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Authors: Andrew Clements

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BOOK: The Landry News
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Mr. Larson carefully folded up his newspaper and put it onto the large stack beside his desk. He would have to finish that World Series article on Monday.

He carefully straightened his long legs under his desk, then tensed his back and stretched his arms, tilting his head slowly from side to side. He was getting ready to stand up. This was the perfect time for some meaningful interaction with the class. Also, it was only five minutes before the end of the day, and he'd have to stand up then anyway because he had bus duty this week.

Moving carefully among the jumble of desks and
chairs, Mr. Larson got close enough to the bulletin board to read
The Landry News.
He nodded at the headline of the lead story: S
ECOND
-G
RADER
G
AGS ON
O
VERCOOKED
J
ELL
-O. Mr. Larson remembered. That little problem had required a call to 911.

A sports column caught his eye, and squinting, he could read the neatly printed description of a noon-recess touch football game. The game had ended with a fist fight and one-day suspensions for three fifth-grade boys. Mr. Larson read slowly, smiling in approval. The writing was clear, no spelling mistakes, no wasted words. This girl had talent. He was just about to turn and compliment . . . Sara? . . . no—well, the Landry girl, when something caught his eye.

It was in the editorial section. There, in the lower right-hand corner of the paper, Mr. Larson saw his own name. He started reading.

From the Editor's Desk

A Question of Fairness

There has been no teaching so far this year in Mr. Larson's classroom. There has been learning, but there has been no teaching. There is a teacher in the classroom, but he does not teach.

In his handout from parents' night, Mr. Larson says that in his classroom “the students must learn how to learn by themselves, and they must
learn to learn from each other, too.”

So here is the question: If the students teach themselves, and they also teach each other, why is Mr. Larson the one who gets paid for being a teacher?

In the public records at the Carlton Memorial Library it shows that Mr. Larson got paid $39,324 last year. If that money was paid to the real teachers in Mr. Larson's classroom, then each student would get $9.50 every day during the whole school year. I don't know about you, but that would definitely help my attitude toward school.

And that's the view this week from the News desk.

Cara Landry, Editor in Chief

The kids watched Mr. Larson's face as he stood there reading. His jaw slowly clenched—tighter and tighter. His face reddened, and his short blond hair seemed to bristle all over his head. Instinctively, the kids backed away, clearing a path between Mr. Larson and the bulletin board. With one long stride he was there, and the four thumbtacks shot off and skittered across the floor as he tore the paper down.

Mr. Larson was tall—six feet, two inches. Now he seemed twice that size to the kids. He turned slowly from left to right, looking down at their faces. Without raising his voice he said, “There is a kind of writing that
is appropriate in school, and there is a kind that is INappropriate.” Turning back to look directly at Cara, he held up the sheet and shook it. “THIS,” he shouted, “is INappropriate!”

Folding the paper in half, he walked quickly to his desk, ripping the sheet into smaller and smaller bits as he went. It was deathly still. Mr. Larson turned to look at Cara, still standing beside the bulletin board. Her face was as pale as his was red, and she was biting her lower lip, but she didn't flinch. No one dared to breathe. The silence was shattered by the bell, and as Mr. Larson dropped the shredded paper into the trash basket, he barked, “Class dismissed!”

The room emptied in record time, and Cara was swept along toward the lockers and the waiting buses. Mr. Larson was right behind, on his way to bus duty. He hurried out to the curb, still angry but back under control. The hubbub and confusion of the scene was a welcome distraction, and during the next ten minutes buses one, two, and three filled up and pulled away with their noisy loads.

The last person to get on to bus 4 was Cara Landry. She was running, dragging her jacket, her gray backpack heavy on her thin shoulders.

Mr. Larson did not smile, but he did manage to say, “Good-bye, Cara.” He knew her name now.

As she climbed aboard, he turned quickly and went
back into the school. Bus 4 pulled away.

Mr. Larson went to the teachers' room, got his empty lunch bag off the shelf, and went straight from there out the back door of the school to the staff parking lot. He did not return to room 145 to get his red thermos of coffee. He did not want to go back there until he had to, until Monday.

And it's a good thing he didn't go get his thermos. Because if he had gone into the room and up to his desk, he probably would have glanced down into the wastebasket. And he would have seen that every scrap of
The Landry News
was gone.

Someone had returned to the empty room to pick up all the pieces.

CHAPTER 3
ANCIENT HISTORY, MODERN MYSTERY

THERE WERE SIXTEEN fifth-graders on Cara's bus, and seven of them had been in Mr. Larson's class. Cara usually
sat by herself on the bus, but today LeeAnn Ennis slipped into the seat beside her.

As the bus pulled away LeeAnn looked over her shoulder to watch Mr. Larson stomp back into the school. “He was so mad! I've never even heard of him getting mad before. But he was mad today, real mad. I can't believe you wrote that, Cara! Oh . . . you know, I don't think we ever met, but I'm in Mr. Larson's class with you.”

“I know who you are,” said Cara. “You're LeeAnn Ennis. Ellen Hatcher is your best friend, you like Deke Deopolis, your sister is a cheerleader at the high school, and your mom is secretary of the Denton School PTA. Math is your favorite subject, you love cats, and you went to the big sleepover party at Betsy
Lowenstein's house last weekend.”

LeeAnn's mouth dropped open. “What, are you a spy or something? How do you know all that?”

Feeling embarrassed, Cara smiled, something LeeAnn had never seen her do before. “No, I'm not a spy. I'm a journalist. People who make newspapers need to know what's going on, that's all. When things happen, or when people say things, I just pay attention.”

Ed Thomson and Joey DeLucca were in the seat right behind LeeAnn and Cara, and they were listening. They were in Mr. Larson's class, too.

Joey leaned forward over the seat and looked at Cara. “You mean you know stuff like that about
everybody?”

“No, not everybody. Some people are newsmakers and some aren't.” Cara blushed. She thought Joey was cute. He had never said a word to her until now. Somehow, she made herself talk naturally. “It's not like I memorize all this stuff or anything. But if something happens that might be news, then I ask questions and pay attention so I can report on it. News has got to be accurate. Like that kid who choked on the rubber Jell-O? That was Alan Cortez. He's in second grade in Mrs. Atkins's class. The lady in the kitchen who cooked the Jell-0 that day is Alice Rentsler. The principal made her write a letter of apology to Alan's parents. Alice also had to have a special Jell-O-making session with the kitchen supervisor to make sure she cooks it right from now on.
I thought that was all pretty interesting, so I looked around and I got the facts.”

Ed piped up. “But all that stuff about LeeAnn? What's that about? Is she such a big newsmaker?” LeeAnn narrowed her eyes at Ed and pretended like she was going to whack him with her backpack.

Cara smiled and said, “No, that's just stuff I've noticed—or heard kids talk about. LeeAnn has cat stickers all over her notebook and her locker, her mom's name is on the PTA newsletter we got in the mail at my house this summer, her big sister drops LeeAnn off at school sometimes when she's wearing her cheerleader outfit, and everybody knows that LeeAnn likes Deke.”

Ed was impressed. “Okay, okay . . . all that makes sense. But tell me why you wrote that thing about Mr. Larson. Are you mad at him or something?”

Cara didn't answer right away. “No, I'm not mad at him,” she said thoughtfully. “I just don't think it's right that he doesn't teach us anything.” Cara was quiet while about ten kids got up and pushed and shuffled and yelled their way off the bus. Her stop was next.

As the bus lurched forward again, Cara lowered her voice and said, “Can you guys keep a secret?” Joey and LeeAnn and Ed nodded. “Promise?” All three kids nodded again, leaning closer. Looking from face to face, Cara said, “Have you ever looked in those glass cases in the front hall by the office?”

“You mean all the sports trophies?” asked Joey. “Yeah, I've seen them.”

Cara said, “Well, you're right, it's mostly sports, but there's some other stuff there, too—Writer of the Month awards, and Math Club honors—all sorts of things. And there's one plaque for Teacher of the Year.”

LeeAnn said, “Oh, yeah . . . I've seen that. Mrs. Palmer—my teacher in third grade—well, she won it last year.”

Cara shook her head. “No, that's the new plaque. I'm talking about the
old
one, way back in the comer of the case. The teachers and the PTA have been giving that award for over twenty-five years. And about fifteen years ago, guess whose name got carved on that plaque?”

“Him?”
asked LeeAnn. The bus was stopping at Edgewater Village. LeeAnn got up to let Cara into the aisle.

Cara nodded. “Yup. Mr. Karl Larson—Teacher of the Year,
three years in a row.”
Cara heaved her backpack up onto one shoulder. As she headed for the door she looked back at the three kids staring after her, and she said, “Now
that's
what I call
news”
.

CHAPTER 4
MISSING TEACHER FOUND IN NEARBY SUBURB

IT WAS A LONG drive home for Mr. Larson that Friday afternoon.

He was angry. Angry at that Landry
girl. Angry at life in general, but most of all, angry at himself.

He'd been a teacher for almost twenty years now, and he couldn't remember the last time he had gotten mad in front of a class. All his talk about respect for one another, respect for different opinions, respect for honesty and real learning. Talk, talk, talk. All his words flew back into his face as he drove south on Interstate 55. Above the half-harvested cornfields on either side of the road, the flat gray sky was a good mirror for his thoughts.

Well . . . what about that little girl's respect for
him?
Mr. Larson tried to build a case for himself, tried to find a way to let himself off the hook for losing control. But he had to face facts. He knew Cara Landry had only been telling the
truth. That was the hardest thing for him to admit.

By the time he drove into Williston, then down Ash Street and into his driveway, he was feeling a little better.

But when he opened the kitchen door and stepped into the empty house, the self-pity kicked in again. He opened the refrigerator and poured himself a tall glass of cider. He walked into the living room and slumped into the big armchair.

“What do those kids know about me, anyway?” he thought. “What gives that Landry girl the right to judge me?”

Mr. Larson remembered his own fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Spellman. She had been perfect. Her clothes and hair and lipstick were always just so. Her classroom was always quiet and orderly. She never raised her voice—she never had to. She wrote in that flawless cursive, and a little gold star on a paper from Mrs. Spellman was like a treasure, even for the toughest boys.

Then young Karl Larson saw Mrs. Spellman at the beach on Memorial Day with her family. She was sitting under an umbrella, and she wore a black swimsuit that did not hide any of her midriff bulges or the purple veins on her legs. Her hair was all straggly from swimming, and without any makeup or lipstick she looked washed out, tired. She had two kids, a girl and a boy, and she yelled at them as they wrestled and got sand all over the beach towels. Her husband lay flat on his back in the
sun, a large man with lots of hair on his stomach, and it wasn't a small stomach. As Karl stood there staring, Mrs. Spellman's husband lifted his head off the sand, turned toward his wife, pointed at the cooler, and said, “Hey Mabel, hand me another cold one, would you?”

Karl was thunderstruck, and he turned and stumbled back to where his own family had set up their picnic on the beach. This big, hairy guy looked at
his
Mrs. Spellman and said, “Hey Mabel.” At that moment, Karl Larson realized that the Mrs. Spellman he knew at school was mostly a fictional character, partly created by him, and partly created by Mrs. Spellman herself. The students and . . . and
Mabel
created Mrs. Spellman together, in order to do the job—the job of schooling.

As Karl Larson sat there sipping cider, he considered the Mr. Larson that Cara Landry and the rest of the class knew. They had no idea who Karl Larson was. They didn't know that he was the first person in his family who had ever gone to college. They didn't know about the sacrifices he and his parents had made so he could get an education, and how proud he had been to get his first job teaching school in Carlton over nineteen years ago.

They probably didn't know that his wife was a teacher too—eighth grade English at a school on Chicago's South Side. The kids had no idea how much Karl Larson had hated seeing his wife's job get harder
and harder over the years. Barbara Larson worried day and night about whether she could ever make a real difference in the lives of those kids she loved so much. Her school had always been a pretty rough place, but now . . . now there were metal detectors at the doors, and an armed guard escorted teachers to a padlocked parking lot at the end of each school day.

BOOK: The Landry News
9.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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