Saying Grace (22 page)

Next, it was time to go monitor Charla Percy’s class, to ascertain whether or not Charla was making a scapegoat of Ashby McCann.

“He’s never had any trouble with a teacher before!” Ashby’s mother had kept asserting over the eggnog and the Santa Claus cookies she was compulsively eating. This was quite untrue; Ashby had been in trouble with every teacher he’d had since he was a three-year-old in preschool. Furthermore, his two older sisters had adored Mrs.

Percy. But the McCanns did not then reason that maybe Ashby was a problem, but rather that Mrs. Percy had changed. They were full of wild theories about what had changed her: she was an unhappy newlywed, her husband traveled too much, she was under stress because she was African American and her husband was white, she was having trouble with her stepson and displacing her anger on Ashby. Rue was glad Charla was in her early thirties, or she knew the next thing she’d hear was that Charla was in menopause.

Rue had listened respectfully. This was the sort of situation that ended with everyone angry at Rue. The faculty, because Rue listened to such tales at all, saying she was far too submissive to wilding parents. The parents, because she listened and then failed to agree with them.

Rue sat through an uneventful forty-five-minute period in which Charla taught the children to recite aloud “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

Charla first explained that St. Nicholas was a character from European folk tales, descended from a German figure known as Bellsnickle, who was thought to appear at Christmastime jingling bells and carrying a sack of willow switches with which he would punish naughty children. No Christ child, no presents. Another de-sanctified holiday tradition, quite correct. The children loved the class and behaved well, including Ashby, and soon all could recite the poem en masse.

The class then went to recess. Cora Alba-Fish was on playground duty. Rue stood at the side of the playground and found that the children shyly approached her one by one. As one came near, he or she would suddenly blossom into technicolor, trans-Saying Grace / 159

formed from a distant, uniformed widget into a quirky, pulsating spirit-filled person. Sasha Petrie wanted to tell Rue all about her new puppy. After she danced off, Courtney Leavitt offered to make Rue a potholder because she had a kit at home. She would make her one tonight. Brendan Bramlett sidled over to tell her that he was going to Hawaii for Christmas. He took Rue’s hand and held it while he fidgeted and talked.

Suddenly there arose a clamor from the other side of the yard, where Ashby McCann, Tod Bitter, Chelsea Malko, and Drew Miles were playing Four Square. “Ashby—you’re out! Get out of the square!” yelled Tod and Chelsea.

“No, but we made a new rule…!” Ashby yelled back, meanwhile staying in the square and bouncing the ball, bat-bat-bat, and not looking at them. The three others ran wailing to Mrs. Alba-Fish.

Rue watched as Cora led them back to the square where Ashby stood alone, bouncing.

“Ashby,” said Cora, “Do you understand why your friends are upset?”

Ashby bounced the ball. “Well we made this new rule where…”

The others yelled, “No, we didn’t Ashby; you just said there was a new rule after you were out….” Cora quieted them and asked again, “Do you understand why they’re upset, Ashby?”

Finally, he said, “Well, I guess I’m out, but…” and dropped the ball and walked away.

The other three children reclaimed their places and went back to their game. Brooke Humphrey came shyly to tell Rue that her big sister was coming home from boarding school. As Rue listened, she watched Ashby edge back toward the Four Square game and begin to harass the players. He kept sticking his foot into the square and then pulling it out again or reaching in to bat the ball, stopping the play. “Ashby, get out!” “Ashby, get away, you’re out!” “Mrs. Alba-Fish!” wailed the three playmates.

Rue went back to her office to take careful notes.

Wednesday evening, an hour before the Holiday Traditions program was to begin, Chandler Kip walked into Rue’s office. Rue’s desk was stacked with boxes and bags wrapped in bright paper and tied with ribbons, and with plates and tins and jars of 160 / Beth Gutcheon

cookies and nuts and homemade jam she had been given for Christmas by parents and children and faculty colleagues.

“Merry Christmas,” said Rue. “Want a cookie?”

“I’ve just come from the Curriculum Committee,” said Chandler.

“You called a special meeting of the Curriculum Committee?”

“Starting immediately after the New Year,” said Chandler, “we want every faculty member to write out the curriculum they plan to follow for the rest of the year. We want to know what topics will be covered, what texts used, what field trips, special assignments, and term projects are planned. Every Friday, we want a report on every subject taught by every teacher, on what they covered that week, and if they have not kept to their schedule, an explanation of why not. And a prospectus for how and when they will make up the missing material.”

Rue just stared at him. Chandler stared back. Rue was running over in her mind who was on the Curriculum Committee. Mike Dianda, who was gone today, attending his daughter Mary’s class lunch, Chandler, Carson McCann, Bud Ransom, Terry Malko, and from the faculty Rosemary Fitch, who’d been out all week with the flu.

“Well?” said Chandler.

“Chandler, have a cookie.”

“I don’t want a cookie. I want to tell my committee that you got the message.”

“I got it.”

“And you will explain it to the faculty at the opening of next semester?”

“Absolutely not.”

A beat. Chandler got rather red in the face and began drumming his fingers on the edge of Rue’s desk. He liked to stand over people who were sitting, she noticed. He liked to loom over people. She returned his gaze unflinching. She didn’t know how long he was going to keep it up, but she was prepared to sit there till breakfast, if necessary.

Finally, Chandler said, “You will not give this message to the faculty?”

“I will not.”

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“This is a direct order from your employers.”

“Chandler…please sit down.”

“I prefer to stand.”

“Fine. You are my employers, but not in the sense that you’re the boss and I’m the hired hand. This is a nonprofit institution of learning, not a bolt factory, and I am the trained professional who runs it.”

“I know, I know, I’ve heard your speech. Now you hear mine.

The Board establishes policy, and that is what we are doing. We have no say in who you hire or fire, fine. I understand that, and I understand why. But we feel that our families pay a great deal of tuition, and they have a right to know what it’s going for. They have a right to be assured that their children will be at or above grade level in every subject when it comes time for them to be measured.”

“Wait a minute. Are you asking me to ask my faculty to demonstrate to you that they are using all their class time to cram your kids so they’ll do well on standardized tests?”

“This is a school. Education is our product….”

“So you want the curriculum to be shaped by what can be tested, even though those tests are biased, and at best can only measure a fraction of what goes into becoming a sound, moral, well-adjusted, curious human being?”

“Education is our product,” Chandler repeated, as if she had not interrupted. “The quality of what we are selling must be measured.

Like it or not, life works like that. When Country students go out in the world we want to be sure they’re prepared to compete.”

“To compete with whom?”

“With the competition! With students from Poly Sci and Arthur Academy, and from Harvard-Westlake and from Burke’s and Hamlin’s!”

“I couldn’t disagree with you more.”

Surprised, he was silent for a minute. Finally, he said, “I find it difficult to see how we could disagree. We’ve made a simple request for some quality control.”

“Then listen. First, it’s an offensive request. You are not trained or qualified to ‘control’ the quality of teaching here. Nor is it in your job description. The quality of teaching is the business of the talented professionals I hire. If something changes in a teacher’s 162 / Beth Gutcheon

work, and there is a legitimate question of quality, you or any other concerned party can bring that question to me, and I will evaluate and deal with it….”

“So you’re upset about control.”

“Please let me finish. No, I’m not upset about control, because I believe the school’s Statement of Philosophy is so clear on this subject that you don’t have a leg to stand on.”

“May I remind you that two of the members of the Curriculum Committee are lawyers?”

“Please let me finish, Chandler. I am upset because you are suggesting that the policy of this school
should be
to prepare our children to compete against others and win.”

Chandler looked at her, truly puzzled. Yes, he thought, for once off balance. That was exactly what he thought. What on earth could be wrong with that?

“Why don’t you tell me what you think our policy is,” he said finally.

“Our policy, our stated mission, is to prepare each child to do his or her own best, according to the particular gifts he or she has been given. We prepare them for success by helping them to help themselves, to believe in themselves, to discover and respect their own talents, to strive for excellence for its own sake, and to respect and applaud the different tastes and talents of others.”

“Yes,” said Chandler. “So?”

“SO. You’re talking about preparing them to compete with others, to beat others, to think that winning, scoring highest, getting prizes, leaving others in the dust, is the goal of life. So that every year, two or three of them will succeed, in your terms, and the rest will feel like second best. Or failures. I am teaching them the opposite. I’m teaching them that what matters is to feel successful when you have done the best
you
can. And if your gift is in art or music or playing soccer or memorizing the phone book, you accept that gift and do the best you can with it. You don’t feel like a failure because your gift wasn’t measured on the ERB. And you rejoice in belonging to a community that values difference, where we don’t applaud only winners, we work together for the decent survival of all.”

There was a long silence. Finally, Chandler said, “Are you finished?”

Saying Grace / 163

“Almost. You think human community is a pyramid, with the winners on top and the failures at the bottom. I think it’s a net, in which everyone matters and has something essential to offer. I think my model will produce more, and happier, truly useful and satisfied humans than yours will. I may be wrong, but it’s not negotiable.

Accept my view, or fire me.”

There was another long silence.

Finally, Chandler said, “I better go. We’ll be late for the program.”

“I think you’ll be very proud of Missy.”

“I’m sure I will. I’ll see you over there.”

“Yes.” He turned to go.

“Merry Christmas, Chandler.”

“Merry Christmas.”

She waited until he had left the room and then opened a tin with a picture of Santa Claus on it, and fiercely bit the head off a frosting-covered gingerbread man.

The Holiday Program was, in the end, a love fest. Everyone was relieved that the term was over and filled with anticipation about the program and about whatever holiday they were going home to celebrate. The family from Armenia had substituted folk dances for Holocaust tableaux. The red and green iced brownies from Tibet were a great success. The third graders sang holiday songs from Nicaragua, and second graders recited “A Visit from St. Nicholas,”

and Missy Kip, along with five other fourth graders, dressed in red long johns, appeared on stage as balletic elves in a play about
The
Grinch Who Stole the Holidays
. At the finale, the whole student body, from junior kindergarten to eighth grade, stood in a ring hand-in-hand around the auditorium, surrounding and enclosing the audience, their parents, teachers, older siblings, and baby ones, and sang a lovely round with overlapping verses about two neighbors’ houses, one with a glowing Christmas tree and the other bright with Hanukkah candles. It left out the Buddhists, Jains, and followers of Islam in the school family, but everyone felt embraced by the spirit of it, and as always, it gave Rue a lump in her throat. So when the lights came up, and she found that the person standing beside her in tattered blue jeans and an unfamiliar coat of some ancient mangy fur was Georgia, she burst into tears.

164 / Beth Gutcheon

There was always at the end of the program a speech of thanks and farewell to send people on their way. Mike Dianda, seeing that Rue and Georgia were hugging each other and that more and more of the upper schoolers had joined the hug to welcome Georgia home, decided he better take the microphone.

“I see that our leader has lost control of herself again,” Mike said,

“but don’t worry. I Am In Charge. I know that tonight we all want to thank the Holiday Program Committee, especially Corinne Lowen…(applause), Mrs. Stevens, who worked so hard on the music for the show, and of course all the children. (Applause all around.) Have a wonderful vacation. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays to all…and (looking toward the knot of huggers who were becoming a spectacle) Welcome Home Georgia!” There was laughter and applause.

There had been a tradition on nights when Georgia and her high school friends appeared at school plays, or to square dance with the little ones at Western Night, for the upper schoolers to stamp their feet and start a chant of “Geor—gia, Geor—gia, Geor—gia,” a request for her to sing. It had begun when Georgia, as a surprise, had come from high school with her girl group and crashed a middle-school dance. They took over the mike and sang “Don’t Say Nothing Bad About My Baby,” and “It’s in His Kiss,” and “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” and sixth graders thought they might flop over and die, they felt so sophisticated. The girl group continued to strike at unpredictable moments: dances, flag raisings, and once even at a father’s kindergarten breakfast, where they sang “It Isn’t Easy Being Green.” Tonight, as soon as they saw her, the eighth graders began stamping and chanting, “Geor—gia, Geor—gia,” and soon the younger children had taken it up, whether they knew what it meant or not.