Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

DAY SIXTEEN. Friday, May 9, 2014

WALLINGFORD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, FIRST GRADE

SILENT BALL

BETH CALLED TO ASK if I wanted to teach first grade at Wallingford Elementary School, the school where Mrs. Norris — who’d given us those useful teaching tips in substitute training class — was principal. I said yes and ate a cheese-and-tomato sandwich as I drove, drinking coffee and hoping I wouldn’t mess up in some basic way. Littler kids are more intimidating than bigger ones.

Wallingford Elementary School was made of brick and clapboard, built in the eighties, hidden behind trees half a mile from the village. A bell tower, which held a large, visible bell taken from the old, now demolished Wallingford School in the center of town, stood near the entranceway, with an American flag on a flagpole next to it. Mrs. Ferrato’s class was in room 4—a small, neat, hypercolorful space with gray carpeting and miniature wood-grained desks and tiny blue plastic chairs and sunlight streaming in from two big windows. A large hemispherical desk was positioned in the middle of the room, near a set of plastic buckets with students’ names on them, in colors of lime green, hot pink, and turquoise. On the wall was a chart in six colors that said, “Use Your Writing Voices.” VOICES was an acronym: each letter stood for something to strive for in writing assignments. V was for “Voice”: “I show my personality in my writing.” O was “Organization”: “I arrange my writing so readers can understand it.” I was “Ideas”: “My writing is clear, focused, and interesting.” C was “Conventions”: “I show pride in my writing by editing my work.” E was “Excellent Word Choice”: “I create images and evoke emotions with my word choices.” And S was for “Sentence Fluency”: “I vary sentence length, structure, and rhythm.”

I thought of the kids I’d coached two days before at Buckland Elementary: many of them could barely form lowercase letters, or spell, or sound out a word — much less vary sentence length, structure, and rhythm. And I remembered my own first-grade class, taught by a sweet, plump, kind teacher who showed us how to spell same and cake and run and sun and one and to and two and made us read from the Dick and Jane textbook, in which nothing bad happened. I wasn’t a precocious reader. A month before first grade began, with my mother’s help, I’d struggled through Green Eggs and Ham, weeping over the unphonetic wrongness of the word dark (dah-erk?) but relieved and happy when at last I got to the last page and my mother as a reward made me pale green scrambled eggs and a small disk of greenish ham, which wasn’t all that green because the ham was pink, and no amount of food coloring could change that. When I swallowed the celebratory eggs I could feel in my throat that I’d been crying. We did very little writing in my first grade — we certainly weren’t able to “create images and evoke emotions” with our word choices — and although we learned how to write numbers, we did no math beyond addition and subtraction. The best thing that happened was when we were taken to a factory that made Millbrook bread, and I saw a piece of dough the size of a sofa tumbling around in a steel chamber while being poked at by kneading bars.

At Wallingford Elementary, in the hall outside room 4, were two other first-grade teachers. I apologized in advance for the waves of sound that would probably come from my room. They laughed. “There are always waves of sound,” said one of them, Ms. Wisman, reassuringly. “They’re a great bunch of kids, and you should have no problem. She leaves great notes.”

Mrs. Ferrato’s sub plans began with a description of something called the Clip-Up Chart, which was a row of laminated strips in seven different colors, one strip for each student. “If you spot a student going above and beyond during any part of the day, you can ask them to clip up to the next color,” Mrs. Ferrato wrote. Whenever they “clipped up,” by moving a plastic paperclip to a higher-value color, they earned a ticket toward a prize. “If there are students calling out or misbehaving, they will clip down. If they get to Orange, they owe recess.” Well, no, I thought — not today. If Mrs. Ferrato wanted to set up a color-coded system of reward and punishment, she could certainly do that, but I wasn’t going to be a part of it. I was weary of the practice of punishing kids for how they acted in the class by taking away their recess time.

At eight-thirty, the students would begin to arrive, said the sub plans. “They should hang up their coats and their backpacks, put their S.M.I.L.E. Notebook in the basket, check in for lunch and sit in their seat and work on morning work.” SMILE was another acronym; it stood for “Students Managing Information and Learning Everyday.”

I heard four mysterious beeps on the PA system and I found where the clock was on the wall. It’s hard to explain why I was so nervous: it was partly that little children are mysterious beings, and partly because I genuinely believed in first grade. Everyone has to master the trick of decoding letters on a page — life is very hard in this country if you can’t read — and I was the teacher, accountable for whatever they learned or didn’t learn that day. I skimmed down Mrs. Ferrato’s plans. There was something about the “Daily Five,” and at ten o’clock I was supposed to “shake the purple egg.” I wrote “Mr. Baker” on the board. Ready.

“Come on in, I’m the substitute,” I said to the first arrivals, who stopped dead at the door.

“Uh-oh, it’s a sub!” said a boy named Jake.

“How tall is he?” asked a girl in a blue ruffled blouse, hanging up her backpack. Her name was Emily.

“Can you touch the roof?” said Sarah.

Sarah tried to help Jake touch the ceiling by lifting him around the waist.

“Are you guys getting married?” asked a third girl, Leyla, slitting her eyes.

“No, of course not,” said Jake. “I’m not going to get married.”

“You said you would,” said Leyla.

“I never, ever got married in my life,” Jake said. “And I never will.”

Several children handed in lunch money and checks for a field trip. I asked Emily what the Daily Five was.

“You do what you signed up to,” Emily explained. “And when you shake the egg we come to the rug and we go to second round. We don’t have to go to third round, but if you want you can.”

Ah. I asked how many kids were in the class. Seventeen, said Jake. A young, pleasant-seeming ed tech named Ms. Boissiere came in to sit with Danny, a mildly disabled child who liked to throw his head back and smile.

The morning work was written in red marker on an easel. The first thing the kids had to do was to find the errors in

do you sea that butterfly

Then they were supposed to use every in a sentence, find the “base word” in careful, and do some subtraction: “Draw tally marks to show the number that is 20 less than 39.” Emily brought up her paper and I checked it and put a star at the top, although I didn’t fully understand what she’d done with tally marks. “Nice job, you’re fast,” I whispered. The sub plans said, “When you put a star on their paper they can sign up for Daily 5 and quietly read a book by themselves on the rug.” Emily sat on the rug and opened her book, Frozen.

I helped Lee find the base word in careful. “When you take care of someone, you’re careful, right?” I whispered. Another boy, Simon, had written an every sentence: POTSAND BLSFLW EVERYWR. He read, “Pots and bowls flew everywhere!” He had trouble with the butterfly sentence. I reminded him about capitals at the beginning of sentences, and question marks at the end of questions, and I asked him how many ways there were to spell sea. “There’s S-E-E,” said Lee, “and I don’t know the other way,” he said. I wrote more stars at the top of more pages. Suddenly I remembered learning how to make a five-pointed star in second grade.

Almost everyone had trouble with tally marks. Ms. Boissiere explained the tally technique to Destiny, referring to a number grid. She said, “You have thirty-nine, and with ten less, where would you go, Destiny? Up or down. Up, right. That would be ten less. So we’d go up one more time, to nineteen. So you now need to show tally marks for that number.”

Joe also didn’t understand how to find the base word in careful.

Beep. A PA lady said, “Please bring students to the gym for CARE time.” CARE stood for “Creating A Respectful Environment.”

We lined up.

“You’re taller than our other teacher,” said Simon.

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

The whole school gathered in the gym — some students sitting on the floor, some standing. We teachers stood near our classes. The staff here was friendlier, less crabby, than at Buckland and Lasswell. One of the teachers was an alert-looking bearded man; all the rest were women. After a minute of mind-blowing noise, a teacher raised her hand and said, “Shhh,” and the gym went still immediately. A second-grader in a light blue dress, with a bow in her hair, stood at the microphone and read: “Good morning, today is May 9, 2014. Please place your right hand over your heart for the pledge.” The whole gym intoned the pledge in unison. “Please say the school rules,” the little girl said. The gym chanted, “BE RESPECTFUL TO OTHERS, KEEP HANDS AND FEET TO YOURSELVES, LISTEN TO ALL DIRECTIONS, RESPECT ALL EQUIPMENT AND MATERIALS.” There was one birthday that day, she said, Becca Hightower. Applause and cheering.

Becca took a bow and asked the CARE assembly to dance the turtle dance, so we moved our arms like flippers for fifteen seconds. Then the head of the parent-teacher committee, Mrs. Royer, came to the microphone, with applause. It was the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week, Mrs. Royer said. “Are we ready for the rest of the raffles?” Huge applause. She reached in a bucket and drew a name. A teacher won a twenty-five-dollar gift card from Applebee’s. Gigantic applause. Another teacher won a ten-dollar Applebee’s certificate. Yay! Another ten-dollar gift card. Woo! Two round-trip tickets on the Downeaster went to Ms. Carlough. Yee! Mrs. Newman won the beach basket, holding a striped towel, and sand shovel and pail, and sunglasses and sunscreen. Another teacher won another beach basket. Less clapping now for the winners. Mrs. Yates won a movie basket, with boxes and candy and bags of popcorn. Mr. Stowe, the sole male teacher, was going to win a spa basket, but that didn’t seem quite right, so he won a movie basket instead. Woo-hoooo! Cheering. Mrs. Thornhill won the coffee basket. Mrs. Gaddis won the baking basket. There were a lot of prizes. What if Mrs. Ferrato won something? I wondered. I whisper-asked Emily to accept the prize for Mrs. Ferrato — just in time, too: Mrs. Ferrato won a garden basket. Then the parent-teacher raffle master said, “Thank you, and have a good day!”

The girl in the light blue dress said, “Have a fantastic Friday!”

We trouped back to our classroom, where there was time for ten more minutes of explaining tally marks and base words, over and over, and sounding out every and butterfly. “A lot of times, if you look at just the first three letters, you can get going and figure it out,” I said. I asked Simon what thirty-nine minus twenty was. “Three?” he said. We looked at the number grid. Dwight had written delicate as the base word for careful. “You did something extra-special,” I said. “But if you just put care I think you’ll be in better shape.”

“Darren got a paper cut,” said Lee.

Darren held up his wounded finger. “That’s a bad one,” I said. I suggested that he hold his pencil in a different way so that the cut was out of the way.

All this was done in whispers. I looked up at the class and was flooded with gratefulness. “Guys, I really like how quiet you are,” I said.

Anne-Marie came up to explain, shyly, that if people were doing good and sitting quietly they got to move up on the Clip-Up Chart. “If we do bad we move down,” she said.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. I took attendance, and then Emily reminded me that I had to make a lunch count. I read from the lunch menu on the calendar. “Lunch today is Monster University Mike’s Popcorn Chicken, Sully’s Savory Rice, Boo’s Hot Broccoli and Squished — GUYS, HEY! IN THE CORNER? SERIOUSLY. Boo’s Hot Broccoli and Squishy Steamed Corn, Mrs. Squibble’s Oatmeal Roll and Chillin’ Sliced Peaches, and of course, your favorite — milk.”

Emily quietly but firmly told me the right way to do lunch count. “You stand up and you say, ‘We’re going to do lunch count,’” she said, “and then you say, ‘Stand up if you’re having…’”

I said, “Stand up if — MY DEAR FRIENDS. I really like it when there’s no clash of voices. Thank you. Stand up if you are having popcorn chicken. Whoa, my gosh.” Eleven popcorn chickens. One person wanted SunButter and jelly.

“Do you know about clipping up and down?” asked Sarah.

“I do, but I don’t like to be mean right off the bat,” I said.

Jake sat reading Curious George. I told him he was doing a great job.

“Mr. Baker? Jake can move up because you said he was doing a good job.”

“On our clip chart,” said Jake.

“When we get up to pink, we have a jewel,” said Sarah.

“And three tickets,” said Emily. “And if we get on purple we get two tickets.”

“My mind is reeling,” I said.

“Yellow is take away a ticket,” said Jake.

“And orange is take away two tickets and recess.”

“And red is when you call people.”

“Not just people,” said Jake. “Your parents.”

“I see,” I said. “That’s helpful.”

It was past time for morning meeting. Emily, who was a real stickler, told me that whoever didn’t finish morning work had to do it at snack time.

“And if you don’t finish it at snack time, you have to do it at recess,” said Jake.

Simon took it upon himself to start ordering people to put books away.

I told him to sit down. “Then everyone will follow your lead.”

“Have the students sit in a circle,” said the plans. I was supposed to give one student a high five, and he or she was supposed to high-five the next student, and then the next, around the circle. This took a while. “Only one person talks at a time,” said the plans. They were supposed to do something with the calendar, note the weather and the days left in school, and go over the day’s schedule. I went off plan to ask the class if anybody had seen an interesting TV show or a beautiful flower, or had something else of note to report.

Emily raised her hand. “My brother’s birthday was yesterday. He got a pogo stick, a basketball that glows in the dark, and Willy Wonka, the movie, and he got a video game. And his cake was this big.”

Deena said, “My sister has a basketball that glows in the dark, too.”

Simon and Randall were wilding out, so I separated them. To Randall, who seemed especially jumpy, I said, “I’ve got my eye on you, man.”

Leyla said, “I watched Chestnut. It’s about this dog that keeps growing. And there was two girls. One of them really wanted a puppy. There were two robbers from New York. They put the dog on the road. Then a truck was coming and the kid ran on the road, and then he grabbed the dog and went on the other side very quick, and then went back with the dog. And then Mother Agnes, she really doesn’t like dogs, and they kept it a secret. And then one morning the two girls got adopted, and they—”

“That’s good,” I said, cutting her short as gently as I could. “I think what you want to do when you tell the highlight of a movie — that was a great summary — is you want to pick the most memorable moment, which was the moment when they save the dog.”

A hand went up from Deena in the front. “Can me and Anne-Marie do the calendar?”

I said they could after one more kid said what happened last night.

“I watched Beethoven, which is about a dog,” said Krista.

A secretary came on the intercom. “I need a lunch count.” Eleven popcorn chicken, I yelled. Ms. Boissiere added that Danny was having chicken burger.

“Discuss the schedule,” said the sub plans. Fine. “We’re going to learn about nouns, verbs, and adjectives,” I said. “We’re going to shake the purple egg. We’re going to have a snack. We’re going to write, we’re going to have lunch, we’re going to go to the music classroom, we’re going to read aloud, we’re going to do some specials, then math, then pack and stack. There’s so much to do today, it’s almost overwhelming.”

Randall was sniffing Simon’s sweatshirt. It was time to dole out a worksheet called “Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Oh My!” But Randall couldn’t get down to business. He rolled around, hummed, sprawled, blathered. I couldn’t blame him. For all but one or two of these kids, it was too early to be studying the taxonomy of words, it seemed to me. They knew how to talk; they needed to know how to read and write. The parts of speech could come later. You can ride a bicycle without knowing what a sprocket or a brake clamp or a wing nut is. You can stand on tiptoe without knowing about the metatarsal arch. Pure brute decoding — reading and writing, memorizing all the unsoundoutable perversities of English spelling — that’s what first- and second-graders needed, more than anything.

“I got a bug bite,” said Anne-Marie, showing me her elbow.

I took a shot at putting grammar in context. I told the class, “Already, without anybody teaching you — even before you had a teacher — your brain soaked up literally thousands of words.”

“Blee! Blop!” said Randall. Sit in the corner, I said.

I tried again. “In your mind are all these words, floating around. And what teachers are trying to do is say, Okay, let’s take a look at this cloud of words and see what properties it has. What’s the difference between this kind of word and that kind of word? And they came up with fancy terms, like noun, verb, and adjective.” I handed out the worksheet, which said, Write one noun, verb, or adjective, which can be associated with each place listed below. Example: the mall. People, shop, exciting. The first place they had to think about was “your school.”

“What’s a noun that has to do with school?” I asked.

School?

Pencil?

“Pencil is perfect. Okay, a verb. Something you do at school.”

Sarah’s hand went up. “Learn?”

“Excellent. You guys really got the gist of it, good. And finally, this is the hardest one, what’s an adjective?”

After some struggle, Leyla thought of red. Good — bricks are red.

The next place the worksheet wanted them to think about was the playground. They came up with swing for the noun, play for the verb, and then came the adjective. “Is the playground sleepy?” I asked. “Is the playground hot? Sometimes the playground is cold and icy. All winter long. Any suggestions?”

Fun?

“Fun is an adjective — or it can be an adjective.”

While the class labored to print nouns, verbs, and adjectives, I got Randall to put his name at the top of the page. “Okay, beautiful,” I said. I pointed to the instructions — find words that have to do with school. First, a noun. “A noun is some thing, like a desk, or a rug, or something that’s in your school,” I said to him. “That’s called a noun. See that word right there? Noun. Tell me some thing in school.”

Randall thought. “I do know something around school,” he said. “Lots of caterpillars can be around school.”

“Good, caterpillars, excellent.” I wrote CATERPILLAR out so he could copy it.

“There’s a book called The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” he said.

As Randall wrote caterpillar, I helped Calvin think of a noun that went with playground. Slide, he said. Then I turned back to Randall. “Now something that happens at school,” I said. “People talk, they run, they learn, they eat. Those are called verbs. Verbs are things that happen.”

“Something I do at school is I think,” said Randall.

“Yes, think! You got it. Randall, that was good.” I explained what an adjective was. A color, or hot or cold, or bright or dark.

“Dark?”

“School can be dark,” I said. “Especially when it’s stormy out.”

“One time I got so scared in a thunderstorm that I hid under one of these tables,” Randall said. I showed him how to write dark, the very same word I’d had such a difficult time with about fifty years ago. Passing on the legacy.

Krista came up with her word list: TV, look, awesome. Bat, hit, fun.

Calvin said, “Joe is copying my paper.”

“I’m not looking at his paper,” said Joe. “I just have a noun and a verb, and now I need a adjective.”

“Okay, keep your eyeballs on the page,” I said. “What are some adjectives? A playground can be hot, it can be cold, it can be muddy, it can be crazy.”

On and on we gamely grammared. Noun, verb, and adjective for the beach, for the doctor’s office, for a baseball game. This was all lost time, it seemed to me, and for some kids it spread confusion and jitteriness, which on a normal day would then have led to their being “clipped down” and deprived of recess. Adjective—what an unlovely word for something juicy and squeezable and wild and elusive and fungible and adamantine and icy-blue. There were nouns and verbs and adjectives in play many thousands of years before anyone took the time to sort and name these abstractions. An eon of language precedes linguistics. You can write a three-decker novel or a whole history of Transylvania without knowing or caring in the least what the parts of speech are — and in first grade, unless you’re an unusual little person who takes an Aristotelian pleasure in verbal classification, it’s an unnecessary encumbrance and a distraction.

“So what happens at a baseball game?” I asked Randall. “Do they walk, do they run, do they sing?”

“Run!”

“And that’s a verb.” Randall wrote run.

Pencil, learn, red. Slide, play, fun. Bed, eat, fun. Water, play, fun. Sarah came up with nervous as a verb having to do with the doctor’s office. I wished I didn’t have to tell her that nervous was an adjective, and that she had to erase it and replace it with something like worry. Lee said that game was an adjective for the doctor’s office. “Because when I go they give me a game,” he said. Lee and Sarah were both making associative word herds, which was in fact a more interesting activity than this parsing exercise. I felt the minutes sifting by, wasted.

The finished worksheets went into the Done Box, and then I shook the purple egg, which lay on the whiteboard tray and made a sound like a maraca. Everyone began reading aloud to a partner. Joe got sad because he didn’t have a reading buddy. I said I’d be his reading buddy. “Up went the elephant,” Joe read to me, guessing. I pointed to the picture of a giraffe in a tree and said, “It has a very long neck.” I made the sound of the first letter: “Juh.”

“Giraffe!” Joe said.

“Yes, good. Right. Up went the giraffe.”

“Up went the zebra,” Joe read. “Up went the elephant. Went up the—I mean, Up went the tiger. Went up—I mean, Up went the lion.” Then all the animals fell down from the tree house.

Joe read me another book, about dogs. “Dogs do things that make me mad.” He had trouble sounding out things and make. On the other hand, he read slobber perfectly. What a great kid.

“Okay, brilliant,” I said to the class. “And now I’m shaking the purple egg!” I shook it around my head. The class put away their read-aloud books and sat cross-legged on the carpet. Our next task involved a green plastic bucket filled with many bicolored plastic Easter eggs (slightly smaller than the purple noisemaking egg), each half of which had a word written on it with Sharpie. “Each student takes one half of the egg and must find their antonym partner,” the plans directed. I asked someone to pull the eggs apart into halves. Sarah explained what an antonym was: an opposite.

“Oh my gosh, yes,” I said. “Antonyms are opposite. You can remember it because you think of two ants walking towards each other, and they don’t like each other.”

“What if they’re fire ants and normal ants?” said Emily.

I said, “A fire ant and a normal ant. Two ants, and they’re antonyms. They want to go away from each other.”

We talked about synonyms, and Emily said, “If it was start and begin, they would hop together, and that would be a synonym.”

“Great!” I handed around the green plastic bucket, and each kid took out half an egg. “Now you want to find your antonym partner,” I said. Immediately there was shouting and confusion. “Who has hard?” “Who has down?” Besides the noise, there was another problem: there were more antonyms than students, and many of the antonymic half eggs remained in the bucket. I decided to proceed one egg at a time. Deena’s half egg said start.

I said, “We’re going for antonyms. The opposite of start is…”

“Startle!” said Danny.

Nobody had stop or finish. What ridiculousness. Move on. Sarah’s half egg said begin. Nobody had end, either, and a quick rummage through the bucket didn’t turn it up. I found an egg that said quiet. What was the opposite of quiet?

Loud!

“I have loud,” said Krista.

We got a few antonym eggs put together.

Anne-Marie raised her hand. “Mr. Baker, I can’t hear you because everyone is talking.”

I snapped my finger at Jake, who was hopping up and down. “SIT. I’m going to start taking names, and I mean it. I NEED ABSOLUTELY ONE VOICE AT A TIME. I want you to say what your egg says.”

“Easy,” said Jake. Nobody had half an egg that said hard, but I found it in the bucket. It seemed momentarily important to point out that there can be several different antonyms for a given word — for instance, the opposite of quiet might be loud, or deafening, or even, possibly, straying further afield, rambunctious. They all meant slightly different things. We got a few more eggs paired up, and then I pulled the plug.

“Okay, hand all the eggs in,” I said. “That was loads of fun. Is it snack time yet?” I looked at the clock: 10:40. “Five minutes till snack time.”

Calvin started shaking the purple egg. Don’t play with the purple egg, I said.

“Mr. Baker, can we play Sparkle?” said Sarah.

I’d never heard of Sparkle.

“It’s like if you get one of the letters wrong, you need to sit down,” said Sarah. “If you get the word right, then you’re still standing.”

Emily said, “If someone says ‘Sparkle’ at the end of the word, the other person sits down.”

It was another public humiliation game, like Around the World. I said, “I’m very glad to know about Sparkle, but since it’s already snack time we might have to do that a different day.”

Joe said, “We have a snack bucket, can I go get it?”

“A snack bucket,” I said. “Sounds exciting.”

“It’s not really exciting at all,” said Joe.

Darren ate macaroni and cheese; Simon ate Ring Dings; Leyla ate Motts for Tots — little chunks of fruit. I ate a crunchy protein bar and listened to a girl named Tracy sing songs from Frozen. When they got too loud I told them to take it down a peg.

“We’re not pegs,” said Dwight.

“A notch, take it down a notch,” I said.

“Why do you call us pegs?” asked Destiny.

“Can I read a book with you again?” asked Joe. He handed me the biggest book I’d ever seen. It was three feet wide and four feet high, some kind of crazily oversized picture book. We both laughed.

“We can’t read those books anymore,” said Emily. “Some kids make a mess of them and they rip them.”

“Okay, wrap up your snackers!” I said.

I asked what time in the morning people woke up. Dwight said six. Calvin said five. Randall said, “I be awake all night.” Finally snack was done and cleaned up, more or less.

To get their attention, I did the quintuple-clap thing. “Special flash report,” I said. “What’s happening next is finishing up the MOTHER’S DAY GIFTS AND CARDS. This is very important, because your mothers work hard, and they love you, and you’ve got to give them something. If you’d like to finish your card, you can. If you’d like to decorate the birdhouses, you can. And Ms. Wisman will be giving you a white bag to decorate, to hold the birdhouse.” The birdhouses sat in a row on one of the art tables.

I sent Destiny next door to Ms. Wisman to find out when we were getting the white paper bags to decorate for Mother’s Day. Destiny returned saying that Ms. Wisman had told her that we already had the white bags somewhere in the classroom. After some intensive searching we found the bags on a file cabinet behind Mrs. Ferrato’s desk. I handed them around. “Decorate these bags for your ma. There’s birdseed that’s going in here, and the birdhouse, and the card. Decorate the front, make it beautiful, do something nice. It’s your mom! You’re taking them home today. That’s very important. And then you save them up and you give them to your mom on Sunday.”

What followed was the best forty-five minutes of the day. The kids colored the peaked roofs of the Popsicle-stick birdhouses with six different colors of colored pencil, and they thought about what kinds of birds might live inside them, and whether the birdhouses should have doorbells, and they put plastic baggies full of birdseed inside them (we found the bags near a window, behind some cups full of crayons), and they sang the melting song from Frozen and debated the dangers of hornets, and they decorated the white bags with stripes and circles and rainbows and MOMs, and they took care when putting the birdhouses into the white bags so that none of the Popsicle sticks were accidentally torn off — and then we arranged the big pink cards that they’d made earlier and the white birdhouse bags on the semicircular table, where they looked resplendent. Ms. Boissiere, the ed tech, went around giving praise. I read some of the letters glued inside the cards: “Dear Mom, I love you because you halp me win I fol daown. I like wan you gev me privig. I like going to Funtown Splahtan wsh with you. tHank you!” “Dear Mom, I love you mommy because. You care me like when I am sick or hurt. And like when it is bed time you read stories like the little mrmade.” “Dear Mom, I love you MoM because you bring Me places. To the go kerts. You take cane of Me. You Feed Me. And Give Me love.” My phone rang: it was my daughter planning a Mother’s Day present. I went out to the hall to talk to her for a minute. When I came back in, Ms. Boissiere was saying: “Boys and girls, it needs to be a little bit quieter. If you guys can’t handle it, we’ll put it down, and you guys will be staying in for recess. Danny. You guys need to lower your voice a little bit. This is a fun activity, but you guys should not be hollering and shouting at people right in front of you, please. Thank you.” Emily told Darren that he needed to color his whole bag. Darren came over to me. “Mr. Baker,” he said, “do we need to color the sides of our bag?”

I told him he needed to follow his heart. “You don’t have to do anything. What you’re doing is making a beautiful bag that you think your ma would like.”

The next fifteen minutes were supposed to be “Writing share/clean for lunch.” There was serial bathroom-using and hand-washing. While several students played chirpy games on their iPads I made the mistake of trying to read some of the class a picture book I’d found on the shelf called The Flying Dragon Room, about a boy who leads his parents to a subterranean realm with a zig-zaggity ladder and an ubble bubble blower. I stopped after a few pages, because they were happier noodling with their iPads. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re being very quiet, and I don’t think I’ll read any more.” I sat and listened to the sounds of many tiny video games being played. Ms. Boissiere told me her story. She’d worked at the middle school for a while as an ed tech and then she moved to Wallingford Elementary. “I think I lucked out with my position here,” she said. “Joan, who’s in this room, is really good. I enjoy watching her with the kids. They’re used to their routine. Joan was out on Monday, and the sub said, ‘I try and follow the plans, but everybody does things differently.’ It happens. But the structure and the consistency — it’s big.” She made an announcement to the class. “We’re going to set the timer for two minutes, and then we’re going to clean up and get ready for lunch, okay?” Randall hastily glued a crayon on his birdhouse to serve as a chimney.

The timer beeped. “Boys and girls, we’re going to call the quietest table!” said Ms. Boissiere. The class went still. “Let’s have Destiny’s table.” They lined up. “Tracy, Jake, you guys can line up. Sarah’s table.” When it got too noisy, she said, “Boys and girls, we can sit back down, and you’ll be late for your lunch. Danny, go sit back down.”

“I’m the line leader!” said Simon.

We walked to the cafeteria. Leyla took me aside and told me she’d gotten an eyelash in her eye. We got it out.

I walked back to the classroom. Mrs. Whitman was standing in the doorway, waiting for her class to line up. She asked me how it was going so far.

“They’re really nice kids,” I said, “but this is a hard job. You really have to admire teachers’ ability to hang in there all day long, because it gets tiring.”

“It does,” said Mrs. Whitman. “It sure does.” She turned to the line. “Okay, THREE, TWO, ONE, ZERO!”

I had twenty-five minutes for lunch. The sub plans said that after recess, which was between twelve-thirty and one, I was supposed to read aloud to the class: “Continue reading A-Z Mysteries. This book is on the easel.” The book wasn’t on the easel. I spent five minutes hunting around for any A to Z Mystery book with no luck, then hurried to the tumultuous cafeteria. Ms. Boissiere held her hand up and called for silence. “I AM HEARING LOTS OF SHOUTING,” she said. “I am hearing people complaining about friends saying not-nice things to them! Let’s all put our heads down and take a last minute at lunch to sit quietly, not talk to your neighbor, and think about what you’re going to do this weekend! Think about how you can have a great Mother’s Day on Sunday! Your voices are off, your heads are down!”

A minute passed, and another ed tech called, “MRS. CASTELLO’S CLASS.”

When our class was called, we walked back to our room, readied ourselves for recess, and lined up again. As soon as the students were outside they fanned out and commenced screaming — all except for Randall and Simon, who fought over a pair of nesting orange traffic cones. Randall wanted to sit on one cone and hold the other cone to his chest, while Simon wanted to run around with his arm in a cone as if it was a lightsaber. While I chatted with a kindergarten teacher, an elegant girl in black pants and a black shirt with very short hair walked up and said furiously that the boys were not letting her play kickball. Her name was Renata. The kindergarten teacher, Ms. Carlough, took the boy kickballer aside. “We’ve been out here for two minutes and I’ve already had two problems with you. One more time and you’re all done. Three strikes and you’re…? Out. What do you say to Renata?”

The boy said he was sorry, barely audibly.

“Good,” said Ms. Carlough. “Anybody can play kickball.”

I said to Renata, “I bet you’re a heck of a kickball player. Are you good?”

“Pretty,” said Renata.

“Good luck,” I said.

“Thanks.” She ran off to the kickball diamond, but meanwhile the game had dissolved. Renata stood on home plate, waiting, kicking the dirt. I chewed an apple. Simon and Randall ran back and forth over the field brandishing their traffic cones. Eventually a new kickball game started, and Renata walloped the ball toward second base and ran. One of the cone brothers, Simon, ran up to me and said, “Can you time me on your phone?”

I said I could, but first I needed to know what the A to Z Mystery was about.

“It’s The School Skeleton,” said Simon.

I started the timer and Simon dashed off, holding the traffic cone. He ran to the trees and back in forty seconds.

“Woo,” I said. “You were a flash of lightning.”

Using my phone, I bought an e-book version of The School Skeleton so that I’d be able to read it aloud even if I couldn’t find the paperback in the classroom after recess.

A girl ran back with a huge bouquet of dandelions to show me. “I got them from all over,” she said. “We’re giving them to our teachers.”

At one o’clock, the kindergarten teacher blew several blasts on a whistle. Renata, the kickballer, ran up. “I got no outs, one strike, and three home runs,” she said. “Nice meeting you.”

“Mr. Baker, someone called Darren a bad word,” said Sarah.

“Oh, well, just let it go,” I said.

Ms. Carlough said, “FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE! MADISON! GET IN LINE AND PUT A BUBBLE IN YOUR MOUTH!”

I walked my children in, with Simon at the head of the line. “Do you have anything I can put water in?” he asked. “I’m dying.”

“Meow,” said Tracy.

I found a cup for Simon. He drank greedily.

“Can we read the book now?” said Emily.

“Yes,” I said. “Mrs. Ferrato said the book was on the easel, but the book isn’t on the easel.”

Emily found the book in somebody’s book bucket. “We got to chapter three,” she said.

“You are brilliant,” I said.

The class was on the carpet and I was in my chair, with the book in hand. I said, “The last sentence she should have read you is, Mrs. Eagle smiled slyly. ‘About a vanishing school skeleton,’ she said. Does that ring a bell?”

Yes.

I read on. “‘What did you call your story?’ Josh asked Dink at their lockers. It was three o’clock and everybody was going home. Dink grinned as he put on his jacket. ‘It’s called “Josh Stole the School Skeleton and Should Go to Jail Forever,”’ Dink said. ‘Hah hah,’ Josh said.” Near where Mr. Bones, the stolen skeleton, usually hangs, Ruth Rose discovers an adult-sized footprint in the dust. Mrs. Schottsky and Dink go over to inspect a footprint of a sneaker, with a zigzag tread. Dink wonders whether the thief made the footprint when he lifted Mr. Bones off the hook.

A girl raised her hand. “Can I go to the bathroom?” Of course. I read more pages. The principal, Mr. Dillon, isn’t the skeleton thief, because he wears shiny tassel loafers with smooth soles. Mrs. Schottsky can’t have stolen the skeleton, because she wears white nurse’s shoes with special treads. We got to the end of the chapter.

“Can you keep reading?” said two kids in unison. I checked the clock. Music was at 1:25. We had time to read chapter four, which had more talk about shoe sizes. They go back to Dink’s house and eat some cookies. They measure a paternal sneaker, and Dink feeds his guinea pig with a chunk of cookie. I asked if anyone had guinea pigs.

“My cousin has two,” Dwight said. “But his first guinea pig died.”

More discussion in the book about the possibility of measuring teachers’ sneakers. They redouble their resolve to find the skeleton. End of chapter four.

“Guys, I want to say that was excellent listening,” I said. “I enjoyed that.”

“Do you know where the skeleton is?” asked Darren.

“I do not know where the skeleton is.” Dwight showed me how to mark where I’d stopped reading, using a paperclip. I asked what kinds of books they liked to read — scary stuff, or maybe nonfiction about volcanoes or insects?

“I don’t like to read scary things, because it gives me nightmares,” said Sarah.

“Anything but Goosebumps,” said Dwight.

“What happens when you have goosebumps?” asked Deena.

If you go out on a cold day, I said, and the wind comes up, you get little things on your arm that are called goosebumps. “And when you’re really frightened, also, you can get a clammy feeling, and you get goosebumps.”

Lee stroked his arm. “You know how I know when I have goosebumps? Sometimes when I’m cold, my hair starts sticking up.”

“I have a horrible dream, it’s a nightmare about dying,” said Leyla.

“It ain’t going to happen,” I said. “You’re going to have a happy life.”

Leyla wanted to tell me a long version of her dream but I said we had to go to specials, so I’d have to hear it later.

Joe asked me what a mosquito bite was, and I told him. We walked down the hall to music class. I had a half an hour to file papers. “Fill their SMILE Notebooks with homework in the Right Back To School side. Any reading logs that were turned in need to be put back into their homework folders for homework.” So that was what the SMILE notebooks were all about: homework and reading logs. What a mistake, I thought. Reading logs interfere with the seamless fickle joy of reading: they turn you into a page-by-page bean-counter of the waking dream. And homework, in first grade? Between first and seventh grade, I had a total of about ten pieces of homework. “Workers Who Keep Us Well” in second grade, plus a report on gorillas. A report on Rhode Island and a report on France in third grade. A report on Thomas Edison in fourth grade. Nothing in fifth grade. A study guide on Lord of the Flies in sixth grade. Practically nothing in seventh. My homework-free generation has done just fine. The first real homework I did was for Mr. Toole, in eighth grade, when he asked my friend Nick and me to write epic poems. There was, I thought, no need for homework, ever, in grade school or middle school. And there was way too much of it in high school.

But I was a sub, and my job was to enforce the status quo, so I spent ten minutes stuffing homework worksheets in the SMILE notebooks. I spent another five minutes reassembling the antonym Easter eggs in the green bucket. Then I called my wife and talked to her about the documentary movie she was editing. I told her about the Mother’s Day bags and Popsicle-stick birdhouses. “Love you madly,” I said. I stood outside the music classroom and peered into the window. The kids were dancing to a pop song. The PA lady came on, calling some kids to the office.

After music, my class was feral. I made an eraser disappear to get their attention. When they were quiet, I showed them the trick of how to do the egg drop. “You say some things that might not mean much, like ‘Alaka zoomidoo, I’m going to make this eraser go to the zoo.’ And then you go like this.”

“I want to try!” said Tracy.

“I’ll go get some more erasers!” said Jake.

“Can I tell you about the nightmare that I had?” said Leyla.

“Guys, please be quiet,” I said. “We’re hearing about a nightmare.”

Leyla said, “I was watching this cursed mirrors thing, and then when I fell asleep I had a dream where it was the same kind of mirror as in the episode. There was one dark side, and I thought I saw this golden thing in the mirror. And then it hooked toward me, and I thought, I’m just going to get out. And then I dived toward it.”

My sympathetic reaction was cut short, because Calvin was throwing crayons. “Kiddo? What the heck are you doing? Come over here and sit right there. Right there.”

“Mr. Baker, your hair’s falling out,” said Deena.

“My hair’s falling out?” I slapped my hands on my head. “Oh my god! It’s seriously falling out.”

The class’s next task was one of those mystery picture grid things, where you color in the squares after doing something with rows of base-ten blocks.

“We know how to do it,” said Simon.

“That’s easy,” said Calvin. “Easy, easy.”

“Dude,” I said fiercely, “if it’s easy, let’s see you do it.”

While the kids were chattily coloring their mystery pictures, Ms. Boissiere told me that there was going to be a change to the schedule: she might be telling everyone to get their backpacks ready early. I went around helping the children who didn’t understand the math mystery picture. The instructions said, Use the base ten blocks to solve the problem. Write your answer on the line. Then color your answers with any color in your chart.

“Any color?” said Krista. “You can choose whatever color you want?”

Well, no. You had to use the color that corresponded to that number in the number key, and the two possible colors were red or green.

Simon started to count loudly, “FIVE, TEN, FIFTEEN, TWENTY.”

I made an announcement. “If you have to say numbers to yourself, say them in a whisper, so you don’t distract the person next to you. All righty?”

The kids who finished quickly went back to making erasers disappear. “Does anyone want to know how to do the magic trick?” said Sarah. Ms. Boissiere began helping kids pack up their backpacks early.

Another ed tech arrived, and she and Ms. Boissiere conferred briefly. Then Ms. Boissiere took control of the class. “Boys and girls! Listen! I gave you guys a couple of directions. That was to grab your backpack and coat, and pack up your bag with your Mother’s Day cards. I did not ask you to stack your chairs, Calvin, or sit on the tables. You guys are kind of not really listening, so it’s making it very difficult for me to give directions. There should be nobody sitting on tables.” Calvin climbed off the table. “We have a special treat this afternoon,” Ms. Boissiere continued. “Mrs. Norris sent in cupcakes for us. So all the tables need to be cleared off. Put your names on your math packets and put them in the Not Done box.” She handed out white cupcakes with white frosting and sparkles on top. “They’re all vanilla,” she said.

“Aw,” said Calvin.

“These look awful scrumptious,” I said, wolfing mine down. Something was afoot, though. Ms. Boissiere passed around some shark fruit snacks. I asked her what was going on.

She whispered, “It’s Danny’s last day.”

While I washed the frosting off my hands, the other ed tech, Mrs. McChesney, said, “Should we say what this is about?”

Ms. Boissiere said yes.

“Boys and girls, I need you looking at me,” said Mrs. McChesney. “Do you guys know why we’re having this party?”

No.

Mother’s Day!

“Nope, nope,” said Mrs. McChesney. “I’ve got to wait till it’s quiet and everybody’s looking at me. I’ll give you a few more guesses. What do you think?”

“Danny’s birthday?”

“You are the closest one. Danny loves sharks, right? Danny is moving to go live with somebody else. He’s going to be living pretty far away, so he’s going to go to a different school. So we’re all going to miss him very much. So we’re having a goodbye party for him. So should we all say goodbye to him?”

Goodbye, Danny, said the class.

“We will miss you,” said Mrs. McChesney. She gave Danny a shark book and a shark mug and a small rubber shark. Danny was happy and giggly. “Raise your hand if you want a second cupcake.” Really?

I went over to Danny. “Glad I got a chance to get to know you,” I said. “Hope things go well.”

When the party was almost over, Ms. Boissiere thought of a number between one and ten. “Randall, you can go first.”

“Nine?” guessed Randall.

“Five?” guessed Simon.

“It was three, so Simon is closer,” said Ms. Boissiere. “So do you want some more shark gummies?”

Simon got the whole packet.

Ms. Boissiere said, “Everybody tell Danny how much you’re going to miss him!”

WE’RE GOING TO MISS YOU, DANNY, said the class.

“I’m going to miss you one thousand times,” said Simon.

“I’m going to owe you a million dollars,” said Randall.

Anne-Marie went over and hugged Danny.

“Aw, are you guys getting married?” said Leyla. “Danny, are you moving to China?”

“No,” said Danny, smiling.

Sarah turned to me. “I know how to remember north, south, east, west. Never Eat Soggy Waffles.”

I started picking up the cupcake wrappers and the half-eaten second cupcakes. Ms. Boissiere clapped the class to order. “I think we have time for maybe one round of silent ball. But first you need to stack and pack.” Mad chair stacking. “Wow, this table looks ready over here,” said Ms. Boissiere. “Nice job, Destiny, Dwight, Calvin, Emily, looking good!” When everything was packed and stacked, Ms. Boissiere said, “You guys know the rules. You talk, you’re out. You’re over by the bags. If you talk when you’re out, you’re against the wall.” Emily turned off the lights. “So starting now, no talking. You talk or make a noise, you’re out. Danny, since it’s your last day, you start. Go ahead.” She gave the ball to Danny, who held on to it, laughing a snuffly laugh.

“Silent ball, remember,” said Ms. Boissiere, warningly. Finally Danny threw it to Calvin. Then he cleared his throat noisily.

“Danny, you’re out,” said Ms. Boissiere. Danny went over by the backpacks and sat down. Calvin said, “No.”

“Calvin, you’re out,” said Ms. Boissiere. “Nope, you’re out. Calvin, you’re out!” Calvin sat down on the rug.

Randall said something.

“Randall, you’re out, sorry.” Randall went sadly over to the backpacks and sat down. The ball hopped around the room. The girls were able to keep their mouths shut.

Calvin was fiddling with something. “Calvin, put that away,” said Ms. Boissiere. Jake failed to catch the ball.

“Jake, you’re out.” Danny, Calvin, Randall, and Jake started snickering softly. “Shh! Boys on the rug!” Danny started laughing harder. “Shh,” said Ms. Boissiere. “Jake, sit. Last warning.”

Deena didn’t catch the ball. “Deena, you’re out.” Tracy dropped the ball. “Sorry, Tracy,” said Ms. Boissiere. “Jake, I said last warning, you go over to the wall.”

Randall began clapping his hands softly and rolling his eyes. Calvin and Danny thought that was very funny. I didn’t want them to get in more trouble, so I waved at them and whispered, “Totally silent.”

“Go a little faster,” said Ms. Boissiere to the remaining players. “All right, Simon, you’re out.” Huge snickering from the rug. Krista threw the ball wrong and said, “Oop.”

“Sorry, Krista,” Ms. Boissiere said. “Silent ball.”

What a nightmare of a game — more public humiliation.

Ms. Boissiere checked the clock and abruptly took control of the ball. “I know we’re playing a game, and it’s Friday, but can I have you guys’s attention one second?” she said. “Since Danny’s leaving, I am actually leaving as well.”

Aw, said the class.

“So today’s my last day as well. But I just wanted to let you guys know that I enjoyed working with all of you, and I had a lot of fun.”

“And I bet they had a lot of fun working with you,” I said.

A bell bonged. “That was actually the bell,” said Ms. Boissiere. “That was a great game of silent ball. Why don’t you guys all go to the rug. If you’re getting picked up or going to Y care, please grab all your stuff and line up. Grab your Mother’s Day things, or else they’re going in the trash.”

I said goodbye to the kids who were lined up.

The PA lady came on and called about twenty names to the office. Simon was one of them.

Anne-Marie was sobbing. She hugged Danny again and tried to wipe her tears. Ms. Boissiere comforted her. “You know, he’ll come back and visit,” she said. “It’s a good thing.”

Randall pointed to my nametag, which said VISITOR. “Is that your name?”

“That’s VISITOR,” I said. “V for visitor.”

“What’s that mean?”

“A person who is visiting the school.”

The PA lady came on again to dimiss K through two.

Bye, bye-bye, I said. See you. Bye. Have fun.

I wrote a note to Mrs. Ferrato and neatened up her desk. The PA system came on. “Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who is a mother,” said Mrs. Norris, “and happy Teacher Appreciation Week. Thank you all.” I found a last unmatched piece of an antonym egg, good, and matched it with its opposite, bad. I put the egg in the green bucket, turned in my badge, and drove home.

End of Day Sixteen.