Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind (5 page)

Go to workroom. Pull paper off large roll. Return to classroom. Starting at one end of bulletin board, begin stapling paper
onto board. Smash out air bubbles as you go. If there is a fire extinguisher or a thermostat on the wall, cover it with paper.
(Cut out fire extinguisher and thermostat later.) When you get to end of paper and discover that you still have two feet of
bulletin board left because you did not measure board or paper when you started, go back to supply room and get more paper.
Patch wall. Trim with scalloped border.

Plaster walls with posters of the water cycle, rocks and minerals, volcanoes, the layers of the earth, the parts of speech,
and a birthday chart. Prop wooden apples and
Teachers Are Special
books on desk. Put Little League photos of students on file cabinet, magnets on whiteboard, and origami on top of computer.
Hang number line over whiteboard, lunch menu by entrance, and sign on front door that says, “Sorry I missed you. Either I
am on a field trip, on yard duty, at PE, or I ran away.”

Open your planner. Look at blank squares. Block out all recess times. Pencil in all lunch periods. Draw big smiley faces in
boxes when students go to PE and library and when the art teacher comes in. Make giant
X
’s in all holidays.

Open classroom door. As your students walk inside say, “Hello,” “Good morning,” “Nice to see you,” “Show me what’s in your
hand,” “Leave the caterpillar outside,” and “You can visit him at recess.”

Sit at your computer. Let student stand behind you. Start typing e-mail.

When standing up in front of the classroom, find one parent who is smiling and direct entire presentation to her. Talk all
the way till the end of the hour so that you do not have time for questions.

If your cell phone rings during class, answer it.

Once your room is set up and your procedures are in place, it is time to get to know your students and determine their learning
styles. Musical learners will sing “The Funeral March” when the tadpole dies. Spatial learners will take apart the pencil
sharpener for you if it’s not working. Verbal learners will point out the spot on your chin where you missed shaving. Kinesthetic
learners will show you their double-jointed body parts, will press down so hard on their pencils that you can read their writing
clear through to the other side of the paper, and — when making landform maps out of flour, salt, and water — will taste the
volcano.

When I finished writing my
Survival Guide,
I slipped it into an envelope and wrote Amanda a note:

My Dear Amanda,

I thought this might come in handy someday. I won’t lie to you: The kids will keep you on your toes. But you’ll find no other
profession as rewarding. I promise you that. Nor as entertaining. This morning one of my students asked me if I was free to
babysit on Friday night. Another wants me to get a disco ball for the classroom. And all day long my kids applauded every
time I took a sip of coffee. You’ll make a wonderful teacher. I’m proud of you.

Love,
Uncle Phil

R
ecently I was hunting in my closet at home when I came across my box of old school photos — not photos of me as a kid, but
as a teacher. I’ve saved them all. Every year when the pictures arrive at school, I pull them out of the envelope, check my
hairline, then tuck them back. Eventually, I toss the photographs into my picture box. I never give any of them away. What
am I supposed to do — mail them with my Christmas card and write on the back: “Phil in third grade”?

Looking through my box of photos reminded me of a night at the Oscars. In one, I sported a mustache (Tom Selleck phase). In
a second, my hair was greased back (Antonio Banderas). In a third, I looked like I had just woken up (Sean Penn). And in another,
I had a buzz cut that was so short I appeared to be bald (Bruce Willis).

As I neared the bottom of the box, I pulled out a photo of me with a goatee. I laughed when I saw it. That goatee certainly
didn’t last long.

“What’s that?” Julie asked from her desk one day, pointing to my chin.

“It’s a toupee,” Anthony announced across the classroom.

“It’s
not
a toupee,” I corrected. “It’s a
goatee.
”

“A
what
?” Julie demanded.

“A goatee,” I repeated, rubbing my new whiskers. “It’s a beard but just around my chin.”

I lifted my jaw for Julie to see. She examined it.

“You’ve got a lot of gray,” Julie pointed out.

That night, I bought one of those boxes of hair dye for men. After I mixed it up and brushed it into my whiskers, I noticed
that some of the dye was getting on my skin.
Uh-oh. Is this stuff permanent? What if it stays on my skin?
Panicked, I grabbed a razor and shaved the goatee. The next day when Julie saw me, she said, “Your mustache looks good off.”

Since I started teaching, there are certain things about school photos that have never changed. First is the envelope they
arrive in. It always has a window in it. Through this window you get to see a third of your face, the top of your head, and
one ear. There is only one reason the envelopes have this window: to ease the shock. The background in school photos hasn’t
changed, either. For as long as I’ve been teaching, all school pictures have had that same light blue background. In fact,
if
Jeopardy!
ever posted “School Photos” as a category, I wouldn’t be surprised if the winning answer were “What is blue?”

Look at any teacher’s individual photos and you’ll see that most look preoccupied. Some appear dazed. If they’re smiling at
all, the smile seems fake. Why? Do you know what grade school teachers have been doing just before sitting down to have their
individual photos taken? They have been smashing down bed hair, tucking in shirts, keeping children in line, straightening
collars, tying bows, fixing buttons that are in the wrong holes, blotting sweaty after-recess foreheads, handing Kleenex to
kids with runny noses, standing behind the photographer trying to get kids to smile, and searching in the Lost and Found box
in the corner of the multi for a shirt for Danny to wear because his mom will not be happy if she sees half the soccer field
all over his new shirt.

One of my jobs on Picture Day is to pass out the plastic combs while the children wait in line. Before I start handing them
out, I always give the Comb Speech: Do
not
share your combs. Hold on to them. Please take them out of your hair before having your picture taken.

Normally, the little plastic combs are black. But this year they were red, green, blue, and yellow.

I handed Melanie a blue one.

“Can I have red?” she asked.

I gave her red.

Sarah was next. “Green, please.”

I felt like I was handing out Otter Pops.

Gina studied the combs in my hand as if she were deciding on which cupcake had the most frosting. “Mmm… can I have yellow?”

“Honey, they’re all the same.”

She pointed to Emily. “
She
got yellow.”

I let out a sigh and handed her a yellow. Then I made an announcement. “Okay, class, no more choosing colors. Take the ones
I give you.”

“Then can we trade?” asked Brian.

“No!”

By the time the teacher gets to sit down for his own photo, he is completely wiped out. But the fun has just begun. Now the
teacher must take a seat on the photographer’s stool. This is similar to sitting in the dentist’s chair while he performs
a root canal. The teacher can’t move. He must sit perfectly still with hands folded, knees together, back straight, chin up,
and feet planted on the masking tape while his students stand on the sidelines unsupervised.

Our school photographer’s name is Charlie. He has been taking school photos for thirty-seven years. Charlie loves taking kids’
pictures — except when the cafeteria is serving pizza. If Picture Day takes place on Pizza Day, Charlie says kids will have
ear-to-ear sauce stains and look like clowns.

This year while I was sitting helplessly on the stool and Charlie was tilting my chin, Christopher was demonstrating for his
classmates how to slide across the multi floor as if he were stealing second base. Trevor was making farting noises as he
emptied his gel bottle onto Kevin’s head. And John was trying to see if he could turn his plastic comb into a boomerang.

Every year before I take a seat on Charlie’s stool, I say the same thing: “Listen you guys — when I sit down I don’t want
anyone to fool around. I mean it. I’m serious.” But do you think my students listen? Absolutely not. They stand behind the
lights and point and giggle and make faces at me because few things are more fun than trying to make your teacher laugh when
he is having his photo taken on Picture Day.

W
e have a new teacher at our school. Her name is Carrie. Carrie teaches third grade a few doors down from me. At the end of
the first week, I went to check on her. She was sitting at her desk sorting through some papers.

“Well,” I said, clapping my hands together, “you made it through week one. Congratulations!”

“Yeah!” Carrie cheered.

“Only 180 more days to go.”

“Ahhhhhh!” she cried.

I sat down in a kid chair. “So how’s it going?”

“Well,” she sighed, “between today’s fire drill, a birthday party, and the school assembly that I forgot about until the last
minute, I don’t know if my kids learned anything.”

I laughed. “That’s normal.” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my legs. “So can you relax this weekend?”

She held up her lesson plan book and grinned. “It’s empty.”

“Ah yes,” I said with a nod. “I remember. Don’t worry. The second year is easier. Trust me.”

“I hope so,” she breathed out.

“Hey,” I said, “mind if I give you some advice from an old vet?”

“Please.”

I uncrossed my legs and leaned in. “Don’t try to do it all your first year.”

Carrie gave an understanding nod.

“You’ll want to make everything perfect,” I continued. “Like you were trained to do in teacher school. But you can’t.” Carrie
nodded some more. “And cut yourself a lot of slack. Learning to teach is like learning a new language.”

“Uh-oh,” she squeaked.

“What?”

“I didn’t do so well in French.”

We both laughed.

“May I tell you something else?” I added.

“Absolutely.”

I paused for a moment. “Sometime in the next few weeks you’ll have such a bad day that you will wonder why you even went into
this profession. Expect it. We all have those days.”

Her eyes got big. “Even
you
?”

“Absolutely. But the funny thing is that every time I have a really bad day, it’s soon followed by a wonderful one that reminds
me of why I became a teacher in the first place.” Carrie listened closely. “In all my years of teaching, it has never failed.
Never.”

Her face broke into a smile. “I’ll try to remember that.”

I turned and looked around the room. Her students’ self-portraits filled one board. Their autobiographies were up on another.
Giant tempera-painted sunflowers mounted on black paper hung over the sink. “It looks great in here. You’re ahead of me. I
don’t have all my kids’ work up yet.”

“Thanks,” Carrie said. Then she put her elbows on a stack of papers, rested her chin in her hands, and looked out at the desks.
“Phil, I
think
everything is going well, but I’m not sure that I’m… I’m not sure that I’m reaching them.”

“Ahh,” I said, nodding my head. “Vanilla wafers.”

“Huh?”

“Vanilla wafers,” I mused aloud. “When I was a new teacher, I had the same thought. I wondered if I was making an impact.
Then one morning I walked to the front of the room and found a Ziploc bag with three vanilla wafers resting on my desk. I
figured someone had dropped it on the floor and the custodian picked it up. I held up the bag and asked if anyone had lost
them. No one answered. Then a soft voice in the first row whispered, ‘They’re for you.’”

A smile crossed Carrie’s face.

“
That
was my sign,” I said, holding up one finger.

My eyes shifted to the wall behind her. Taped on the whiteboard was a colored-pencil drawing of a woman with rosy cheeks,
long eyelashes, and a Marlo Thomas hairdo. A bright sun wearing glasses smiled in the corner. A rainbow swooped through the
words
To Miss Baxter.

I pointed to the drawing. “Is that from one of your students?”

Carrie turned and looked at it. “Yes.”

“There’s your sign,” I said with a smile. “You’re doing great.”

T
hey say that the art of letter writing is dying. Well, this simply is not true. Ask any elementary school teacher if you don’t
believe me. Teachers help kids write friendly letters all the time — letters to pen pals, cards for Grandparent’s Day, thank-yous
to our field trip drivers. When a child writes a letter that is really cute, sometimes I’ll pull in his mom and share it.
Last year after we wrote valentines to the veterans, I showed Martin’s mom. Martin wrote, “Dear Vet, Happy Veteran’s Day.
Thanks for taking care of my cat. She’s all better now.”

Writing a friendly letter is not easy for a third grader. There is
so
much to think about — which words to capitalize, where to put the commas, what to indent, and whether to sign off with
Sincerely, Love,
or
From.
It’s a lot for a child to wrap his head around. But letter writing isn’t just difficult for the kids. It’s not easy to teach,
either.