Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind (9 page)

She pulled the paper back. “I do it differently than you.”

It’s not just students who take pride in their cursive. Teachers do, too. Bankers and lawyers and engineers have their fancy
homes and Lexuses and stock options. Teachers have their perfect slanted writing. It’s our badge. It’s how we’re identified.
I know the one thing I have that my doctor doesn’t is my nice cursive.

A few days ago I was in the grocery store and found a yellow sticky note in a shopping cart. When I picked it up, I knew immediately
that it had been written by a teacher. Her
’s were not backward. Her
’s were crossed. The slash in her
was not slanted the wrong way. The top of her
was not collapsing. Her
wasn’t too fat. And her
did not look pregnant. Of course I could have identified the list as a teacher’s even if it had been written in print. It
said: Excedrin, graham crackers, and beer.

October

I’ve just decided to switch our Friday schedule to Monday, which means that the test we take each Friday on what we learned
during the week will now take place on Monday before we’ve learned it. But since today is Tuesday, it doesn’t matter in the
slightest.

— Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

M
ark Twain once wrote that teaching is like trying to hold thirty-five corks underwater all at once. But what I’d like to know
is —
who
drank those thirty-five bottles of wine in the first place? My bet’s on the teacher.

What exactly is a teacher anyway? A lot of different things. Teachers are like puppeteers. We keep the show in motion. When
we help children discover abilities that they don’t know they have, we are like talent scouts. When we herd kids off the play
structure at the end of recess, we are like shepherds.

Teachers are like conductors. We try to get everyone to play together nicely. Some years it’s like leading the entire navy
band. When I take the lunch count, I feel like a waiter. Once in a while, I feel like the dust jacket on a popular book in
my classroom library — well worn, rarely untouched, more wrinkled than last year, close to falling apart.

When my students are tapping on me, I feel like a tree trunk that a flock of woodpeckers has just landed on. When the kids
are buzzing around the room in all directions, I feel like a beekeeper. When we’re walking in line, I feel like Daddy Duck
leading his chicks.

When I have two minutes to finish my lunch, I look just like a squirrel eating in fast motion. When someone leaves treats
in the staff lounge, I turn into a hyena. When a lesson tanks, I feel like a gutter ball.

Teachers are like birds. We use a variety of flight strategies. Sometimes we glide. Some days we soar. Most of the time we
flap our wings furiously trying not to crash-land.

Teachers are like farmers. We sow the seeds — not too close together or they’ll talk too much. We check on them every day
and monitor their progress. We think about our crop all the time. When we see growth — we get excited.

Teachers are like doctors. Both have lots of tongue depressors and cotton balls. Both own human body charts and stethoscopes,
and use white butcher paper. Both put on Band-Aids, hold bloody noses, and take care of kids with tummyaches. Doctors, however,
don’t see twenty patients at a time. And they only see kids
after
they’ve thrown up on the teacher’s carpet.

Teachers are like actors. We work in front of an audience. We project our voices to the back of the room. We sing, dance,
do our own stunts, and make jokes about pencils coming from Pennsylvania, ants living in Antarctica, and fractions being invented
by Henry the
¹
/
₈
th. For five hours a day, five days a week, we try to hold our audience’s attention. Come rain or shine, the show must go
on. If it’s bad, the audience tunes out.

When I blow my whistle, I feel like Captain von Trapp in
The Sound of Music.
When I hand out certificates for good deeds, I might as well be the Wizard of Oz. When I pass out percussion instruments
for music time, I feel like Harold Hill in
The Music Man.
And when my students are absolutely bonkers because it has rained all day and they’ve been cooped up inside for six hours,
I know
exactly
how Captain Hook must have felt at the end of
Peter Pan
when he jumped off his own ship.

Teachers are memory makers, too. We know that the stories, paintings, and plaster of paris handprints that children make at
school will someday become family treasures. Each day we create experiences in our classrooms that our students will someday
look back on and laugh over and talk about and perhaps even try to re-create in their own children’s lives. We understand
that kids are like wet canvases. We help paint the backgrounds.

And so we collect the field trip notes and throw the parties and play the piano and pitch the balls and wear our shirts inside
out on Backward Day. We set up the experiments and buy the pets and run to the store and clean the spills and fill the bird
feeders. And when it is time to send our students’ artwork and craft projects home, we
always
make sure that their names and the date are written clearly on the back.

W
hen I first started teaching, there were several things I did not expect. I did not know that Show and Tell would be the most
important hour of the week. I never thought I’d have class rules about where children
shouldn’t
put their feet. I never imagined that the doorknob in the staff bathroom would have hand lotion on it every time I tried
to get out. And I did not expect that I would become the dictionary.

“Mr. Done, how do you spell
every
?”

“Mr. Done, how do you spell
special
?”

“Mr. Done, how do you spell
SpongeBob
?”

“Mr. Done, how do you spell
ponna
?”

“Ponna?”
I said, confused. “Use it in a sentence.”

“You know… like ‘once a
ponna
time.’”

My students think I’m the spelling genie. All day long they ask, “Mr. Done, do I drop the
y
?” “Mr. Done, does that word start with a capital?” “Mr. Done, is that a drop-the-
e
-add-
ing
-word?”

And all day long I sing: “
I
before
e
except after
c.
” “An
e
at the end of a word makes the vowel say its name.” “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.”

I repeat my spelling tricks, too:
Eat
is in the word
great. Here
is inside of
there. Ear
is in
hear. Lie
is in
believe. Ant
is in
restaurant. Bus
is in
busy.
And the
principal
is my
pal.

Swimming
has M&M’s in the middle of it.
Tomorrow
contains three little words:
Tom, or,
and
row. Together
has three words in it, too. If you draw spokes on the
c
’s in
bicycle,
they look like wheels. And if you put circles around the
e
’s in
eye,
it looks like the word is wearing glasses.