32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny

by Phillip Done

  I laughed to myself and finished my coffee.

  … How do I know spring has arrived?

  When the song flute monster appears.

  Testing

  Thirty-two sharpened number two pencils and a stack of practice tests just arrived in my box. I looked through the tests. Fractions. Decimals. Time. Geometry.

  “Eek!” I said out loud. I hadn’t taught any of this yet. Will someone please explain to me why we must have everything taught by March? Am I wrong, or aren’t there three months left of school?

  I gave a big sigh and walked into the classroom.

  “Good morning, boys and girls,” I said. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. I cannot read to you after lunch anymore. We cannot have any more discussions. I do not have time to look at your stitches or your mosquito bites or your tadpoles. We have to get ready for the test!”

  I continued, “Today we are going to learn how to find the area of a square, and the perimeter of a rectangle, and the volume of a cube, and prove the quadratic formula. Today we have to learn how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions, and find main ideas and supporting details. Today we have to learn where to put periods and commas and question marks and quotation marks and semicolons.”

  “What’s that?” Patrick asked.

  “No time for questions, Patrick.” And I continued, “Today we have to learn how to use the atlas and the thesaurus and the encyclopedia and the almanac. Today we have to improve your decoding levels by three years. That should take us up to morning recess.”

  The whole class groaned.

  “You don’t like these tests?” I asked. “You don’t want to do these tests? Don’t you realize that these scores are published in the newspaper and parents and real estate agents everywhere look at these scores? Don’t you realize that your parents’ property values are affected if you don’t know how to find the diameter of a circle?”

  “You want to paint?” I continued. “You want to run? You want to sing? You want to do a play? You want to go on a field trip? You want to play your song flute? Ha! What do you think this is? A school?”

  I stood on my chair.

  “Boys and girls,” I proclaimed, “you must learn to fill in all the bubbles completely. You must learn to bubble in anything as fast as you can when the teacher shouts, ‘Ten seconds left!’ You must learn to make dark marks with your pencil so the Scantron machine can read your answer. You must learn to erase completely if you decide to change your answer. And you must learn to guess even if you don’t know what bubbles to fill in. You must learn to answer fifty verbal ability questions, thirty vocabulary questions, forty-five reading comprehension questions, forty-five quantitative ability questions, and seventy-five math questions in fifteen minutes! Understand? Good. Now come on, everyone, let’s get to work!”

  Why do we continue to give these tests? I ask myself. And why are we placing more and more value on them every year? We know that they do not accurately measure what a child really knows. We know that they do not indicate how well a child is doing in school. We know that one of your best math students can fill in one wrong bubble on the answer sheet and get a zero out of ten in math.

  One of these days I’m going to get my courage up. When the tests arrive in my mailbox, I’m just going to send them right back with a note saying, “Sorry. Can’t do. We’re looking at tadpoles today.”

  April Fools!

  There are hundreds of books on how to teach reading and how to teach math and how to manage your classroom and how to decorate your bulletin boards and how to motivate your students. But I have yet to see one book on how to get through April Fool’s Day.

  Each year thousands of first-year teachers walk blindly into their first April without any guidance on how to survive it. I feel sorry for them. The following is a list of rules on how to survive April first with thirty-two children including Stephen.

  RULE 1: Call in sick.

  RULE 2: Never eat anything handed to you by a student on the first of April, unless of course you like to eat Oreos filled with toothpaste.

  RULE 3: Never drink anything handed to you by a student on April 1 either, unless you like drinking Pepto-Bismol or salt water in a 7-Up can.

  RULE 4: Never go to the bathroom on April Fool’s Day, unless you are good at detecting plastic wrap stretched under the toilet seat.

  RULE 5: Play dumb.

  But you cannot play dumb the same way for each trick. Certain tricks require different degrees of playing dumbness. For instance, when you see Stephen blowing up a Ziploc sandwich bag after lunch, pretend that you do not notice. When your students direct you to sit down on your chair, pretend that you do not know there is a Ziploc whoopee cushion under the sweater that has been placed on your chair. And pretend that you do not see them trying hard not to crack up as you prepare to sit in the chair. After you sit down, jump up and act surprised. When Stephen pulls out his lunch bag from under the sweater, look even more shocked and ask, “Who put that there?”

  When Justin pats you on the back, pretend that you do not feel the Post-it note that he just put on your shirt. Then walk around the room so everyone can read the note. The more you walk around the room and pretend that you do not know there is a sticky note that says “Kick Me!” on your back, the more everyone will laugh. When the sticky note falls off, stop walking so that Justin can pick it up and put it back on your back.

  When you see a plastic spider on your desk, jump away and scream. When you see the plastic snake on your chair, jump away and scream. And when you see the plastic dog poo on the floor, jump away and scream again. Act like you think they are real.

  When the children fall over laughing after you discover the plastic poo, turn and stare at the children like you are horrified. Say nothing. Then turn and look back at the poo. Then turn and look at the students again. Then look at the dog poo again. The more you turn and look at the dog poo, then back at the students, the more they will laugh.

  Oh, and don’t forget to tell Stephen to put the plastic dog poo and snake and spider back into his backpack, or he will do it all over again five minutes later, and everyone will laugh as if they did not just see it five minutes ago.

  Parents are lucky. They drop their little darlings off on April first with their backpacks full of salt water and plastic throw-up and drive away. I wonder. Did Stephen’s mom think about what he would do with his new plastic toys?

  This year I decided to get the parents back. At the end of the day, I wrote notes to each of the kids’ parents. Each note said this:

  Dear Parents,

  Your child was fooling around in class today. He was very disruptive. He would not do his work, and he talked back all day long. Please speak with him.

  Sincerely,

  Mr. Done

  After writing the notes, I turned each child’s paper over and wrote, “April Fools!” in tiny letters on the bottom corner of each note. So just as the moms start to scream at their kids for misbehaving in school, the kids turn over the notes and shout, “April Fools!”

  The parents would not expect to be April-fooled by the teacher. The kids could hardly wait to go home and trick their parents.

  The next day Stephen walked into class. He looked sad.

  “What’s wrong, Stephen?” I asked.

  “I’m grounded for a month,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I showed my mom the note.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “She got mad,” Stephen said. “I turned over the note to show her what you wrote, but it was blank.”

  “Blank?”

  “You forgot to write on the back of my paper,” Stephen said.

  I smiled. “April Fools!”

  RULE 6: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

  The Wedding

  My first year of teaching, Miguel brought in his camera to class.

  “Mr. Done,” he asked. “Can I take a picture of you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why?”


  “I want to send it to my aunt,” he said. “She needs a husband.”

  Any teacher who is single will tell you that your students will try to marry you off. Every year my class picks one woman in the school and decides that she should be my wife.

  “You should marry Ms. Sanders,” said Sarah.

  “She’s married!” I said.

  That didn’t matter of course. The only thing that mattered was that I was not.

  “You should marry Ms. Carter,” said Justin. “You can marry her. She’s divorced.”

  Ms. Carter has been divorced for fifty years.

  If I so much as speak to a woman at school, the kids think we are getting married: the secretary, the nurse, the crossing guard, the cafeteria lady, the noon supervisor, the principal. Even their own moms are candidates.

  Whenever a teacher gets married, it is a big deal at school. This year my friend Lisa announced her engagement, and the whole school was buzzing. Cathy had a shower for the staff. The room moms threw a shower for Lisa in the cafeteria and invited all her students. The kids made all the decorations and presented Lisa with a book. It was entitled When You Get Married. It was full of advice from the children:

  “When you get married, you must remember to take your ring off before you take a bath so you don’t lose it.”

  “When you get married, you must remember to come back to school.”

  “When you get married, set the table.”

  And, “When you get married, you should call your husband nicknames like ‘Dear,’ and ‘Honey,’ and ‘My Little Fish.’”

  Lisa invited the whole staff to her wedding, and her whole class too. Most of her kids sat in the first few rows with their parents. But I don’t know if it is such a good idea to invite your students to your wedding.

  They threw birdseed like they were playing dodgeball. The candles in the reception hall were all blown out before the wedding party arrived. The frosting flowers were gone when it was time to cut the wedding cake. The Just Married sign was misspelled. spelled. And five of her boys dog-piled on the floor to catch her garter.

  Actually, Lisa’s kids were pretty well behaved at the ceremony, I must say. Well, that is, until the end of the service. Just as the groom lifted her veil and moved in to give Lisa a kiss, the entire front row screamed, “Yuck!”

  Believe Them

  Did you ever wonder where the Boy Who Cried Wolf goes to school? He goes to mine. In fact, he is in my class. His name is Sean. Sean usually talks with his fingers crossed behind his back. And about once a week, he walks up to me and points to the sky, or my pants, or my shoes, and screams, “Mr. Done, look!” I look and Sean shouts, “You looked! You looked!” and laughs. It’s the highlight of his week.

  Some days, however, I refuse to look at my zipper that is supposedly down, or my shoelaces that are untied, or the UFO that has just landed on Miss Carlson’s office. This drives Sean crazy.

  The other day Sean hopped up to my desk.

  “Mr. Done, I can’t straighten my leg,” he said.

  I looked down at his leg. His right knee was bent. I gave him the Chin Down and told him to go back to his seat. He hopped back.

  A few minutes later Sean came up to my desk again.

  “Mr. Done, really, I can’t make my leg straight,” he said again.

  “Sean Warren,” I said (teachers use middle names just like parents do), “get back to work.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and hobbled back to his desk. I shook my head. What an actor, I thought to myself. But later that day as I was reffing an intense game of kickball, I noticed that Sean really was hobbling.

  “Sean, come here,” I yelled.

  He hopped on over.

  “Stand up straight,” I said.

  “I told you. I can’t.”

  “Let me see it,” I said, kneeling down.

  I tried to straighten Sean’s leg. It wouldn’t straighten. I took him to the office, and the nurse called his mom. His mom took him to the hospital, and they X-rayed his leg. The doctor found a pin right behind his kneecap.

  Apparently Sean had knelt on the carpet in class, and just as he knelt down, a pin slid right behind his kneecap. He didn’t even feel it. He brought the pin to school the next day for show and tell.

  Last week Sean walked up to my desk once again and said, “Mr. Done, I don’t feel good.”

  “Show me your leg,” I said.

  “It’s not my leg. It’s my stomach,” he said.

  “You’re fine. Go sit down.”

  We go through this same routine once a week. Always during math time. Sean walks up to my desk, says he is not feeling well, and I send him back to his seat.

  Well, about five minutes later, Sean was back at my desk again. (We were doing decimals.)

  “Mr. Done, I really don’t feel well,” he said again. “Can I go to the bathroom?”

  “Sean, you’re fine. Go do your math,” I said.

  He walked back to his chair. A couple of minutes later, he was up at my desk again.

  “Sean! That’s enough!” I shouted.

  “But, Mr. Done,” he said. “I—”

  Then out it flew. All of it. His entire breakfast and lunch. Cap’n Crunch and sloppy joes. All over my desk. All over my shirt. All over my shoes. I wiped my clothes as best I could and taught the rest of the day in my socks.

  Parents

  Most parents are great. They drive their vans on field trips and even volunteer to take the boys. They buy cookies from the Girl Scouts, candles from the Cub Scouts, and candy bars from the Retired Teachers Association. They collect plastic bottles and wash out aluminum cans for the new play structure and sew Uncle Sam vests and Glinda dresses the night before the school play.

  But once in a while you get some real doozies. Fortunately, those times are rare. One year a friend of mine had a really rough group of parents. It got so bad that she finally put a sign outside her classroom door that said, “No dogs or parents allowed!”

  They say that a teacher is doing well if he can please ninety percent of the parents. Here are the letters I never sent to the other ten percent.

  Dear Mrs. Proud,

  I know your son is not reading like some of the other children. He is a boy. He wants to play. Yes, he is not reading the same book as your neighbor’s child, but he is reading. And he is progressing. Please, chill out.

  Dear Mrs. Challenge,

  You came in and said your child is not being challenged. It is the second week of school. I am still learning their names. Attached you will find her math test. As you can see, she missed half the problems. Could you please help your brain surgeon learn how to add? Thank you.

  Dear Mr. Permissive,

  You’re shocked at your son’s language at school? Your son watches MTV all day long. He has every rap song memorized. He has seen more R-rated movies than I have. Please turn off the television.

  Dear Mrs. Uptight,

  Yes, the bus for the field trip is safe. No, your son will not have to really kiss Snow White in the school play. Yes, I know he is allergic to peanuts, and I will not give him any for snack. Thank you for the water bottle; I will make sure he doesn’t get dehydrated.

  Dear Mrs. Maintenance,

  I am sorry, but I do not have time to monitor your son’s time-release medication every ten minutes and chart it on a graph as you requested.

  Dear Mr. Pusher,

  Please don’t be upset about your son’s B+ in math. No, this will not hurt his chances of getting into Stanford. No, he does not need a private math tutor now. And by the way, does he really need to take tennis and piano and swimming and karate and violin and polo lessons?

  Dear Mrs. Stage Mom,

  I received your lengthy e-mail about your daughter’s not getting the lead in the school play. She has a very nice part, as all the children do, and I’m sure will have a wonderful experience. Sorry, I cannot go back and reaudition all the third grade girls as you would like.

  Dear Mrs. Issu
es,

  I was not discriminating by discussing slavery in my classroom. I was not favoring the boys when I had one more boy solo than girl solo in the school musical. I am not prejudiced because I happen to have more Asian students sitting on one side of the room than the other. If you asked me how many boys and girls or blacks or Asians or Hispanics I have, I could not tell you. They are children. I see children.

  Dear Mr. Perfectionist,

  Please do not do your child’s work. I cannot help him if you write his papers for him. It is OK for him to make mistakes. Please let him. And please do not tell me that he did it all by himself when he didn’t. I can tell. “Philanthropy” and “fundamental” and “significant” are not words that eight-year-olds use in their writing.

  Dear Mr. Drill Sergeant,

  I know you are trying to instill in him a sense of responsibility, but your son is only eight years old. He is not eighteen. He is eight. Yes, it would be nice if he were self-motivated and organized and sat down and did his homework by himself and remembered his backpack and his sweater and his lunch money. But he doesn’t. He needs your help. He is eight.

  Dear Mr. Blame,

  I am sorry for calling you and telling you about your son’s poor behavior at school. I thought you would want to know. I am sorry you think that it is my fault, and that I did something to provoke your darling little angel.

  Dear Mrs. Weird,

  Please do not drop by anymore in the middle of math and say that you just received a “psychic envelope” from Joey and you’re sure that he needs to talk with you. The post office is closed today.

  French Lessons

  For years I’ve wanted to learn how to speak French, so this year I finally started taking lessons. I began my lessons in September with a nice, little old French Canadian lady named Grace. Grace lives close to school. I drive over to her house every Wednesday after work for my lesson. We began with numbers and how to tell time.