"Three Years In a Teacherage" is part of a 9 chapter serial fiction piece written by Wanda Molsberry Bates. To see all chapters, please select this link -
Three Years In a Teacherage .
We teachers were barely beginning to get acquainted when the next encounter came-the first day of school. My classroom, where I was to teach seventh and eighth grades, was in the northeast corner of the schoolhouse.
At the front of the room was a stage with blackboards behind it. Folding doors formed the back wall, and beyond it was the classroom which housed the high school students. For programs and meetings the folding doors were opened and a fair-size auditorium resulted. Irene's and Gwen's rooms were on the same floor, while the gymnasium, shop, and home economics laboratory were in the basement.
I had made careful preparations for the first day. My lesson plans were made, the bulletin board was decorated, and the bookcase and my desk were neatly arranged. Things seemed to be in order and my new blue and white print pique was freshly pressed. Why, then, did I need to have a lump in my throat and a dry mouth? Maybe it was a foretaste of the shock I was to feel, when promptly at 8:30 AM three school buses pulled into the school yard, and very shortly what seemed like a mob descended upon me. Actually there weren't more than sixteen or seventeen pupils; even so, the books which they piled unceremoniously on my desk made quite a stack. No one had told me that I was to serve as a clearinghouse for text books. I tried to recover from this surprise as the new seventh graders clustered around my desk demanding to buy seventh grade books and the new eighth graders loudly voiced their needs for the books brought in by last year's eighth graders.
Somehow I managed to get some of them seated, but others slipped out to the playground, promising to return later to do business.
Usually in every class there is at least one serious student who aligns herself/himself with the teacher. And, indeed, on this first day, Emily Jansen, an eighth grader, did come forward and offer to help. Between us we were able to find out which books belonged to whom and to complete some transactions. At one point I brought on snickers when I asked who owned the book with "Tommy and John" written inside the cover. (Anyone should know that, when names scribbled in a text book are joined by "and,"
they refer to people of opposite sexes.)
Eventually the book sales were completed with only one or two books left unclaimed, but the morning was well underway by the time we were finished. The pupils had found seats for themselves with the biggest boys in the back seats and the smallest girls in the front. I trusted that they had divided themselves into two grades, and after they had signed their names on a sheet of paper I attempted to call the roll. That again brought snickers and guffaws. (I hadn't the faintest idea of what to do with a name like Schregardus and how was I to know that Huge was pronounced Hoo-gee?) Then, too, the students found it uproariously funny when two of the boys answered to each other's names. All I needed at that point was to find a dead mouse in my desk drawer and I would have gathered up my belongings and my shattered dignity and headed back to college. (Fortunately, for my career as a teacher, the dead mouse came later, and by that time I was somewhat inured to the rigors of coping with the young.)
Blessedly, recess time (always known as ree'sus) came and I had a few moments to relax, for Irene had been assigned to morning playground duty for the first week. L.P. stopped by for a moment to comment on the noise in my room. I must have looked stricken for he quickly assured me that things would be better after the pupils and I got used to each other.
The noon hour came, and lunch pails which had been deposited in the hall were brought into the classroom. Most of the children were in a hurry to get out to the playground and they finished their sandwiches and apples with dispatch. I learned that I was to have playground duty during the first half of the noon hour with Gwen taking the second half. During that time Althea and Irene hurried to the house and served up lunch and washed dishes. Those chores were to be Gwen's and mine during the second week. She and I ate hurried lunches during our time away from the playground. L.P.
helped with playground duty, organizing ball games for the older children.
My duty was to supervise the younger ones. This required such functions as seeing that nobody got hit by a swing, dropped unexpectedly to the ground when a partner suddenly jumped off a teeter-totter, or shoved out of line while waiting for a turn on the slide.
The first day ended with an early dismissal hour and an after-school conference with L.P. and the teachers. He gave us a list of suggestions, one of which was "Don't talk shop outside of school." He might as well have told the wind which whipped around the teacherage to stop blowing. L.P. was one of the chief offenders in ignoring that advice.
I hoped to fall asleep early to be rested and prepared to cope with day two, but my mind was full of visions of stacks of text books on my desk and apple cores in my waste basket, and the names of Jensen, Schregardus, Jansen, Wilson, Nelson, Huge and Geis marched through my head far into the night.