Rationale

I'm not always in accord with my friends and neighbors.  I couldn't, for example, agree with Fran's delighted realization.  "In just one week," she announced, "the kids go back to school, I go back to bed in the morning, and you go back to work.  Lots of luck, Teach.  I don't envy you."

"Oh, Fran," I protested, "teaching's fun.  I love it."

"You're not dedicated," she decided.  "You're masochistic."

Fran is only half right.  It's not dedication that makes a teacher accept the endless chattering, the harebrained responses, the incomplete assignments, and the late May madness.  But masochism doesn't explain it either.  The real answer lies elsewhere in the teacher's makeup.

Witness Ella, the school librarian.  She knows instinctively which books are suitable for her young charges and is unerringly accurate in her library techniques.  She also handles, most adroitly, the inventories the federal government requires for its funding programs.  But Ella has always had an uncanny knack for working with Washington. 

Years ago, while she was attending college, she had a civics professor who gave his students a weekly oral quiz.  As he mentioned a word or phrase, the class would write an appropriate definition.  The professor might, for example, call out "Wobblies."  On their papers the undergraduates would then identify this term as "The Industrial Workers of the World, a labor organization."

One unforgettable morning the instructor's question was the date "March 4th."  All around Ella her classmates were scribbling furiously "Inauguration Day for the President," the correct answer at that time.  But for reasons Ella has never fathomed, she interpreted the spoken term to be "march forth."  Shrewd enough to realize a blank space on her paper was a certain ten points off in score, she cast around for ideas.  To the professor's astonishment her definition read, "A command by Washington to his troops."

I've never known Ella to complain about student stupidity.

But she's not the only staff member capable of imaginative responses.  Equally far reaching in her search for solutions is Mary, the fifth grade teacher.  Mary can wrestle thirty ten-year-olds into submissive attention in two minutes flat.  She can finish her register in ten minutes, her plan book in fifteen, and her chores as teacher representative in thirty.  But the ten months of the school year are not long enough for her to devise even one appropriate bulletin board.  Such visual aids are a challenge that's defeated her for the last twenty years, and she cheerfully concedes that after the first three she stopped worrying about it.

One year, however, she had a student uninterested in any subject but art.  In an effort to elicit some contribution from him, she asked him to draw on the blackboard any scene from their study of history.  It was October, and Mary was well into the Mayflower and its passengers.  Consequently her artist produced a colorful chalk mural of a Pilgrim group.

On its completion, Mary complimented him almost as warmly as she congratulated herself.  Above the drawing she printed "Do Not Erase," and next to it she lettered, in magnificent flowing script, "Happy Thanksgiving from Plymouth Rock."  The principal himself was impressed with the illustration and remarked, gazing around the otherwise bare walls, "Well, it certainly brightens the room up."

Nor was this his only chance to admire it.  The drawing was still there in December, its legend now reading "Merry Christmas from the Pilgrims."  In April these same pioneers wished us a happy Easter, and in late June, long after Mary had left for the summer, the founding fathers remained behind, expressing their hopes for a joyous vacation.

Mary's students are rarely chastised for incomplete work.

George, the social studies teacher, has much less trouble with his decorating schemes.  When his imagination fails, he merely covers the corkboards with newspaper sheets and tacks over them, in cut out block letters, "What's new?"  Unfortunately, however, George must also cover what's old.  Thus on an afternoon in late May I received a plea for help from him.  His student was very self-important as she delivered the folded message.  "Mr. Lengel wants an answer right away," she informed me.

I was delighted at the interruption.  My inclination to teach spelling has never been overpowering, and on warm spring afternoons there are only two things that keep me at it: will power, and the hope of a fire drill.  With a sigh of contentment, I opened George's note.  "Hey, Ron," it asked, "wasn't Cooper the novelist who was born in nearby Burlington?"

Had this query been posed in October, my response would've have been, "Yes.  Do you want me to teach some of his works this year?"  Had the question come in February, I would've answered, "Right you are.  Shall I take up local color with the kids?"  But it was, as I say, only two weeks before the end of school.

I yielded to temptation instantly, and dispatched his messenger with my reply.  As the door closed behind her, I perched on the edge of my desk.  "If you can keep absolutely quiet and not laugh for the next five minutes, you may have the rest of the period off," I promised my class.  A buzz of bewilderment greeted me as I continued, "Mr. Lengel will be visiting us, and I want total silence when he cones.  He'll be here within forty seconds, and he will be upset."

I erred only in my timing.  George flung open the door to my hushed classroom in less than half a minute.  In one hand he held our communication, which he shook at me.  His other hand was gesticulating also, his eyebrows were working, and his face was a study in consternation.  "Mrs. Stevens!" he spluttered, "Mrs. Stevens!"

I regarded him demurely, as silent as my students.  Twice more he gibbered my name, then turned for his own room.  The note was still shaking in his hand.  On it I had written, "Can't help you.  I always confuse James Fenimore Cooper with Millard Fillmore."  That little inanity ended not only my lesson but his.

Inevitably tales of such events reach the ears of school administrators.  Reprimands seldom occur, however.  For there's a rationale behind a principal's acceptance of his staff's vagaries.  Dedication won't explain his tolerance, nor will masochism be the answer.  No, the real reason lies elsewhere in his makeup....