Chad is drawing a monster. Or dinosaur, from the looks of it. Monster sounds so threatening…but that was the assignment: “You are an explorer in an undiscovered land. You have just seen prehistoric monsters still roaming around. Draw one.” So! Dinosaurs are monsters. It is art class, and the substitute teacher, Mr. Nelson, is observing … Continue reading
Category Archives: The Schoolyard
They looked into the lens–and history.
The sunlight in the old photo looks as it does today on a spring or early autumn afternoon. The facade of the white clapboard school shines, and the shadows cling to the posed figures, the shade line close to where we would see it now, more than 130 years later. There is even a familiar … Continue reading
BTUs, Student Age, and Academic Subjects: Notes towards a new theory of elementary school heating.
The school building is cold—again. That is, the rest of the building is cold. My office and Mrs. Thomas’s office are saunas. But Bill McWeeny’s room is glacial (yesterday it was a sauna); so is the art room. We’ve come to expect the lobby to be cold, given the constant traipsing in and out during … Continue reading
A jump-start on spring
They appear at my office door five minutes before the start of every recess and ask, “Will you come turn for us?” It is the Jump-Rope Squad. In the morning, as they pour off the bus, they dash to the ropes for some before-school jumps. During even the smallest interstice in the school day, … Continue reading
The magic of spring—and swing
It doesn’t matter whether the sun is out or there’s a light drizzle—by 7:20 a.m., you can usually find a dozen or more kids out on the town common in front of my elementary school. They’re choosing up sides for the first of several daily whiffle ball games. As players arrive by car they add … Continue reading
A typewriter may be old-fashioned, but it still has that magic
The kindergartners and first-graders couldn’t quite name the object I delivered to their room on Monday, a gift from my mother to the class. It had keys like a laptop, but no screen. It had a plug, and you had to put paper into it before you could see the letters. If you flipped the … Continue reading
A Slow Trip Back in Time
“I wanted to know where the trains were going.” —Dennis Hopper to Terry Gross on his Kansas childhood. The eighth grade class and I had been on the Amtrak Downeaster for over an hour before the obligatory question was asked by a certain wag: “Are we, like, there yet?” “Nope.” We were in Dover, … Continue reading
The Principal Shepherd
The day Mr. West took his sixth graders on a field trip to the mud flats, I learned how to herd sheep. The two events are related. It had never been a part of my school principal duties until Mrs. Hutchins called. Seven sheep were in her garden. Would I come and get them? … Continue reading
