32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny Read online

  The children roared. Clearly they thought that this was all part of the show. Well, apparently Max is also a big show-off. He began dragging me across the field by my pant leg. Then my pants began to come off. I held on for dear life.

  Officer Joe finally arrived and pulled Max off.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  I could not move. “What happened?” I asked, still flat on my back.

  “You forgot to put your arm down. Why didn’t you put your arm down?” he asked.

  “How am I supposed to put my arm down when I’m being chased by Cujo?” I yelled.

  “I’m so sorry,” he repeated. “Really.”

  I could see he felt really bad.

  Officer Joe helped me up. Everyone applauded. My kids ran up to me.

  “Mr. Done, do it again! Do it again!” they screamed.

  “No, no,” I said, “Max has to go now.”

  “Why?” they whined.

  “Because Max is late for his appointment,” I answered.

  “Where does he have to go?” asked Matthew.

  “To Doggie School,” I said. “For the next twelve years!”

  Frog and Toad

  My students are supposed to read with their parents every night, and every night their parents are supposed to sign their kid’s reading log.

  Ronny’s reading log is never signed. I asked him if his mother helps him at home. He said no.

  Ronny needs the help. He struggles in reading.

  One Friday I sent another letter home to Ronny’s mom explaining the importance of reading with your child. I included another reading log and an article from The Reading Teacher. I also sent home a big manila envelope with Curious George and Where the Wild Things Are and Frog and Toad.

  On Monday morning Ronny brought back the envelope.

  “So, Ronny, did you read with your mom this weekend?” I asked.

  He looked down. “No,” he said. “She was busy.”

  I gave a big sigh and shook my head. Too busy? Too busy for her own kid? I was tired of these families that don’t value education.

  For the next two weeks I continued to send home books in the manila envelope. They continued to come back unread. Ronny continued to give excuses.

  Finally I called Ronny’s mom in for a conference. Surely this would help. Mrs. Hanson came in the following day. She was very pleasant. She thanked me many times for working so hard with Ronny. Again I explained the importance of reading every day. I gave her a stack of flash cards with sight words, and I copied another article from The Reading Teacher. I also lent her two books on reading strategies for children with reading difficulties. She thanked me again.

  A couple of days later, I was listening to Ronny read and asked, “Hey Ronny, how’s the reading going at home?”

  He stopped and put his head down. He did not answer.

  “Your mom is reading with you now, right?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “She’s busy. She’s got things to do.”

  “Things to do?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Ronny, “she’s taking night classes now. She gets home from work and makes dinner really fast, then goes out, and when she comes home, I’m in bed. She wants to read with me, but she doesn’t have time.”

  I was mad.

  Here Ronny’s mom is out doing who-knows-what, and her son sits at home neglected. Some of these parents! So wrapped up in their own lives that they don’t even have time for their kids.

  On Monday night I was at home mowing the lawn when I remembered I was supposed to be at school helping Dawn with registration for adult education. I raced to school and ran into the building. Dawn was with a student.

  “Dawn, sorry I’m late,” I said.

  “No problem,” she said. “We’re almost finished.”

  I sat down and started taking off my jacket.

  “Hello, Mr. Done,” I heard someone say.

  I looked up. It was Ronny’s mom.

  “Uh … hello, Mrs. Hanson,” I said, surprised.

  Dawn handed her the registration form.

  “Good to see you, Mrs. Hanson,” Dawn said. “Glad to have you back.”

  Mrs. Hanson took the form and looked at it. Then she began rummaging through her purse.

  “Oh my goodness. I must have left my glasses at home. Would you mind helping me fill this out, please?” she asked Dawn.

  “Of course not.” Dawn smiled.

  Mrs. Hanson shook her head. “Sometimes I’m so absentminded. I can’t believe I forgot my glasses.” She laughed.

  Dawn helped her with the form and pointed her to the classroom down the hall.

  “Oh, thank you so much,” she said. “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.” I smiled.

  And she walked down the hall.

  After she left, I leaned over to Dawn. “You know who that was?” I asked. “That’s Ronny’s mom. She won’t help her son but will come here and take a pottery class.”

  Dawn stared at me.

  “Phil,” she said. “Do you know which class Ronny’s mom is taking tonight?”

  “No,” I said.

  She paused. “Beginning reading,” Dawn said.

  I stared at her.

  “Mrs. Hanson cannot read,” she said. “In fact, every one of the parents who signed up for that class forgot their glasses tonight.”

  I did not move.

  How many other parents like Mrs. Hanson have I handed helpful articles to? To how many other parents who could not read have I sent school newsletters and field trip notes? How many other parents have I judged so unfairly?

  How many other Ronnys have I forced to make excuses? How many other Ronnys have I sighed deeply at and embarrassed? How could I call myself a reading teacher? How could I call myself a teacher at all? I felt so ashamed.

  A few days later I asked Mrs. Hanson to come in for another conference, and I apologized.

  “Please don’t apologize, Mr. Done,” said Mrs. Hanson. “I want to thank you.”

  I looked up at her. Mrs. Hanson pulled a big manila envelope out of her purse.

  Then she said, “Mr. Done, last night I read Frog and Toad—with a little help from Ronny, but last night I read Frog and Toad!”

  She laughed.

  “I never thought I’d learn to read,” Mrs. Hanson continued. “Not in a million years. And you helped me, Mr. Done. You helped me. I’m grateful that you sent all those books home every night with Ronny. Thank you, Mr. Done. You helped me learn to read.”

  Some days, when everyone is gone, you close the door and cry. This was one of those days.

  Fall

  The Pie-Eating Contest

  Every October the PTA at my school puts on a big carnival—snow cones, cotton candy, clowns—the works. It’s the big fundraiser of the year.

  All the teachers work at the carnival. This year I called out numbers in the cake walk and sold pumpkins in the pumpkin patch behind the library. It beat last year, though. Last year I sat in the dunking booth.

  My school carnival always reminds me of the school carnivals that we used to have when I was a kid—especially the famous one when I was in third grade.

  It was the end of the day. The final event was about to take place, the event that every child looked forward to—the pie-eating contest. The contest was divided into three categories—kindergarten and first graders together, second and third graders in another group, and fourth and fifth in another.

  My two brothers, Carl and Steve, and I all signed up. Carl was in the older kids’ group, I was in the middle, and Stevie was with the little ones.

  At three o’clock the cafeteria tables were rolled outside and stretched across the blacktop in a line. More than a hundred kids sat on the benches. The pies were laid out on the tables. A local restaurant donated them.

  Hundreds of parents and kids surrounded the benches. The fourth and fifth graders sat at one end of the tables. The second and third graders sat i
n the center, and the little kids at the other end. My mom stood in the back of the crowd.

  The rules:

  Eat everything in the pie tin.

  Don’t use your hands.

  Stop if you’re feeling sick.

  Mr. Mason, the principal, held up his megaphone and called out, “Are you ready?”

  The kids screamed, “Yeah!”

  “OK, everyone,” he announced, “On your marks. Get set. Go!”

  And we were off! Like rockets, we threw our faces into over a hundred tins of apple, blueberry, and cherry filling. The crowd cheered.

  In just five minutes the older kids were almost finished. The crowd rushed over to that end of the tables, where over fifty children raced to finish their pies. Two boys in the center of the group were half a pie ahead of the rest. They were neck and neck. The crowd started chanting, “Go! Go! Go!” Mr. Mason stood right beside the two boys watching closely. He leaned over them.

  “And the winner is … ,” he said.

  Carl popped up first.

  “Carl Done!” he yelled.

  The crowd applauded.

  Carl beamed. And my mom witnessed ten years of saying, “Slow down,” “Chew your food,” and “Take smaller bites,” disappear in front of her eyes.

  Immediately the crowd ran over to the second and third graders. Harold Parks had won three years in a row and was the hands-down favorite.

  The crowd began chanting, “Harold! Harold! Harold!”

  Then someone screamed, “Hey! Look at that boy!”

  Everyone looked.

  At the corner of the table sat a little boy, his face buried in blueberry. Suddenly he came up for air.

  “Hi, Mom!” I yelled.

  She gave half a smile. Then I threw my head back down into the blueberries and surged to the finish.

  Mr. Mason shouted, “Phillip Done is the winner!”

  The crowd cheered again. Then, like a swarm of bees, everyone ran over to the little kids. News spread rapidly that there was a third Done boy in the little kids’ group. If Steve Done won, this would be a sweep. Never before in the history of the pie-eating contest had one family won in all three categories. It would be a new school record!

  In the final group, some of the little ones had already given up. Some had hardly eaten anything at all. One little girl was crying blueberry. But one little first grader looked like he had never been fed. The crowd did not know, however, that he had just eaten a Filet-o-Fish and a large fries for lunch, and when he finished his pie, he’d probably ask the child next to him if he could finish hers too.

  The crowd began chanting, “Stevie! Stevie! Stevie! Stevie!”

  Stevie took a break, sat up, smiled, and looked around at all the people. Then he took a deep breath, bent over, ate his last bite of apple filling, jumped up on the bench, and posed like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  Everyone laughed.

  My mom put her head in her hands. Mr. Mason stood behind Stevie and grabbed his arm.

  “And Stevie wins!” he shouted into the megaphone. “That’s a sweep for the Done boys!”

  The crowd went wild. They hoisted all three of us boys onto the table and gave each of us a first-place ribbon. The president of the PTA took photos. A few moments later she presented my mom with a special ribbon.

  It said, “Mother of the Three Little Pigs.”

  Writing

  “Boys and girls,” I announced, “today we are going to learn how to write.”

  Justin groaned.

  Then I said, “Now put your coats and hats on. We are going outside.”

  “Yeah!” they all screamed.

  “But there is one rule,” I said. “You may not say one word when we go outside. Got it?”

  They smiled and nodded with their mouths closed.

  We put on our coats and hats and lined up. Then we walked outside in single file to an open field right next to our school. No one spoke.

  We sat down in the grass, closed our eyes, and listened to children shout in the distant playground. We lay down on our backs and took big breaths and tried to smell the wetness of autumn. We watched golden leaves say good-bye to branches and followed their paths to the ground. We waited for the leaves to fall on our faces.

  It began to drizzle. They all looked at me, expecting me to say it’s time to go back inside. We didn’t. The children looked at each other with wide eyes. We took our hats off instead, and tried to catch raindrops in our mouths. They were dying to speak, but no one did. For they knew it would break the spell.

  “OK, everyone,” I said, “let’s walk back to class.”

  We kicked rocks and crunched leaves on our way back to school. We slipped in mud and splashed in puddles. We felt the cold autumn earth through our shoes. Finally we walked inside, took off our coats, wiped our feet, and hung up our hats. Everyone sat down. They all looked at me. Peter raised his hand. His lips were held tight.

  “Yes, Peter?” I said. “You may speak now.”

  He let out a big sigh and put his hand down.

  “Mr. Done,” he asked, “when are we going to learn how to write?”

  I smiled. “You just did, Peter. You just did.”

  Garage Sales

  OK, I admit it. I’m cheap. Before leaving a hotel, I grab all the soap—and the shoehorns and the shower caps. I don’t need to buy any cologne because I have hundreds of those little samples you get on index cards at the cologne counter. My friends won’t go out to dinner with me anymore because they’re embarrassed by my coupon book. When I go grocery shopping, I eat all the little pizza samples that the lady at the end of the frozen food aisle is giving away. And the best present anyone ever gave me was from my brother Steve—a gift certificate to the Salvation Army Store.

  So what if I take the barf bags from the plane (they make terrific lunch bags)? I have to be frugal. All teachers have to be. How else can we afford to buy everything we need for school?

  Actually, over the years I have become very good at bargain hunting and have fallen in love with garage sales. Every Friday night I scour the local paper for the next day’s sales. I circle the ones that look promising and check the addresses on the map. On Saturday mornings I wake up at five, fill up my big travel mug with coffee, and hit the road.

  If I see a garage sale sign, I look for bicycles on the lawn, or a basketball hoop over the garage, or a lemonade stand on the curb. Bicycles and basketball hoops and lemonade stands mean kids. And kids mean kids’ stuff. And kids’ stuff means books and checker sets and puzzles for rainy day recess.

  One day I was driving along a street when I saw a lady just opening up her garage for the sale. I spotted roller skates on the porch, a soccer ball in the tree, and a hula hoop in the hall closet. (My sense for spotting kids’ toys is highly developed.) I parked my car and walked up to her garage.

  The nice lady was selling off a ton of her kids’ stuff. I figured they had either just gone off to college or she was very mad at them.

  I walked over to one of the boxes, put down my coffee mug, and started to shake. The boxes were filled with Madelines and Babars, and Encyclopedia Browns and Nancy Drews in almost perfect condition! This was better than Vegas! But I did not jump up and down. It is always best to remain calm when you find a box of children’s books with no price tags.

  Suddenly I spotted a heavy-set lady grabbing books out of another box. She had a giant coffee mug too. She was putting books into a totebag. Her sack had thirty names on it. The names were written with glitter glue.

  I knew it! Another teacher.

  I turned over a box of stuffed animals and began filling it with books. The teacher with the totebag spotted me and started grabbing faster. I did not like that she was getting anything. So I stood up and walked over to her. She gave me a dirty look and tried to cover up the books in her bag.

  Then I reached down and pulled a copy of Amelia Bedelia out of the box. It was only ten cents! She grabbed it out of my hands.

  “Hey!” I screa
med. “Gimme that!”

  “I had it first,” screamed the Mean Teacher.

  “You did not!” I yelled.

  “Yes, I did,” yelled Mean Teacher again.

  “It’s mine!” I shouted.

  “It is not!” screamed Mean Teacher. “I was here first. Go back to your own box.”

  She would not let go.

  Just then the Nice Lady came over and said, “If you two are interested in children’s things, I have more over here.” And she pointed to three big boxes under a picnic table. We both ran over to the table.

  Eureka! There was a globe and a chemistry set and a rock tumbler and Legos and Junior Scrabble. There were children’s dictionaries, and boxes of multiplication flash cards, and jump ropes, and a set of children’s encyclopedias, and Twister, and Battleship, and Chutes and Ladders, and a big plastic clock for learning how to tell time.

  “I’ll take it all,” said the Mean Teacher calmly.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “I want it!”

  “Oh my.” The Nice Lady laughed nervously. “I guess I should sell it to the lady who said she wanted it first.”

  “What?” I screamed. “That’s not fair.”

  Mean Teacher smiled. “How much?” she asked.

  “Well … is five dollars too much?” asked Nice Lady.

  “Five dollars?” I yelled. I started gagging.

  You will not believe what happened next.

  Mean Teacher said, “Will you take four?”

  I grabbed my chest.

  “Well … OK,” said Nice Lady.

  I fell on the driveway.

  Four dollars for all that! This was robbery! Not only was Mean Teacher mean—she was a thief! Imagine asking for a discount, when she was already getting everything for nothing!

  Then Mean Teacher asked Nice Lady to help her carry everything to her car. This was too much. I crawled away. While they were loading up Mean Teacher’s car, I spotted Amelia Bedelia on the picnic bench. Mean Teacher must have forgotten it. Ha! I thought. And I grabbed it.

  After Mean Teacher drove away, I walked up to Nice Lady and held out the book. I smiled.