Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind (22 page)

Most of the people who will walk after me will be children, so make the beat keep time with short steps.

—
Hans Christian Andersen

T
o celebrate the hundredth day of school, young children all over the country sing songs, shout cheers, read books, count numbers,
chant poems, make murals, and string Froot Loops necklaces. When I was a kid, no one celebrated 100th Day. Now it’s huge.
Our kindergartners measure stacks of 100 pennies, do 100 jumping jacks, lick lollipops 100 times, and try to stand still for
100 seconds. (Most don’t make it.) The first graders blow out candles on 100 cupcakes, pop 100 balloons, and discuss what
they’d do if they had $100. (It’s amazing how far their money goes. One kid bought a Ferrari.)

The second graders write what they’ll be like in 100 years and draw pictures of how they will look (some just draw tombstones).
Kim brought some of her kids’ papers into the staff room to share:

“When I’m 100 years old, I will wear pink lipstick, blue eye shadow, and a pearl necklace.”

“When I’m 100 years old, I will watch TV with my dog.”

“When I’m 100 years old, I will have glasses and dye my white hair black.”

“When I’m 100 years old, I will have false teeth and play golf.”

“When I’m 100 years old, I will plant peppers in my garden and spend money on taxis.”

All our first and second graders bring in bags of 100 things. You name it, the kids haul it in: LEGOs, pretzels, sugar packets,
leaves, bottle caps, Skittles, Ritz Crackers, rocks, stickers, hair bows, Cheerios, cotton balls, jelly beans. Last year one
child brought in 100 bars of soap. Most from the Marriott. Dad travels a lot.

Even our staff gets into 100th Day. Gail wears a hat covered with 100 pins. (One says, “I Survived 100th Day!”) Kim sewed
100 buttons on her jean jacket. (The kids count her all day.) Lisa blacks out her teeth and dresses like a 100-year-old woman.
Bob parades into each classroom wearing a Zero the Hero hat and says he has ninety-nine brothers and sisters. And Ellen hands
out certificates at the assembly to the students who walk into the office and take the 100th ice pack, open the 100th Band-Aid,
and have the 100th stomachache.

I wonder who the teacher was who started 100th Day. Did she have any inkling that her cute little idea would turn into a national
event? Could she have ever imagined that her little brainstorm would cause Froot Loops’ stock to soar on Wall Street every
February?

I must admit, I’m not really into the 100th day of school — though once I tried having my students not talk for 100 minutes.
(It doesn’t work.) Fortunately for me, by third grade most kids have pretty much outgrown it. Every couple of years, however,
I get a class that absolutely does not want to let go of it. This year is one of those groups.

“What are we doing for 100th Day?” Brian asked.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“We’re
not
?” he said, shocked.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

Joshua looked worried. “Can we bring things in if we want to?”

“Aren’t you getting a little old for that?” I said, lowering my chin.

“NO!” several shouted.

“
Please
can we bring stuff in!” Melanie begged.

“Okay,” I said with a shrug, “if you really want to. But only small things.”

The next morning, Christopher brought in 100 poker chips. Trevor pulled out 100 plastic green army men. Kevin carried in 100
marbles. Chloe rolled in a huge black suitcase that was almost as big as she was.

“What’s in there?” I asked.

“A hundred stuffed animals,” she answered, proudly.

“I told you to keep it small.”

“I did. I brought my Beanie Babies.”

I vowed to myself at that moment that if I ever celebrated 100th Day again (which was highly unlikely), all collections would
have to fit inside a Ziploc bag. Sandwich size.

A couple of minutes later as I was taking the roll, the door swished open and in waddled Trevor. He was twice his size and
looked like the Michelin Man.

“Trevor, what happened to
you?
” I spluttered.

His smile went from one ear to the other. “I’m wearing 100 things!”

Melanie giggled. Several stood up for a better view.

I fixed him with a look. “Trevor, that’s impossible.”

“Really!” he defended.

Then right there in the middle of the room he started stripping. The class began counting out loud.

“One! Two! Three! Four!”

I responded with a Frozen Teacher.

“Five! Six! Seven! Eight!”

Trevor was having the time of his life.

“Nine! Ten! Eleven! Twelve!”

Waves of laughter surged with each new number.

“Thirteen! Fourteen! Fifteen! Sixteen!”

After removing one down vest, two gloves, five scarves, a pair of earmuffs, two shoes, four socks, six wristbands, and three
ski caps, Trevor started unbuckling his belt.

“Okayyyyyy,” I said, walking over to him. “That’s enough now.”

“No!” several retorted.

“I’m only on twenty-four,” Trevor whined. “I’m not done.”

I picked up one of the ski caps and pulled it over his head. “Oh yes, you are.”

A
s a rule, third graders like to write. Ask them what they’d do with three wishes and their third will always be for more wishes.
Tell them to keep a pirate journal and one boy will make all the girls walk the plank. Let them make coupons for their moms
on Mother’s Day and they’ll expire in a day. Have them write about their dream vacation and they’ll cast their teacher as
the chauffeur.

There is no question that third graders write with flair. They make twenty-five exclamation marks where there should be one.
They dot their
i
’s with hearts. They fill their papers with words like
bonk, conk, crash, pow, smack, splat, thwap, slam, whack, varoom, splash, zoom,
and
arf arf.
Their friendly letters end with ten
PS
s. If they’re writing in print, they’ll switch to cursive to make a word stand out. They put ™ next to their signatures. And
just in case you weren’t sure they were finished with their story,
The End
will fill up half the page.

Whenever we start writing, I always set my rules. “Okay, boys and girls,” I announce, “no blood. No farts. No burps. No toilets.
And no machine guns.”

“Can we have pistols?” Trevor asked.

“No!”

When the Goosebumps books were popular, my students wanted to write gory stories. When the Captain Underpants books were all
the rage, half the kids’ papers had battling toilets. When Harry Potter first appeared, their main characters had lightning
bolts on their foreheads. When
Pirates of the Caribbean
came out in theaters, everyone wanted to write about Johnny Depp.

I usually have my students write two copies of everything — first a rough draft (the sloppy copy) that we edit together, then
a final draft. When I’m editing their papers, I spend a lot of time putting in periods, fixing spelling mistakes, turning
lowercase letters into capital ones, adding quotation marks, and explaining that commas are on the ground and apostrophes
fly.

Sometimes third-grade papers are not all that easy to read. Eight-and nine-year-olds will write forty lines of dialogue with
no quotation marks, place apostrophes in every word ending with an
s,
hyphenate one-syllable words, write sentences that are two pages long, and — if they’re running out of room — scrunch ten
words into a one-inch space and act shocked when I say I can’t read it.

My students don’t type many final drafts. Typing their final copies in computer lab can be quite a challenge. Third graders
type about three words a minute. They don’t put spaces after periods. They don’t put spaces after commas, either. All they
want to do is play with the fonts. And if the computer has grammar check, God forbid a green squiggly line appears under one
of their words. They can
not
continue typing until that green squiggly line goes away.

This year I made the mistake of showing my kids some of those emoticons — you know, those little faces you can make using
numbers and symbols on the keyboard. Well, you’d have thought I showed them how to type naughty words. Pretty soon emoticons
were popping up all over their papers wearing sunglasses 8-), sticking their tongues out :-P, and wearing braces :-#. There
was one I didn’t know though. Melanie had typed :-)X.

I touched the screen. “What’s that, honey?”

“You!” She pointed to the
X.
“See the tie.”

*  *  *

When third graders hand in their papers, they are usually a stapled mess, and I have to perform surgery on them to get the
staples out. Have you ever seen third graders staple two pieces of binder paper together? They can’t. Rebecca’s papers all
come apart because she pushes the stapler so gently that the staple never goes through the last page. Robbie pounds the stapler
so hard that the handle, the staples, and the shiny part you put the staples into all transform into a whole new thing — like
a metamorphic rock.

Jennifer staples her papers in the upper
right
corner. Laura likes to staple two eyes, a nose, and a mouth before handing her papers in. Joshua hasn’t figured out that
his pages are supposed to line up, so after stapling them together the corners end up three inches apart. And Danny’s papers
have more staples in them than my bulletin boards. This means that I have to hunt for my staple remover — which I usually
find in Christopher’s desk because he likes to hold it up to Chloe’s face and pretend it’s rattlesnake fangs.

In spring, I buy a bunch of hardback books with blank pages inside. My students create their own adventure stories then write
their final drafts in them. The kids love making their own books. They feel like real authors. When they’re finished, we have
an Authors’ Tea where all the final copies are on display. All the parents come. The kids serve their parents tea in china
cups and sign autographs. Everyone dresses up. Last year, Brad wore a navy blue jacket with brass buttons that his mom got
him at a secondhand store. He called it his tux.

This year soon after we started writing our adventure stories, I began holding individual conferences with each child. Brian
was first.

“Nice work, Brian.”

“Thanks.”

Something caught my eye. It was a
c
with a circle around it.

“What’s
this
?” I asked, smiling.

He smiled back. “I copyrighted it.”

Kevin’s writing conference was next. His dedication page said, “To Wally.”

“Who’s Wally?” I asked.

“My hamster.”

Laughing, I turned the page. He started off with dialogue.

“Nice beginning,” I said. “I see you’ve used quotation marks here. Good for you.” I pointed to one of the sentences. The period
was outside the quotation mark. “Kevin, periods always go inside the quotation marks.”

“Why?”

I thought about it for a second. “Well… think of it this way — the periods are too little to play outside.”

He liked that.

John walked up after Kevin. His paper was empty.

I tapped his blank paper with my pen. “Uh… what seems to be the problem here?”

“I have a severe case of writer’s block.”

“I see. And how long do you think this will last?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a couple of months.”

“I’ll give you five minutes.”

David followed John. His story was three lines long. At the end he had written
to be continued.

I gave him a questioning eyebrow. “You need to write more than this.”

“It’s a cliffhanger,” he replied, grinning.

I pointed to his desk. “Back to your seat.”

Emily was next. Her first page looked like a text message. On it she had written
great
as
GR8. Because
was
BC. Later
was
L8R
and
People
was
PPL.

I screwed up my face trying to understand. “Uh… honey, you have to write these out. This is a book — not a cell phone.” She
giggled. I spotted one abbreviation that I didn’t know. “What’s
FTASB
?”

“Faster than a speeding bullet.”

Melanie stepped up after Emily. I looked over her story. One sentence began,
“And Anastasia wore a a a a a a a a a a a a a silver gown.”

“Melanie, why did you write all these
a
’s?”

“I was thinking.”

Dylan had the last writing conference of the day. Dylan loves to write stories. He has a good imagination. I laughed when
I read his title:
Mr. Done in Outer Space.
Dylan illustrated some of the pages, too. He drew me sitting in a spaceship with my briefcase. I was holding my coffee mug.

“Nice drawing,” I said.

He giggled.

Dylan reminds me of myself when I was a kid. When I was his age, I also liked to write stories. Not too long ago, I came across
my very first book. I wrote it in third grade. Actually, Winston Churchill showed me how. It was spring. My class had just
gone on a field trip to the zoo. After school, I sat down at the kitchen table with my paper and pencil and wrote a story
about the trip. I drew pictures, too. When I was all done, I folded it and stapled the edges. But I wasn’t happy with it.
Something wasn’t right. It didn’t look like a real book. So I went to the family room and stared at the shelves. I pulled
down a copy of
My Early Years
by Winston Churchill and examined it. Then it dawned on me — real books have hard sides. Winston Churchill hid his staples.
I ran into the garage, found a cardboard box, and cut it up. I glued my story into the cardboard and wrapped it with a brown
lunch bag. Now it was real.

The week before this year’s Authors’ Tea, my kids started working on the dust jackets for their hardcover books. I gathered
the children on the carpet and shared a stack of books that had received awards and become bestsellers. I explained what reviews
are and pointed out examples. We talked about how special it is for an author to get a review from a big paper like the
New York Times
or the
Chicago Tribune
or the
Wall Street Journal.
Then I asked the children to write their own reviews on the back of their dust jackets. The kids ran back to their desks,
grabbed their papers, and started writing. But they didn’t want to write critiques from the big newspapers. They had their
own ideas in mind.