Ms Henning
tried to calm him down. “Nigel, please—forget for a moment what just happened;
tell me what you felt coming to school today.”
Nigel held his
scowl and wouldn’t take such bait.
The room was
a tawny glow of afternoon sun, slanting to the reaches of most desks, if not
the one that Nigel chose for this detention. Distant playground noise came
through the open windows, and perhaps both he and his teacher were relieved not
to be out there on this destined-to-be-dumb kind of day. The principal had made
it a policy—not because of Nigel, but probably with him in mind—that when
typical time-outs and such weren’t working on a teacher’s recess duty, instead
of going to the principal’s office, the trouble-maker would go back to the
classroom with the teacher, and the principal would watch the rest of recess.
This way, he argued, the context of the problem would already be known and the
principal could see a recess devoid of this contextualized factor. If
necessary, a debrief could be deep, with everyone better ‘in the know’.
Some
teachers saw this as a cop-out, the principal ‘too soft on crime’, but Ms
Henning had been through countless recess policies and figured that today, for
instance, she could get more marking done while letting the ten-year-old
delinquent stew. Her initial efforts were earnest, as perhaps were Nigel’s
clamming up. She came to his math assignment and marked it as ‘messy in spots,
but correctly done’, then lost herself in the stack that required more
reminders, beyond the need for being neat.
“They treat
me like I was Mr Bean,” he finally said.
“Hmm. Do
they know who Mr Bean is?” she asked, doing a quick calculation that the 2012
Olympics opened that mime up to the wider world; these kids an ocean away would
only have been in kindergarten then.
“Everyone
knows him. And no one want to be like him.”
“Well, I’ve
seen a couple episodes… I’m not sure many students here at Roosevelt Elementary
would—”
“They do.
I’ve shown them on my phone.”
“And… they
enjoy?”
“They say
they’re stupid.”
Ms Henning
almost channeled Forest Gump’s ‘stupid is what stupid does,’ yet wasn’t sure
that would be germane. She decided that attending to the next math paper would
be the better answer.
Nigel saw
what she was doing and turned more toward the shadows. He’d murmur something,
eventually, but wouldn’t let her understand.
“Occasionally,”
he heard her say, “Mr Bean adds his trusty teddy bear to a scene—you know Rowan
Atkinson writes his own stuff—and the audience will go from laughter to a heartfelt
‘aaww’…. I think they call that a foil character, when the hero has somebody
with him, and the audience feels better for it.”
“Then
that’s also stupid. It’s a grown man clinging to a teddy bear.”
She’d
continue, ‘and untold millions cheering him on,’ but recognized the growing
banter in the hallway that indicated recess was over and the final hour of math
(as the schedule would have it) was coming back into the room.
***
The next
day was nondescript. Maybe everyone forgot the reason Nigel had to sit out the second
recess, or, like Ms Henning, thought the prank had run its course. It must have
taken days of preparation to gather all those worms and put them into zip-lock
bags with the precise ratio of air holes to keep them squirming. Then to
threaten mostly girls throughout the morning that they wouldn’t guess what
might hit them—and some teased ‘lima beans?’ and others ‘what your mum put in
your lunch’, which might have been the same—and to sulk behind the cell phone
he’d been told many times to put away or else to bring it here, the morgue that
Henning had within her desk, for things that shouldn’t interfere with school.
“What’s
with these worms, Nigel?” Ms Henning asked, when he lingered after school
voluntarily, almost as if he wanted to be in detention again. “I mean, it’s
fine to have interest in a particular creature, and your report last month on
tapeworms was very thorough.”
“Cestodes,”
he clarified. “Weren’t you listening?”
“Oh, we all
were. You said that tapeworms were ‘eucestoda’, if I remember right. And that
there were some myths concerning them.”
Nigel took
some paper out from his desk tray and started to sketch. Ms Henning watched him
for a minute before facing more worksheets to mark. Progress was very slow,
however, as she kept thinking about the first weeks of the school year, Nigel
being new to the school and even the country, having come from Glasgow with his
American father and Scottish mum, and a poem he placed in the desk tray of
Alison, another new student from San Francisco. Now Ms Henning tried to conjure
the poem from memory, but resorted to the original she had to confiscate, filed
at the back of her bottom drawer. Silently, not to be suspected, she slid it
out and read it again:
Guess who I am?
I’m under the very
skin of things
(the earth has a skin
and so does the sea,
somewhat the same
as you and me)
so that means
I’m under myself—
Guess who I am!
He had written it out carefully on the front of a sealed
envelop, the kind with bubble wrap inside to pillow the contents. When Alison
opened it—during the lull of work time dedicated to math—she pulled out a
flattened and desiccated earthworm that happened to be in the shape of a
question mark, without the bottom dot. She screamed, naturally, and it took a
whole week to get a confession out of Nigel, the only one of the boys who
didn’t roar with laughter. Since Alison wasn’t really devastated, and in fact
became more popular as a result, Ms Henning didn’t pursue the matter beyond
some stern words about respecting one another and accounting for bad judgment.
When Nigel finally told her, privately, that he had done it, he said his bad
judgment was trying to be a poet.
“I
disagree, Nigel,” Ms Henning reacted at the time. “The poem is actually
thoughtful, maybe even lovely when you consider no one was really hurt.”
“Maybe I
wanted to hurt,” Nigel responded, and ran away.
***
The week
was coming to a slow exit for the weekend. Friday recess was observed by the
principal even though no one was having a time-out, and Ms Henning took it as a
chance to get back up to the room and churn out the final papers she would
otherwise have to distribute on Monday. ‘Nice of the principal to do that,’ she
thought.
She was
surprised to see Nigel’s mother in the classroom, sitting at her son’s desk.
She clutched a single sheet of paper as if it were a go-cart steering wheel and
remained seated when she queried, without a greeting, “what is this that Nigel
left on our dining room table yesterday?”
Ms Henning
said, “hello” and, walking over to look, “I don’t know.” It was a kind of
flowchart—they had been working on these in math to determine absolute values
for equations—and an odd kind of life cycle for—she could instantly see—tapeworms.
She used “cestodes” to explain that Nigel preferred that term in his research
for this project a month ago.
“But this
was yesterday, and he became awfully upset in the evening when I asked him
about it. Look more closely—” the mother pointed to the labels of the figures:
The central
figure was shaped like an outline for a women’s lavatory, and on the left skirt
side was minutely written ‘Ms Henning’; within that figure was a something that
looked very similar to Richard Scarry’s Lowly Worm, if more stoic; the worm was
labeled ‘me’; arrows exited the woman downwards and to the right—through grass
to a cow labeled ‘Mum’—and to the left—through waves to a fish labeled
‘Alison’; inside each were larvae, all with Lowly Worm’s trademark Tyrolean
hat; arrows coming out of the cow and fish led straight into a grocery bag and
sushi bar respectively, then into the lavatory figure’s mouth (also stoic, if
one could say so).
“I don’t
know what to say,” Ms Henning admitted, contextualizing further that Nigel had
chosen this animal and in no way would such labels be sanctioned, even if a
creative approach to the assignment was encouraged. “We want to make sure the
kids don’t just do a Wikipedia report,” Ms Henning explained, “but of course
this chart isn’t an appropriate example of creativity.”
“Are you
saying Nigel isn’t creative?”
“Oh,
heavens,” Ms Henning laughed a little, wondering if that ‘Guess who I am’ poem
had been drafted on their dining room table, “Nigel is precocious and full of
curiosity—I’m not worried about his creative potential.”
“Well then,
you’re worried about something else.”
“Why would
you assume so? I would email you any concern I’d have, and we spoke last time
at parent-teacher conferences that he—”
“—could be
neater in his work, could integrate better with his peers, could channel his
energy more constructively at recess…”
“Yes. And
should continue to be the best math student we have, and the sensitive soul
that has talked with me when something is on his mind.”
“Well,
that’s where I want things to stop.” Nigel’s mother asserted. “We—Nigel’s
father and me—have issued a formal complaint about your pseudo-counseling of
our son—”
“Excuse
me?”
“—and the
way you demean him with teddy bear examples and questions like ‘what’s with
these worms, Nigel?’—exact quote, do you disagree?”
Ms Henning
reviewed in an instant the forty years she had been teaching at this school. She
had taught Nigel’s dad in this very room, almost from this very desk. She
hadn’t met Alison’s parents yet—odd, that—but calculated that probably a
hundred new families had come through her classroom as a means to acclimate to
not just Roosevelt Elementary, but the suburban world around it. The bulletin
boards changed several times a year, but rarely the cork below. Windows had
become terrorist-proof. Blackboards turned green, then white, then smart.
Desks, oddly, went through very few changes—seems like those trays below would
never go out of style. Recess probably experienced most alteration. Some kids
today wore bike helmets on or around the swing sets. Long gone were the days of
‘smear the queer’, which resulted in the termination of a principal—not for the
semantics or the playful way to hate, but because a boy had broken his arm, and
most likely not the ‘queer’ that was the designated one to ‘smear’. All the
math assignments, stories that ranged from Flat
Stanley to Judy Blume, science projects that were prescribed and dialed up
by choice, birthday parties that still wanted a wallchart to designate,
filmstrips and transparencies and videos and school-issued iPads, portfolios
that pushed away tests, tests that demanded ‘no child left behind’, tests that
extolled some kind of ‘core’, meetings on everything, principals towing some
sort of line…
“Do you
disagree?” the question banged rhetorically.
***
Nigel’s
birthday was not to be denied, charted on the wall like everyone else in the
class—even Ms Henning, who happened to be lumped in with the five other ‘summer
birthdays’ they’d celebrate on the final day of the school year. What anyone
wanted to do with their birthday was up to them, to some degree. Most brought
in cupcakes, sometimes with a theme of Stars
Wars or Despicable Me. Someone
suggested that Nigel should do Harry
Potter, to which he curtly reminded, “I’m Scottish, not English.”
“I thought
you were American.”
“That, too.
I have dual citizenship.”
“What’s
that mean?”
Someone wanted to be funny:
“it means you can choose who to spy on!”
Ms Henning
clarified what Nigel thought he could do for himself, but he remained silent. Awkwardly,
he took out a grocery bag full of gummy worm packets and distributed them
desk-by-desk as if they were Halloween overstock. He returned to his desk and
declared to no one in particular, “don’t worry, they’re not real.” When some
appreciative laughs coincided with the packages opening, Nigel decided to add,
“but you should see how gelatin is made.”
***
It was a
curious way to end another school week, especially so close to the summer
break. The principal emailed Ms Henning to come to his office to discuss Nigel,
as if that was enough to go by. She brought her gradebook and his portfolio,
guessing that something regarding performance indicators would be relevant. As for
time-outs, he hadn’t had any since that worm-throwing incident.
The boy
wasn’t there, but his parents were. Mum looked exactly as she had the time she
surprised Ms Henning in the classroom; the father looked amazingly familiar,
considering she had not seen him since the early eighties, when he was in 4th
grade—his receding hairline didn’t make him look less boyish. The principal
stood to invite Ms Henning to a central chair, poised to face more the parents
than the spot he’d occupy behind his desk.
She shook
everyone’s hand instinctively, and smiled at the chance to advise Nigel’s
progress.
“We’re
really concerned about your influence on our son,” began the mum, barely after
Ms Henning sat down.
The
principal a-hemmed, yet allowed more
space for her—or as it happened—her husband to continue.
“Yes, it’s
remarkable to see you again, Ms Henning, after all these years. I’d say you
haven’t changed a bit, but… the world does change.”
“I don’t
know what we’re exactly talking about,” Ms Henning replied.
“You see,”
the mum turned to the principal, “there’s a peculiar naïveté that doesn’t befit this meeting, let alone a sustained
presence at this school.”
“I’ve
brought Nigel’s portfolio, if that befits the meeting. I was only informed this
morning on an email that didn’t say more than ‘we need to discuss Nigel’—”
The
principal again coughed into his fist and took a semblance of charge: “we
always put children first in our considerations; Nigel is our starting point… and
only outcome.”
Ms Henning
nodded at that and added, “there are twenty-nine other children also on my
mind, each and every school day.”
“I can’t
believe you just said that,” the mum rejoined, “as if you’re sweeping every one
of them into a pile.”
“I’m doing
nothing of the sort.”
“A pile
that’s destined for a dustbin.”
“I refuse
to be so accused. Again, I’ll assert, in an even-keel voice, I don’t know what
what we’re exactly talking about. That’s not my naïveté—rather your own lack of clarity.”
The
principal inserted some rambling ideas about the history of conflict management
at the school, how complaints are filed and addressed, other mumbles that
didn’t set the women at ease.
And so the
father thought it best to enter in. “I’ll tell you all a little story. Ms
Henning, you’ll probably know some of this.”
She did not
want to nod anymore a presumed sense of acknowledgement. Instead, his wife
encouraged him to “go on, whether she knows it or not.”
“Ok. I
enjoyed being a student here, for the most part. Your lessons, Ms Henning,
probably helped make me a better manager of my time—certainly made me correct
spelling errors, as if that mattered—but probably flat-lined things like math,
not that that matters for an aspiring
businessman.”
“As I
recall, you didn’t do much math homework—”
“We won’t
bring ‘homework’ into this meeting,” interjected the principal. “You know we
use the term ‘enhancement exercises’ now and have done so for at least six
years.”
“And we
have exercised that often,” the mum let known, “not that we have to say so.”
“Appreciating
that,” Ms Henning acknowledged, “though at the time of this story, a homework
policy was in place and I attended fully toward its success. How you ‘flat-lined’
is, well, regrettable, but not a reflection of our negligence as a school.”
“I can’t
believe you just said that,” the mum restated.
“Anyway,”
her husband continued, “I’ve done pretty well in life. I don’t want to say
‘despite’ this or that, and—credit to you, Ms Henning—nothing about you demonstrably
held me back.”
“Gosh, I
guess I’ll say thanks,” she said, devoid of any certain tone.
“There was
a teacher then, a Mr Christopherson—you must remember him…”
Ms Henning
searched her memory, “you mean for P.E.?”
“Yes, an
older guy—well, apologies, about your
age.”
“He was
here just one year, I suppose the year before he retired.”
“He was fired, Ms Henning—you must know that.”
He turned to the principal for a verification the latter wasn’t prepared for,
but still provided with a nod. “He sat every P.E. lesson and smoked Marlboros
as we played dodgeball—every single time it was dodgeball, without exception.
And at the end of the semester, when grades came out and every single one of us
got a ‘C’, we marched up to him and said, basically, ‘what’s up with this?’ And he said, still smoking, ‘what does it
mean to get a grade of C? average, right?’ and we, dumb 4th graders,
had to agree. Then he said, ‘you all did average.’ ‘But,’ one of us said, ‘all
we did all semester was play dodgeball.’ And he salted the wound by concluding,
‘yep—your dodgeball was positively average.’”
Ms Henning let
that story sink in, exhibiting what pedagogy calls ‘wait time’. She nodded in a
modicum of understanding, then decided, “he obviously taught you something,
despite appearances.”
“And what
would that be?” jumped in his wife.
“You tell
me.”
***
The summer
birthday boys and girls didn’t bring in cupcakes, but instead received
well-wishes written from everybody in the class. Ms Henning wrote out something
for every student, regardless of when their birthday occurred, and received
something from everyone in kind. Alison’s included the logo for the Golden
State Warriors, saying, ‘keep playing great!’ Nigel’s was wordless, if a rather
neatly drawn ouroboros, looking like a Möbius strip.
The same
afternoon had another kind of card in Ms Hennings’ staffroom box, if not the
insulting ‘pink’ everybody associates
with it. She marched into the principal’s office and threw it on his desk.
“Rejected,” she said, aware of the double entendre in so saying. To clarify,
she followed with, “I reject this.”
“You
can’t,” the principal held. “It isn’t up to you to reject or even me to defend.
And if you read more closely, there are provisions for your most positive
severance package—”
“I’ve taught
here for forty years, entitled to a couple more—”
“Ms
Henning, I couldn’t agree more to a sense of entitlement, and that’s why you
should really read those provisions—”
“I was here
when Mrs Berg burst her veins during a 2nd grade lesson, and no one
could make sense of it, let alone step in to help those students decompress!”
“I don’t
doubt for a moment—”
“And when
Mr Parker was rumored to be on drugs and fell down the flight of stairs, or Mr
Norton collected all the 6th graders after school to chide them for
not laughing at his jokes—I was the one who negotiated their release, so to
speak.”
“Negotiation
is precisely what we’re talking about—”
“And I
won’t exploit the thousands of private examples where adults and kids needed
something of a listening ear—”
“But that
has become your Achilles heel, Ms Henning, in this case—”
“What?”
“Nigel
didn’t want you to be a listening ear. He didn’t want your advice on teddy
bears or worms.”
Ms Henning
took that in, more for the principal’s benefit than her own. “He didn’t want….
Or he didn’t need….”
“The
former, for sure.”
“And the
latter?”
“The latter
doesn’t matter. We’re fighting the voucher system nowadays, if you haven’t
followed politics.”
“I most
certainly have, yet—at apparent
risk—I’ll listen to your point.”
“My point
is that we’ll lose parents like Nigel’s and, consequently, the voucher
allocation that comes with it.”
“And so,
instance by instance, you’ll weigh the risk of losing these vouchers.”
“That’s too
simplistic—”
“Too much
an ouroboros?”
“What? what
do you mean?”
“Ask Nigel.
He’s obviously in a position to teach you a thing or two.”
“Now, Ms
Henning—”
“I do have
a first name—”
“Of course,
I don’t—”
“—mean to
be crass? Goodbye, Mr Principal of nothing I ever stood for.”
“The school
year is not over yet—”
Ms Henning
thought about that. “You’ve got the general gist through recess,” she said, and
left with a thorough sense of coda.
Daniel Martin Vold
Lamken (2017)
