1979, Anderson, Indiana

By Karen Thurber

Her ebony eyes sparkled. Skin? Fair and flawless like fine porcelain. Personality? She was so good-natured that she could even tame the “Grumpys” of the world. Insert Snow White. In other words, she was perfect in every way. The problem? I was taking over her 3rd grade class, midyear. How does a new teacher step into those shoes?

I had begun my first full-time teaching position, replacing a teacher who was dearly loved by her students. Right from the start, I knew I had to be careful how I handled every situation or face mutiny.

On the first day, my little dwarfs strategically plotted to remind me at every possible moment that “Snow White” had done just about everything differently than I. “Mrs. Snow White always reads to us first thing.” “Mrs. Snow White knows our names.” “We wish Mrs. Snow White would come back.” Fine then. I had always liked Cinderella better than Snow White, anyway. OK, so I would be mature on another day.

Mrs. Snow White was actually deserving of every bit of loyalty her students gave her. How would I live “happily ever after” in her shadow?

On my second day, the tension was building. No self-respecting 3rd grade class would let a new teacher coast along without earning her pay. When it was time to begin reading groups, I noticed a “four letter word” had mysteriously appeared on the reading chart — not quite the vocabulary lesson I had in mind.

Suddenly, everything I had learned in college about classroom management was muddled in the real world classroom. “All right! Who wrote on the chart?” I heard myself say, almost as if I were having an out of body experience. Everyone knows a dastardly-deed-doer would never confess on the spot, but had I really seen 23 halos over 23 heads?

My first thought was to have the entire class stay in for recess until the culprit would come clean. Besides being more than a bit unfair, there was the “mutiny thing” to remember. No need to add fuel to the “me versus them” atmosphere that had already bruised my ego. I knew I had to wait it out and find a more fair, workable solution. What was it my professors had explained about handling this particular situation? Oh yeah, this one never came up. Time for approach B: white ink over the offensive word, a round table discussion on respecting school property — and a deep breath.

Every day, I could count on a new colorful word to magically appear on the chart — maybe two or three, depending on how much the “mystery writer” was in the mood to expand our vocabulary. My new approach was to appear unaffected in hopes that the fuel would be taken away from what appeared to be attention-getting behavior — Behavioral Psychology 101.

But whoever was writing on the chart was slick, and obviously knew nothing about behavioral psychology because my approach was not working. A week went by, and I was still without clues. Who knew there were so many four-letter words to choose from?

The reading chart had become quite the talk of the class. There were a variety of speculations on how the words appeared each day. Some students suggested aliens were coming into the classroom when we weren’t there. Others had decided the chart was magical. Hmmm. Creative writing lesson, maybe? Absolutely.

A synopsis of our class story: “Letters jumped off the page and wrote words on the chart, creating mischief at night when no one was there. They hopped back on the page before school started the next day. Finally, they waited too long to return to the paper, so we caught them.” I could only hope for such an easy, though admittedly fantasy-based solution.

“This was the most fun I’ve ever had writing stories,” said Mark. The rest of the class agreed. OK, so maybe teaching wasn’t so bad, after all. Maybe I would even try for tenure.

Another day would come and another four-letter word would appear on the charts. Eventually, the students shifted from fantasy to reality and began to assemble clues. A band of future detectives had thought they were about to close in on the criminal — Jimmy.

Their evidence? “Jimmy sits right by the chart,” Andrea said.

“He always asks a teacher to go back to the room to get something when no one’s there,” Tony added.

And so continued the mounting evidence.

I had to admit they had some valid points. They knew it. I knew it. I just couldn’t let them know I knew it. It was still speculation, after all. Innocent until proven guilty. I added that to our social studies lesson, taking Jimmy off the premature “guilty hook.” When we finished our lesson about the legal system, Karrie said, “Mrs. Thurber, you’re a good teacher. I’ve never had so much fun in Social Studies.”

I smiled. So maybe I would even teach long enough to have a retirement party.

But, what to do. The four letter words didn’t stop. The situation was increasingly annoying. OK — exasperating.

As the children and I bonded, the more Snow White took her proper place in the storybook, rather than lurking over my shoulder. The more at ease I felt, the better I became at problem solving. And I was determined to sort out the reading chart mystery. I had known that children continue to misbehave as long as they’re getting some reward from that behavior. So what was this student’s reward? I could only guess. The power of not getting caught, maybe? Could I replace that power with something that would be equally as gratifying? With mounting evidence, I had a suspect, and finally, a plan.

The next day, I called Jimmy to my desk and said, “Of course you know the problems I’ve had with four-letter words appearing on the reading chart.”

His eyes dropped down. He fiddled, awkwardly, with the pencil in his hand and answered, “But I didn’t do it, Mrs. Thurber.”

“I actually just need your help to solve this mystery. I can’t think of anyone who would do a better job than you as ‘Keeper of the Chart.’”

He looked at me again, as if to scan my expression for clues to a plot. For a split second, I felt as if I had traded places with the witch in Snow White, handing over a poison red apple.

“Do you think you could guard the chart for me to be sure no one writes on it ever again?”

When our eyes met, this time, there was a moment of understanding between us where we both knew what the other one knew, but neither of us let on.

Then, with a grin he said, “Sure, Mrs. Thurber, I can do that. Nobody will write on the charts again with me around.”

And, you know … they never did.

Even though we still had our ups and downs as a class, the downs became increasingly fewer. We had bonded through the creative writing and social studies lessons, resulting from the reading chart mystery that was finally solved. We were a unit, now — family. And just like real families, we were united through solving our problems.

I learned that rather than stepping into someone’s shoes I just needed to figure out how to make my own fit. From that day forward, the students and I lived happily ever after — even without Snow White.

Karen Thurber is a freelance writer for magazines, newspapers, and a greeting card company. She wrote a column for two years and formerly taught elementary school.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, December 15th, 2006 | Email This Post

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 12:02 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.