globe and threw it to Jarrett, over Robert’s head.

“This is our planet,” I said, catching it.

“Jarrod and Jarrett are torturing me,” said Robert.

“Ask Robert where anything is, he knows it,” said Roxanne. Where was Cuba? Robert knew. Where was Siberia? He pointed to Serbia, then found Siberia. Where were the Rocky Mountains? He found them. Where’s the moon? Robert pointed to the air.

“This is Dubai,” he said.

“Good. Okay. PUT YOUR NAME AT THE TOP. Grab your books. I want to see this room cleaned UP! Good work today! Lots of good concepts mastered!”

“I will be back for homeroom!” said Roxanne.

“Good, see you then.”

“I might be back at the end of the day,” said Kimbra.

“Hope to see you around.”

“Are you going to be here tomorrow, too?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Noah, can I show you a handshake real quick?” said Jarrett. He shook Noah’s hand and did a little shuffle and a double fist-tap.

—

NEXT BLOCK, a tall kid, Jerome, walked in. “Can I take the attendance down?”

“Yes, but we haven’t taken it yet,” I said.

“I’m just making sure ahead of time.”

“That’s so prepared of you,” I said.

“I know, right?”

Another kid, Clint, came in, wearing an Apache helicopter T-shirt. “If you need help with the attendance, just ask me,” he said.

“No, don’t ask Clint,” said Jerome, “he’s the biggest troublemaker in this entire school.”

Astrid said to Clint, “You got sent out of Ms. Plancon’s room three times.”

“Don’t bring that up,” said Clint.

“WELCOME,” I said. I called out eighteen names, checked off seventeen, signed the sheet, and handed it to Jerome. “Okay, PAGE SIXTY-FOUR of this beautiful green textbook that actually matches the carpet. Page sixty-four. These pages are kind of shiny. They’re covered with words. We’re going to be talking about why people migrate. What do you do when you migrate?”

Brandon’s hand shot up, and then he realized he didn’t know the answer. He pulled his hand down.

Martha raised a hand. “You’re sleepy and you don’t wake up!”

I said, “That is an excellent try, but — sleep?”

“Hibernate,” she said, her hand on her forehead.

Astrid, who had a loud singing voice, read the beginning of the chapter, and she read it well. We talked about Cuba, about persecution in Europe, about whether Jamaica was pronounced Jamaica or Jameeka, about how tall I was, and about the job description of a demographer. Amber found a definition of demographer in the back of the textbook. She read, “It’s a scientist who studies human populations, including their size, growth, density, distribution, and rates of births, marriages, and”—she smacked her hand down on the page—“deaths.” There were two minutes left before lunch.

“Can you play basketball?” asked Kent. “Can you jump and turn and dunk the ball?” asked Kent.

“Oh, I did the flying double axel,” I said. “They called me the Rocket. I was up there!”

“I’m going to call you Rocket!” said Kent.

“No, I wasn’t very good at basketball,” I said. “Besides height, you actually have to have skill. Can you palm the ball?”

“I can,” said Kent.

I checked the big hand on the clock. “All right, guys, lunch.”

“Bye, Rocket!” said Astrid.

“Bye, Rocket!” said Kent.

Ricky was hopping in place. “Can you let go of my foot?” he said to Dougal. “I can’t go downstairs like this!” He and Dougal hopped into the hall.

I went to the teachers’ break room to get another snack pack of potato chips. Two teachers, Mrs. Yancey and Ms. Plancon, were eating leftover birthday cake and complaining about kids. Mrs. Yancey said, “I was like, ‘In the future, if you’re standing outside my door because you came to class, you need to not have a full conversation that I can hear from my desk.’ They were like, ‘Bleh bleh bleh,’ while they were waiting at the door.”

“They’re wound today,” said Ms. Plancon.

“Why? Why are they wound?” asked Mrs. Yancey. “There’s nothing exciting or fun happening today.”

I said, “I think they got wound up in my class, and I’m sorry.”

“No, no, they were wound up from the start,” said Ms. Plancon.

They resumed an earlier conversation about Jerome. Mrs. Yancey said, “I said to him, ‘Aren’t you a little bit embarrassed? We have a guest in our classroom today. This is the impression that she has of you — that you are that kid? Who makes that sort of comment?’”

“He doesn’t care,” said Ms. Plancon.

“We’re starting our argumentative essays,” Mrs. Yancey said.

“You’d think he’d be good at that!”

“I actually said that,” said Mrs. Yancey. “I said, ‘Spending all this time with you, I know that arguing is something you do really well.’ So we’re brainstorming all these topics. We had Haskel, who was saying stuff like, ‘You know, I really think that the US military should be paid more, because look how much professional athletes make.’ It was great. And then Ricky said, ‘All hungry people should be fed.’ Really just these neat, insightful social issues that they’re coming up with. And Jerome says, ‘Skechers are a ripoff.’”

Ms. Plancon laughed. “That’s so…!”

“I’m like, ‘Child, you have no soul!’ They need to learn to think. Marty asked to go to the toilet. I’m like, ‘Again?’ And I’m like, ‘What is taking you so long? What are you doing?’”

“He’s done,” said Ms. Plancon.

“Done for the year, or done with the activity?” Mrs. Yancey.

“I think he’s done with the year,” said Ms. Plancon.

I chewed a potato chip.

“I bought this thing called Stress Relief,” said Ms. Plancon. “It’s an aromatherapy thing.”

“Did it work?” asked Mrs. Yancey.

“No,” said Ms. Plancon. “But I’m going to pull it out. I am so wound right now.”

Mrs. Yancey said, “They’d go, ‘This stinks! What’s that smell? Bleh bleh bleh!’”

“Take care,” I said, softly closing the door.

My room was quiet. Textbooks and worksheets and backpacks lay on the desks, awaiting the return of seventeen children.

The school secretary arrived to tell me to call Beth, the sub caller.

I dialed 8 for an outside line. Beth said that a request had come into the central office for a tutor for a hearing-impaired middle school boy. It was a full-time tutoring job, all day, one on one, to help him catch up with his work, and it paid twenty-five dollars an hour. It went to the end of the school year.

“Wow, that’s a lovely salary,” I said. “The only thing is I kind of like being in class with these kids. Do you have any advice?” Beth said it was completely up to me. I said I’d call my wife and think it over and get back to her in five minutes.

I called my wife and told her the situation. She said I should do what I genuinely wanted to do. I heard noise from the hall. “Uh-oh, the students are coming back now,” I said. “Love you. Bye-bye.”

Clint was making crazy coughing sounds.

“Bye, Estelle,” said Goldie.

“Hello! Hello!” I said. “Come on in!” As soon as I saw the kids take their seats and look up at me expectantly — this group of complete strangers that had become, for one day, my boon companions and fellow conspirators — I knew I couldn’t possibly take the tutoring job. What, miss this madness? Did I want to spend all day, every day, forcing a hearing-impaired boy to master a curriculum that I mostly didn’t believe in? No. I was a substitute.

“I like piggies,” said Goldie. “They go glump glump glump!”

“Where were we?” I said.

“How are you doing, Rocket?” said Kent.

“Do you have any candy?” said Rosabelle.

Out in the hall, a moving bolus of kids, thankfully not ones from my class, were making a racket. A little boy emerged from a nearby classroom and screamed, “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! GO TO YOUR CLASSES!”

I closed the door, my eyes big. “Did you hear that? That was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Can I read?” asked Philip. Philip read, and then Jerome read. “In the 1800s, many Scandinoo—”

“Scandinavians,” said Astrid.

“Oh, well, thank you,” said Jerome good-naturedly. “Many Scandinavians moved to Minnesota and Wisconsin. They wanted their own land, which was scarce in Scandinavia. Some also left to escape religious persecution.”

“So the Scandinavians were pushed out of their former lands,” I said. “They said, We’re tired of Sweden and we’re tired of Norway, so we’re going to roll up our sleeves nice and high, and we’re going to—”

Jerome rolled up his sleeves and flexed his arms.

“Show off our guns,” I said.

“Locked and loaded,” said Jerome, quivering.

“And then we are going to move to the United States.”

“What page?” said Clint. I told him. Clint read about Ireland, and he did it fluently. Then, as we talked about the potato famine, things went off the rails. Martha put her hand up. “Do you think there’s going to be a World War III?”

The question irritated Jerome. “Why would you be thinking of that?” he said. While I tried to explain urbanization, he could not shut up. His mouth just kept going. Finally I said, “GOD. JEEPERS CRIMINY! BE QUIET. If I could teach you one thing in this class, what would the one thing be?”

“That I should have had a V8?” said Jerome.

“Be quiet,” said Astrid.

I said, “If somebody is waving his arms like an idiot, trying to convey some idea, and you’re sitting there going, ‘I like my dirt bikes, I like my mudding trucks’—no, it’s rude, right? And it causes people to give little speeches. Remember that.”

“What’s happening in Egypt?” said Dougal. “There’s smoke coming from the cities.”

“What page is that, sir?”

“Page sixty-nine,” said Dougal.

“There’s smoke coming from page sixty-nine, let’s check it out.” I found the picture. “All right, we’ve got a picture. Does anyone want to read the caption?”

Astrid spun around in her chair and said furiously, “SHHHHHHHH!”

“Oh my gosh,” I said, impressed. “The spittle was spraying. Do you want to read it?” Astrid read the caption perfectly. It was unhelpful. “Across the world, growing cities face special challenges,” etc.

“So in Cairo, Egypt’s capital,” I said, “they’re taking mud from the riverside, and what are they doing with the mud?”

“They’re making homes,” said Astrid.

“Right. And here’s this modern city behind them. Great. We have blazed through the chapter. And now it’s worksheet time. Who wants to pass out the worksheets?”

“I do, I want to be a suckup,” said Jerome.

“I want to grow a beard just like him,” said Kent.

“And while we’re doing that, who wants to read another random word from the dictionary?”

Rosabelle flipped through the pages until she found the word egg. “There’s two definitions,” she said. “Egg number one. Oval or round body laid by a female bird, fish, etc., containing the germ of a new individual.”

“The germ of a new individual,” I said. “Isn’t that beautiful? It’s an egg. Next definition.”

“To urge or incite,” Rosabelle read, with help from me.

“This is kind of interesting,” I said.

“Nuh-uh,” said Clint.

“The germ of a new baby,” said Jerome. “Looking good in the pan.”

“Guys, EGG. Crack, birdie comes out. But there’s also the second definition, which is ‘urge.’ I’m going to egg you on! Egg you on. That’s a totally different word. I don’t know why, but it’s true. We just learned it. And now let’s work on the worksheet. Ten minutes to do side one!”

A few minutes into the worksheet, Jerome stole Rosabelle’s pencil and the class disintegrated. The girls screamed their outrage at the malicious boys.

Astrid said, “You want me to get them to be quiet? I’ll sing.”

Ruby said, “I can go get the teacher next door.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary, do you?”

“Yes, because I can’t concentrate,” Ruby said.

Astrid began singing loudly.

“Don’t sing,” I said.

“I can’t concentrate,” said Ruby. She went next door.

A minute later, Mrs. Ricker stood in the doorway. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I understand you are to be doing a worksheet,” she said. “You are to be seated and silent, doing that worksheet. This door is open. If I hear you I will come back, and it will not be fun for you.”

“I’m sorry they made so much noise,” I said to her.

“No, no, it’s fine, sometimes they take advantage,” Mrs. Ricker said. She went back to teaching her class. My class went funereally silent.

“See, that’s what’s embarrassing,” I whispered. “That’s embarrassing for me.”

For the rest of the class, I made the rounds, helping kids with Main Idea B and questions 6 and 9. “I need some ideas,” said Goldie. “Some people are too poor to pay their bills?”

“Put that down, good,” I said.

They began handing in their worksheets.

“I’ve finished!” said Ricky.

“I’ve finished!” said Philip.

“Good, bring them up. Pristine. Good. Excellent. You are the man.”

What a disaster. Once again I’d allowed the class to be hijacked by a feud between three of the loud-but-good girls and three of the loud-and-bad boys. I should have been able to shut it down with some kind of timely fierce threat display, but instead I’d tried to joke my way through, and it hadn’t worked. I felt chastened and queasy and incompetent.

“Mr. Baker,” said Astrid, “we’re one minute late for locker break.”

“LOCKER BREAK,” I announced. What was locker break?

“What do you do if you’re not done?” said Rosabelle. “I couldn’t get much done, it was too noisy. Should I do it for homework?”

“Do you want to do it for homework? Or do you just want to hand it in?”

She handed it to me.

“I didn’t finish,” said Amber, who had left some lines blank.

“Don’t worry about it, you did a good job with it,” I said.

When they’d gone to their lockers and returned, when all the textbooks were piled and all the worksheets were handed in with names on the top, they made their daily forced migration to their next class. What a bust. I looked at the sub plans. “Now what are we doing, for flip’s sake?” I whispered to myself.

—

NEXT. Theresa, a fleshy girl with cropped salmon-colored pants, held an ice pack to her face. “It’s leaking already,” she said.

“Wow, this is a huge class,” I said.

“Twenty-two people,” said Theresa.

“ALL RIGHT, SHHH,” I said to everyone. “Mrs. Ricker’s door is open, and she doesn’t like loud noise, and I don’t either, so be quiet, okay? I’m going to do something really unusual. I’m going to take attendance.”

I called out seven names. “Are we having fun yet?”

“Yes,” said Hugo.

I called eight more names. “You know,” I said, “when they used to take attendance, and I was in class, I was always embarrassed when they would get to my name. My name is Nick. So I hate doing this, but I have to.”

I called out the last seven names. Only Wesley was absent. “Who knows the way to the office?”

“Everyone does,” said Avery, raising his hand.

“All right, you’re the first person I saw to raise your hand.”

Dede asked, “Why is there a dictionary on the desk?”

Because it was random dictionary word time, I said. “Just put your finger down anywhere on this page,” I said.

“There,” Dede said. Her finger was at flexion.

“Flexion, that’s a good one.”

“What’s that?” said Dede.

“FLEXION,” I said. I made two fists and flexed my arms. “Flexion. Flexion is the bending of a joint or limb by means of the flexor muscles. The FLEXOR MUSCLES.” I snapped the dictionary closed. “All right, today there’s going to be total silence, and total happiness. Total contentment. And total migration, because we are talking about, bada-bing, Why People Migrate. What is migration?”

Hands went up. “It’s when people move,” said Shannon.

“Right, butterflies migrate, but we’re talking about people. There’s incredible chatting to this side of the room, I don’t like it. I will take names.”

“Carson,” said Shannon.

“I was in a car that got hit by a train and I got brain damage,” said Carson rapidly.

“Yeah, sure,” said Hugo. “He also said he played with gasoline.”

“He said he was hit by a sniper,” whispered Shannon.

I went over to Carson and looked at him. He shook his head rapidly and made a bubbling, laughing sound. “Hello,” I said. He looked up at me with goggle eyes. I turned to a boy near him, Amos, who’d had his hand up. “What were you going to say?”

Amos said, “Migration is like when people move to different parts of the country, or the world, to get resources or stuff?”

“Excellent,” I said. “This guy’s good. Textbook, page sixty-four. Have you been reading this textbook, by the way?”

Yes!

“Have you been enjoying this textbook?”

No.

“Have you been loving this textbook?”

No!

“I have been loving this textbook,” said Wendell, embracing it.

“What page?” said Brody.

“Six four,” I said. “Was anybody here born not in the United States?”

“I was born in New Hampshire,” said Shannon.

I whistled. “You’re an immigrant!”

“I was born in York Hospital,” said Amos.

Commotion.

“Carson, be quiet!” said Hugo.

I went back to stand in front of Carson and I gave him the hairiest eyeball I could manage. He shut his mouth.

“Where were you born, man?” I said.

“Colorado.”

“So your parents decided to leave Colorado and come to Maine. Why did they want to come to Maine?”

“I don’t know,” said Carson. “They just did.” He snarfled.

“So your parents migrated—oh, it doesn’t matter. You don’t care.” I walked away from him.

“He does this all the time,” said Dede. “My mother was an immigrant. She was born in Germany, and then she came to the US.”

“Okay,” I said, “and there’s tons of people like that. This country is filled with immigrants.”

Cole raised his hand. “My mom’s grandfather came from Italy.”

There was a roar from the hall.

I said, “And now there’s a massive migration of kids down the hall. They’re all from Scandinavia.”

“Those are butterflies,” said Everett.

“Those are some big butterflies,” I said. I opened the textbook. “So they’re going to start us off with a little bit of knowledge about the head of Coca-Cola.”

“An intro,” said Shannon.

I nodded. “An introduction. This man, Mr. Goizueta, was born in Cuba, he had nothing, he came to this country and became the head of Coca-Cola, and Coca-Cola is rich as anything because it’s delicious, it’s sweet, and it’s nutritious, and if you drink a lot of it it will dissolve your teeth.”

Brody said, “Did you know that Velveeta, before they put the color in it, is clear? My aunt’s friend went to a Velveeta factory.”

I read the quote from Mr. Goizueta. “Migration,” I said. “The movement of people. Who wants to read a paragraph aloud? Do people do that in this class?”

Yes.

“Do they enjoy it?”

No.

“It depends,” said Aurelia. “She picks people!”

“That are not raising their hands,” said Theresa.

“You should call on Carson to read,” said Wendell. “Because he can’t.”

Bad idea. I saw a hand, from Jonas. “Take it away!” I said.

“For centuries, people have moved from one place to another,” read Jonas. “This is called migration.” The parade of immigration statistics followed—Groundhog Day in social studies. A girl in the back, Lucy, read the push-pull passage fluently but inaudibly.

“Well done,” I said. I gave them a capsule summary of the Cuban revolution, and then Aurelia read about the potato famine in a delightful, folksy-but-dramatic delivery. She was a natural. “Great reading,” I said. “Think of how hard it is to make a decision to leave everything you know — all the streets, the countryside, your relatives — and go somewhere totally different. It’s a huge, frightening decision. So something has to be really wrong in the place that you’re at, or something has to be really right in the place you’re going to.” I was talking in a tired, serious voice. I wasn’t trying to make jokes. The class was still and attentive. Even Carson was quiet, I’m not sure why. They seemed to want to hear about Ireland and Vietnam, and about migrations within a country, from country to city. “Does anyone here live on a farm?” I said.

Theresa raised her hand. I asked her what she had on her farm.

“Chickens, pigs, and calves.”

“Great. Two hundred years ago, almost the entire population of the world lived in rural places — farms, tiny towns. Now it’s very different. Now almost half the world lives crowded in cities. So this huge thing’s happened, and it’s called urbanization.” I wrote the word on the board, and I told them about a time I went to Seoul, Korea. “It’s one of the biggest cities in the world. You get on the subway, going quite fast — there are beautiful, clean, fast subways. An hour later you’re still on the subway going through the town. It just goes on and on. It’s gigantic.” I described the capsule hotels in Tokyo, and I suggested that they have a look at the photo on page 69 of men building mud-brick shanties outside of Cairo. “Okay, now you know what you need to know to fill out the famous worksheet,” I said. But watch out for the tricky questions, I warned — especially Main Idea B. “Think about your own experience. Why would you want to move to Boston? Or if you were in Boston, why would you want to move to Maine and start a chicken farm?”

“Chickens smell,” said Theresa.

I told them if they did a good job on the first page, they could work with a partner. They went to work. An ed tech, Mrs. Morse, stole in as I was on my first tour of the class. She went straight over to Carson and stood behind him. His worksheet was blank. “You’re not staying here unless you can get something done,” she said.

“So?” said Carson.

“Come on, Carson,” she said, in a flat, irritated voice.

“No,” said Carson.

“We’ll go down to the office and tell them no,” she said. “Carson, get something done, or you’ll be down in the office again.”

“I am getting things done,” said Carson.

“I don’t need a wise comment,” said the ed tech. “Come on.” She led Carson away, nodding to me as she closed the door behind her.

“Who is she?” I asked.

“She’s an ed helper,” said Theresa. “She helps kids.”

“And deals with them,” said Everett.

“She just takes kids,” said Hugo.

“She yells at kids,” said Aurelia.

“She takes them away!” I said, in a mad-scientist’s voice.

“She’s a kidnapper,” said Everett.

“She takes them out into space,” Hugo said.

“She tickles them,” said Wendell.

“She just takes them down to the principal’s office to rot,” said Aurelia, laughing. “I’m just kidding.”

Theresa threw her melted ice pack away. I let Lucy and Rachel, who’d made progress, go out in the hall.

“I’ve finished,” said Amos.

“How did you do that?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

I checked the worksheet. Everything was right. Rural, urban, push, pull. “Brilliant, nice job, Amos.”

Brody said, “He’s beating me up”—pointing to Wendell.

I grabbed a clipboard and held it up. “All right, I’ve got a clipboard. I’m going to put a blank piece of paper on top of it, and I’m going to write down anyone’s name who is disturbing the peace and tranquility of this wonderful class. Okay? Thank you.”

“What tranquility?” said Everett.

“What’s tranquility?” asked Theresa.

Aurelia showed me her worksheet. “I don’t understand this question,” she said.

“Economic reasons push them to leave, don’t they?” I said. “You can’t find land, you can’t find work. Sometimes a war pushes you. What are some reasons that would pull you?”

Amos interrupted to ask me what he was supposed to do.

“You are supposed to find a book from the magic book area.”

Amos pulled out The Big Book of China.

“That’s a good one,” I said.

“Big books for small minds,” muttered Everett.

“The only reason he has a big book is because he wants to read something else,” Theresa explained. She was right. Amos slyly positioned a manga comic behind the propped-up China book.

Another ed tech appeared, Ms. Heath, and said hello. She went to work quietly helping people. No hectoring.

Everett handed me his paper filled with writing. “Whoa, you’re using specific examples, man,” I said. He’d quoted statistics from the textbook, and he’d filled the page with careful handwriting. “You are on top of it!”

“He’s G/T,” said Theresa.

“G/T, eh? Did you put your name at the top? That’s all you’re missing now. You’ll fly through the back page.”

“Can I work with a partner?” asked Everett.

“Yes.”

Brody came up with a finished worksheet. “Excellent, very good,” I said. “You are done.”

Brody said, “What do you want me to do now?”

I looked at the sub plans. “Well, I think what she wants you to do is invent a cure for cancer. No, I think she just wants you to find a book, or talk to a friend, gently, quietly.”

Shannon was done. I told her to read a book.

“Can I read one of my own books?”

“Of course.”

Amos came back up to find something more to do. “You’re reading that China book,” I said. “Did you already read it?”

“Yes, I read it all,” said Amos stoutly.

“Did you memorize it?”

“Yes, I did,” Amos said. “I have a photographic memory. I’m learning all the symbols, fire, earth, water, wood, and metal.” He gave me a wicked look.

One by one I checked the sheets. Mostly what kids wanted was for me to tap on the paragraph where a particular phrase that answered a question could be found. “How come you guys were much faster with this assignment than some of the earlier classes?” I asked.

“Because I’m smart,” said Theresa. I admired the way she’d written her name with a flourish on the T.

“You’re my favorite teacher,” she said.

“I’m finished, what do I do?” said Chris.

“You can find a book, you can talk quietly to your friends. Something non-destructive.”

Amos was standing, wanting another book. I said, “Do you want to read about Israel, or about the hungry planet?”

“I already read those,” said Amos.

“I’ll show you a good book.” I pulled out Charlotte’s Web, but he said he’d already read that. I flipped through some more.

“All of these have pictures,” said Amos. “I don’t like the pictures.”

I pulled out a simplified version of Frankenstein. “This is a sort of dumbed-down retelling,” I said.

“Dumbed down?” said Amos.

“If I’m done, can I draw instead of read?” asked Theresa.

“Of course.”

Amos said, “I want to draw!”

“Yeah, draw, draw,” I said.

Everett brought up his sheet again. On the reverse side, he’d written several small treatises on immigration, and his sentences were skillful. “Everett, you are good. That’s all I can say. I can’t say anything else.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Just take another close look at the spelling of immigrant.”

He looked at it.

“Spelling has no correlation with intelligence,” I said. “But it is useful to spell things right.”

“And then what do I do?” said Everett.

“You can read, draw, compose music, do whatever you want.”

“I need help,” said Wendell, pointing to a question.

I tapped the relevant paragraph. “It’s usually hidden away in the text somewhere,” I said.

Jonas came up with his sheet and I scanned it. “Oh, I like what you did here,” I said. I pointed to immagrant. “Just check the spelling on that. I think you pulled it off of Everett’s.” I showed him the word on the whiteboard.

There was a whoop of laughter in the corner. I went over. “I’m your favorite student,” said Aurelia.

I checked a few of their papers. “That’s a work of art if I’ve ever seen one. Avery, congrats. Now you can read, you can create a new form of rocketry.”

He held up his paper. “What am I going to do with this?”

“I don’t know what you can do with it. It looks great. I’ll take it and give it to the teacher.” He’d also copied immagrant from Everett.

“He’s going to sell it,” said Wendell.

“Yes, I’m going to sell it on eBay,” I said. “Rare, collectible worksheet, filled out by Avery. Well done. What happens now?”

“Now it’s study hall,” said Everett.

“With the same kids?”

“Yes.”

Ms. Heath said, “Wendell, sit down at your desk.” I was very glad she was there. With so many kids there were a million questions to answer. The speedier kids helped the slower ones, and in this way everyone’s immigration worksheet got done, more or less.

Mrs. Ricker, the English teacher, came in through the adjoining door. “OKAY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Remember last week, we instituted a study hall from twelve thirty-five to twelve fifty-five?”

Yes.

“Okay. That is twenty minutes for you to get some work done. It is not twenty minutes for you to socialize with your friends. It is twenty minutes for hundreds club, pronouns packet, whatever else it is that you have on our board that says ‘Due whenever.’ It is NOT social time. At twelve fifty-five you will go to your STAR class, and we are switching today. If you want to listen, I can go through the list.”

YES.

“BUT I WILL NOT DO THAT IF YOU ARE TALKING. Because I will not talk over you. I will actually tell both rooms at the same time, just to save my voice. Give me a moment.” She disappeared into her classroom and talked to them.

“Mr. Baker,” said Brody, “can I go get my ruler from my locker?”

I held up a finger.

Mrs. Ricker returned and read off twenty-one names. “All of you go to Ms. Plancon’s STAR. None of you should be asking me where you’re going, because you’re listening, right? This group is going to be with Mrs. Yancey.” She read off more names. “If I just said your name, you’re with Mrs. Yancey.” She turned back to us. “Okay? Everyone knows where they’re going? Give me a thumbs-up?”

Thumbs went up. She went back to her class.

I called Beth back. “I know it sounds silly because it’s a lot of money,” I said, “but I think I’d be happier filling in when you need me as a sub than committing to a Monday-through-Friday schedule till the end of the year.” She said that was fine.

I helped Amos with a math exercise meant to teach order of operations. Aurelia’s iPad wasn’t working, so she rebooted it.

Theresa made a loud, revolted screech.

“All right, where’s my clipboard?” I said.

“He just made me lick a pencil,” said Theresa, pointing to Amos.

“Somebody’s name is going to be on the board now,” said Amos.

“Yeah, Amos,” said Theresa.

“Do you feel a sudden wave of fear passing through you?” I said to Amos.

“Yes,” said Amos. “But she did it to me, too. I have a red mark on my arm.”

“It’s all over now,” I said.

“It’s not all over, it never happened,” said Amos. “So that means you’ll never write my name on the clipboard.”

“He looks constipated,” said Aurelia, laughing, leafing through a book.

I said to Theresa, “Do you know Lord of the Rings?”

“Yes,” said Theresa.

“I feel like Sauron. My eye looks over the classroom. Wong, wong. Nobody cares.”

Aurelia, Theresa, and Amos began laughing themselves sick at a photograph in an art book. I glanced at it — it was a picture of a wizened, bare-breasted tribal woman making dinner in clay pots.

“I think it’s a man,” said Theresa.

“Does it make a difference?” said Amos. Wild giggling.

“That is totally out of control,” I said.

“They keep on pointing this stuff out,” said Theresa.

“SHH!” I said. “I’m on the hook. You’ve got to be quiet, you’ve got to be cooperative.” I pointed to a hole in Amos’s desk. “You’ve got a hole in your desk, man.”

“It’s been there for a while,” Amos said.

Aurelia said, “He scrapes it.”

“No I don’t!”

“What do you know about the order of operations?” I asked. “What do you do first?”

“Parentheses,” said Theresa. “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.”

“Parentheses,” said Amos. “Exponents. Multiply. Divide. Add. Subtract.”

“You’re my favorite teacher,” said Aurelia.

“Thanks, it’s very nice of you to say that,” I said.

“You’re the only one who can pronounce her name right,” Theresa explained.

“That’s why I like you,” said Aurelia.

Study hall was over. Children shuffled in and shuffled out.

—

STAR CLASS WAS IN SESSION.

“Hi, Hugo,” said Marty.

“Hi, Marty,” said Hugo.

“You’re still my friend, right?”

Brandon came over. “I have to go to the library to take a test.”

“Do you need a note from the librarian?”

“No, the health teacher is the librarian.”

“Rocket! I’m here,” said Kent.

“Okay, guys, listen,” I stage-whispered. “The door to that room is open. It is silent reading, am I right? Because this is STAR. Every one of you will shine silently.”

“Can we sit on the floor?” said Kent.

“You can sit on the floor if you’re silent,” I said. “I’m going to turn the lights down.” The class began reading.

Mrs. Ricker appeared and saw kids on the carpet. “NO, NO, NO. You can’t be seated on the floor.”

I said, “I’m sorry, I said they could sit on the floor.”

Mrs. Ricker explained to me that they’d decided to do a special activity during the first half of STAR, rather than during the second half. To the class, she said, “You’re heading into my room. I will not talk over you, so settle down for directions. You must bring a pencil with you, and a positive attitude. Both of those things.”

“What if we don’t have a positive attitude?” asked Jarrod.

“Then shape up, buddy, shape up.”

I asked Mrs. Ricker if there was some way I could help.

“Crowd control would be great,” she said.

The doubled crowd assembled in Mrs. Ricker’s room. “So who does not have a seat?” she said. “Grab a clipboard. Back up. Ross, grab a clipboard. Grab a clipboard. Ladies. Back up. Brett, you need a paper from the desk, you need to grab a clipboard. Okay, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. We’re going to be working on a learning target in this STAR group. We’re going to be rotating these STAR groups every five days. Clipboards are right here. As I was looking at the learning targets, I realized, Yikes, yikes, yikes, we don’t have enough days to get through everything that we need to get through. So in this STAR group we’re going to work on synonyms and antonyms. Most of you have probably done some synonyms and antonyms work in the past, and that’s really okay, it just gives you a little background knowledge — right? — that helps you to be really successful when we do our synonyms and antonyms work. I know you’re packed in here like sardines.”

I saw that Rafe, from my class, didn’t have a clipboard, so I handed him mine.

“All four legs of the chair need to be on the floor,” Mrs. Ricker said to Carson. “OKAY, you are being extremely RUDE and I will not tolerate this behavior. If you are booted, it is a phone call home.”

The PA lady came on. “Sydney Truslow to the office, please.”

“And you will be having to explain to your parents why you were asked to leave. And that will not go over so well for you. You must be respectful. You’re too large of a group for us to continue to have this go on. If you’re booted, it’s a phone call home, and that’s not going to be pretty. I don’t want to have to do it, but I will. We’ve got to get through this. Okay, synonyms and antonyms. Who has background knowledge? What’s a synonym or an antonym? Which would you like to tell us all about?”

Dawn said, “I think they are opposite words to each other.”

“Synonyms or antonyms?”

“I don’t remember which one.”

“Okay, I’m glad we’re doing this. Dawn, choose someone in the room to help you out.”

Amelia put her hand up. “Right here, Dawn, Dawn.”

“Yes, Amelia, help us out.”

“Synonym same, antonym opposite,” said Amelia.

“Yes! Synonym same, antonym opposite. That is indeed true, and we’ve got this cool little presentation for you. Remember I said if you are talking THAT IS BEING RUDE. Okay? You think it’s no big deal because you’re talking, but if twenty of you are talking, it’s a big deal. So ZERO. I think you can handle fifteen minutes of total attention here. Fifteen minutes.”

She put up a slide. “Synonyms are words that mean the same thing. Happy. Joyful. Synonyms. And antonyms are words that mean the opposite. Let’s use that happy example again. Happy. Sad. Antonyms. Opposite. Okay? So I gave you this handy-dandy chart. Nope, you shouldn’t be writing on this yet, other than your name, because I’m going to give you some words, where you’ll be looking at synonyms and antonyms. Synonyms for happy, right? You could say you’re content, pleased.”

Jarrod moved his chair, clicking its metal legs against the chair next to him.

“I am NOT happy right now, I am unhappy with your behavior. So content, pleased, joyful, glad, cheerful. All synonyms for happy. And on the flip side we have those antonyms. Sad, miserable, gloomy, unhappy. Those are our antonyms. So you have this chart thing, and this is how it’s set up. You have the synonyms on this side, and the antonyms on the other side. So each slide that I show you is going to have the words. I’m going to go through them one by one, and you’ll be tempted to rush through but I’m going to ask you not to, okay? Because there are a bunch of you, it’s easier if we do it all together. You should have your pen or pencil ready. Find the side where it has Chart Number One, where it has the synonyms and antonyms for beautiful. Put your name on it, and the date. Name on it and the date. Are we all on the right page? Yes? We all have something to write with? Okay, so let’s go through this. Word number one. They need to be spelled right, they’re right in front of you, people. Attractive.” She put up a slide. “You can either write it in the synonym column or the antonym column. Is it a synonym or an antonym for beautiful? Attractive. When you are ready, tap your nose.”

We tapped our noses.

“Don’t poke your eyes out, just tap your nose. Okay. Ugly. Synonym or antonym? When you’re done, tap your nose. You shouldn’t be sitting so close to someone that you’re seeing their answers. You’re in your own space. Your own bubble. Next is revolting. Synonym or antonym.”

“I don’t know what that word is,” said Shawn.

“If you don’t know what it means, I want you to guess. We did attractive, ugly, revolting. Let’s do gorgeous.” She saw someone struggling. “Synonyms mean the same, and antonyms mean the opposite,” she said. “Let’s move on to lovely. Synonym or antonym? Okay, stunning.”

Dede sneezed.

“Bless you. Hideous. Goldie, get out of her space. Thank you. Hideous. It’s right here if you need to remember the spelling. If you can’t see, come closer. And last but not least, horrible. Okay, put a hand on top of your head if you are all done. All right, so our next word, if you look at number two, is dangerous. So synonyms are the words that are similar to dangerous, and of course your antonyms are the words that are the opposite of dangerous. So let’s have a look at these words. Treacherous! Treacherous. Is it a synonym or an antonym for dangerous? Next up is harmless.”

Gus raised his hand. He had to leave for something.

“Okay, thank you. Ready? Risky. Safe. If you need me to slow down, just give me a wave.”

Dennis waved.

“Are you being facetious? Do you know what that word means?”

“Um, not good?” said Dennis.

“When I say, If you need me to slow down give me a wave, you only give me the wave if you need me to slow down. Okay. Protected. Is that a synonym or an antonym for dangerous? Protected. Now, secure. Synonym or antonym? Secure. Unsafe.”

Lester arrived late and sat near me. “You’ll need a pencil or a pen,” said Mrs. Ricker.

I handed him my pen.

“Okay, and we’re at the last word, hazardous. Hazardous. So if you’re done, hand on your head. If you’re done, hand on your head. We’ve got a few people without hands on their heads, so they’re still looking.”

“Well, I can’t see,” said Dennis.

“Dennis, done? All right, next you’ll see that the word that we’re looking at is smart. If you’re talking, that’s rudeness, we will not tolerate rudeness. All right, so it’s important that scuba divers are smart. Synonyms for smart, antonyms for smart. What means the same, what is something different. So, sharp. Synonym or antonym. Sharp. We’re going to move on here to intelligent. Next up, unwise. Right smack in the middle here is bright. Three more. We’ve got clever. And next up is foolish. And last but not least, brainless.”

PA lady piped up. “Flora Sayle and Rex Hoffman to the office, please.”

Then the phone rang. Mrs. Ricker answered. “All right, all right, yes, okay.” She hung up. “All right, so the students who — LISTEN CAREFULLY PLEASE. When you’re talking, you miss directions. The students who are in Mrs. Lebartus’s STAR, it is now silent reading time. It is silent reading time. If you took a chair from her room, you’re going to bring the chair back. Also, the paper that you did — you need to return it to me. You will give it to me as you go in.”

With hooting and the clashing of chair legs my students made their way back to our classroom.

“Hi, Mr. Baker,” said Lexie.

“How are you doing? Day’s almost over.”

“Can we sit on the floor, Mr. Baker?” asked Marty.

“Please do.”

I shut the door to Mrs. Ricker’s classroom.

Rafe said, “I left my silent reading book in my locker, can I go get it?”

I nodded.

I went over to Theresa and Aurelia and asked them not to look at the book of international photography.

“I looked at it,” said Theresa.

“She’s never going to recover,” I said. “Silent reading.”

Theresa wandered off. I whispered, “Theresa! Theresa! Just sit.”

Then we had seventeen minutes of soft, foam-core silence. Once in a while there was a sound of a turning page. The loudest noise I heard was when I squirted some hand sanitizer on my hands.

Suddenly, bong, the PA lady came on: “Please excuse the interruption for the afternoon announcements.” She read off the names of twenty-five students who had to stop by the library, or report to the office for messages, or prepare for early dismissal. As soon as her voice came on the class began talking.

Then another PA announcement. “Natalie Whitman to the office for dismissal, please. Natalie Whitman to the office for dismissal.”

Ear-blinding noise.

—

STAR CLASS BECAME HOMEROOM. More students arrived, and a few left.

“Elise Smiley to the office for a message,” said a different PA lady.

Jerome, newly arrived, picked up an eraser to erase immigration and push-pull theory and urbanization from the blackboard.

“How did your day go?” I asked.

“Terrible,” said Jerome. “Can I erase your name, or are you going to be here tomorrow?”

“You can erase it. I don’t think I’ll be here. I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.”

“No one knows,” Jerome said. He wiped the board clean.

Lexie picked up the book of international photography, which was now sitting on Marty’s desk. “Marty, can I throw away this book?” she said.

“No!” said Marty, from the back of the room.

“It’s a perfectly good book,” I said, “it just has some embarrassing pictures, that’s all.”

“People,” said Theresa.

“People,” I said.

“Can I play the drums?” said Lexie.

“No, please, it’s too loud,” I said. “Does she play the drums in this class?”

“No,” said Lexie. “They’re right there.” She pointed to an orange Frisbee-shaped gong thing on a high shelf.

“I don’t see any drums,” said Jerome.

Lexie reached up.

“She would not want you beating a drum right now,” I said.

“She would not want us to smack one,” said Lexie. She sat down.

“And — it’s been a pleasure having you in class,” I added.

Lexie brightened. “I know! We talked about McDonald’s, and Cuba, and Scooby-Doo.”

Jerome said, “And speaking of Cuban stuff, I would like to show you something, Mr. Baker, that I think you’ll really really like.”

“I am eager to hear it,” I said.

“It’s something from my favorite movie,” said Jerome.

“What is your favorite movie?” asked Trent.

“You will soon know,” said Jerome.

While Jerome tapped at YouTube, Lexie showed me a picture of her two dogs, Munch, the one whose tongue got stuck to the door, and Fleece, a tiny mutt wearing blue booties.

I said I liked the booties.

“She does not like them,” said Lexie. “I also have a hamster. I also have a turtle. I don’t have any pictures of him, though. He’s so fat that his fat is sticking out of his shell.”

“Here we go,” said Jerome. He put his iPad down on my desk to show me his favorite clip from his favorite movie. A green-faced Jim Carrey began singing the Cuban Pete song-and-dance number from The Mask.

“Do you like Cuba?” Aurelia asked me.

“I’ve never been there, but I like it,” I said.

“I like Cuba, and Cubans,” said Aurelia.

“You like ze Cubanos,” I said.

Jerome began doing the Jim Carrey dance.

“How tall are you?” said Aurelia.

I told her.

“I’m five nine,” said Aurelia. “My mom’s almost six feet.”

Ida had brought out a tray of colored markers and began coloring her fingertips.

“Oh, don’t do wacky things with markers right now, it’s too late in the day,” I said. I let out a huge sigh. “So that was Monday. That was Monday.”

“We do fingerpainting,” said Aurelia.

“In art class?”

“No, we’ve already been in art. I didn’t like art.”

Both Ida and Aurelia were coloring their fingertips. Eh, why not?

“How many times have you played GTA?” asked Trent.

“Not many,” I said. “I wasn’t very good at it, honestly.”

“This is what we do, we make fingerprints,” said Ida, holding up her marker-colored fingers.

“And then you go, boop,” said Aurelia. She printed a blue fingerprint on the back of her hand.

I asked them how long a bus ride they had.

“I’m the first stop,” said Theresa.

“I go home with my mom,” said Aurelia. “She works in this school.”

“That’s convenient,” I said.

“It’s kind of embarrassing,” said Aurelia.

“Embarrassing because she knows what you’re up to?”

“She chaperoned my dance the other day!”

“My mom works with an old lady named Betty,” said Lexie. “She’s like ninety-seven years old.”

“My great-grandmother was like ninety-nine,” said Ida. “Then she got pneumonia.”

Bong, first wave. Half the homeroom left.

“Bye,” I said. “Have a good one!”

There was an uproar near the door, so I went over. “He tried to give me an Indian sunburn and I totally freaked!” said Trent.

“He did it to me,” said Jerome “Look at that.”

“That hurts,” I said.

“It’s friction!” said Trent. “Friction hurts!”

“Do you know what Lumosity is?” said Aurelia. “It’s a game we play every day. It stretches your brain. It times how long and you get extra points.”

“Sorry, just a sec,” I said. “Do all the chairs have to be stacked up?” I remembered the sub plans, which said, “Please remind homeroom about putting chairs up.”

“Now can we go to our lockers?” said Marty, after stacking two chairs.

“Are you trustworthy, and do you normally do it?”

“No,” said Lexie.

“Yes,” said Marty.

I let them go.

Aurelia demonstrated Lumosity. Ida and Marisa looked at horse pictures. A hallway commotion arose. “There’s mayhem out here,” I said. “Back inside.” I got everyone in.

“Are you going to be here tomorrow?” asked Ida.

“Not sure,” I said. “I’ll see you if I am.”

Marisa said, “I would like to show you the cutest video,” she said. She showed me a funny cat video. I laughed at it. “And this one,” she said. “Keep watching the dog, keep watching.” The dog was sniffing and running madly in his sleep.

“Jeez, he’s really going,” I said. “I wonder if they have him on tranquilizers.”

“This is even cuter,” she said. She showed a video of a puppy that kept rolling back and forth on his back. “He can’t get up! He can’t get up!”

Near the windows, Theresa and Silas had started a game of inflatable-globe catch using two globes. “Theresa,” I said. “Globes back in the globe area.”

“Globes back in the globe area!” echoed Theresa.

Globes were stowed. “Thank you so much,” I said. More turbulence by the doorway. “That guy Carson is out of control!” I went over. “Carson, how are you doing?”

“Good.”

Mrs. Ricker had walked Carson over from her part of the hall. She smiled and said to me, “I just heard you’re very cool because you played Black Ops and GTA Four.”

“Well, I have a son who was into it,” I said. “Now he doesn’t play video games. I wanted to find out what that world was all about.”

Theresa pointed at me. “He pronounced Aurelia’s name right the first time!”

Mrs. Ricker’s eye picked up evidence of disorder in my classroom. “They should stack the chairs and pick up things off the floor, and then they can just kind of sit tight.”

I bustled back into my classroom to bark commands. “LET’S DO SOME SERIOUS STAIR CHACKING,” I said. “Stair chacking?”

“Chair stacking,” said Jerome.

“My mind reversed its polarity,” I said. “Come on, guys, chair stacking.”

Jerome went off to supervise a group. “Guys, he said stair chacking! Carson, stair chacking!”

“Stair chacking!” said Carson, grinning like a madman.

All chairs were stacked in under thirty seconds.

“Thank you, sir,” I said to Carson.

Lexie, Ida, and Aurelia began comparing notes on a former teacher. Lexie said, “Mrs. Bentley screamed at my cousin and now she’s so furious she’s like, ‘I will not go back to that school—’” She mouthed something more.

“Lexie, language!” said Theresa, who wanted to be in the group.

“No swearing,” said Silas.

“You know you cannot say FUB in school,” said a girl. “It’s just not right.” (FUB means “Fat Ugly Bitch.”)

“WAVE TWO, YOU ARE DISMISSED, WAVE TWO, YOU MAY WALK TO YOUR BUS.”

The boys heaved off, roaring and screeching; the girls said sweet goodbyes to each other. Bye, Lexie! Bye, Ida!

“Bye, have fun,” I said. It was just a room of empty desks now.

Mrs. Ricker leaned in my door. “Thank you so much for coming in,” she said.

“My pleasure, thank you for having me.”

The stack of somewhat crumpled migration worksheets looked impressively bulky, each class’s work neatly arranged perpendicular to the next. I left a note for Mrs. Lebartus: her students were good-natured and friendly and funny, I said. I mentioned no names. The secretary waved goodbye when I dropped off my badge. My car was waiting, parked between two yellow lines. I sat in it for a while. Sixth grade. Treacherous, dangerous, harmless, risky, safe. I drove home.

End of Day Thirteen.