Post 12: Consequences

Fourth grade was a turning point. Not only in the depth of our education, but also in the understanding of what a truly great teacher was and could be. Despite my gratitude for most of my teachers, Mrs. Bowman changed the way I thought about learning and life.

            At least once a week, Mrs. Bowman wore her artist’s smock, complete with a ceramic palette pin, with various enamel colors circling the edges and an artist’s brush positioned at a jaunty diagonal. She completed her outfit with a beret, worn at an equally rakish angle atop her head. This outfit could only mean one thing: art day. We loved art day because of the freedom it brought.

Mrs. Bowman came in early on art day to arrange an array of materials we could use to express ourselves. More than just a few bottles of tempura paints and craft paper, Mrs. Bowman laid out watercolors, oils, acrylics, miniature canvas boards, an array of silks, cottons, burlaps, and other textural fabrics, along with markers, calligraphy pens, charcoal, glitter, feathers and string. For collages, she brought in current magazines, old greeting cards and a box full of photos collected by our class and the many classes that had preceded us. Every art day, she proclaimed, was “your license to create!” Best of all, every creation, every collage, every primitive watercolor, every effort made that day was exhibited in “the gallery,” which occupied the long wall running from her classroom, Room 14, down the expansive hall to Room 16, where fifth grade began. The Art Day Gallery stayed intact up to the next scheduled PTA meeting, allowing us to proudly display our most recent masterpieces to visiting parents.

            If we learned about the mysteries of science from Mrs. Sheldon, it was Mrs. Bowman who taught us that reading was not only a joy, but also a privilege. Aside from the fourth-grade reading curriculum, Mrs. Bowman cultivated a separate, more esteemed library of her own, reserved for the class as an earned privilege to follow the lunch break. If our class was well behaved in the morning, the reading hour was granted after lunch; if we failed to maintain appropriate decorum, independent study followed lunch, but Mrs. Bowman didn’t crack a smile. Or a book.

            On most days, as we were generally a congenial bunch, after lunch Mrs. Bowman would send us from the cafeteria back to Room 14 by ourselves, with the implicit agreement that we could comport ourselves like “ladies and gentlemen” without her overt supervision. Once in our classroom, we were expected to use the restroom if needed and settle ourselves for the reading of the day. Mrs. Bowman would arrive about ten minutes later, book in hand.

            As I look back, I can see the covers of the volumes she brought in: Black Beauty, Ol’ Yeller, and the perennial favorite, Charlotte’s Web. With the class settled and respectfully quiet, she would begin.

The magic of reading hour wasn’t the story itself, but the way Mrs. Bowman brought it to life. She never rushed. The story was allowed to unfold. As she read, she carefully looked up to read the eyes of her students and their depth of engagement. Where needed, she would deftly change from the narrator’s voice that of the gluttonous Templeton, the innocent Fern, the sensitive and vulnerable Wilbur, and the cool and collected Charlotte. Her voice mesmerized us. Characters emerged from her readings fully flawed, wise, wonderful, and sometimes woefully human. When Wilbur was saved, we cheered. When Charlotte succumbed at book’s end, we cried. There is no video, no animated substitute, no equivalent of a story delivered in a human voice infused with love.

            And so it was, at the end of one of our reading hours when Mrs. Bowman closed her volume with satisfaction and turned to place it in her book bag, the moment that Donald Morse chose to throw a freshly sharpened pencil directly into the cheek of Susan Day, who sat, by coincidence, behind me.

Susan let out a scream. The pencil fell from her cheek and was replaced by Susan’s hand, which was rapidly bloodied by the wound. In the course of sixty seconds, Mrs. Bowman attended to Susan, washed the wound, placed a bandage on it, and sent Susan off to Mrs. Callie, the school nurse. This quick work behind her, she slowly turned to face the class with a look of intense displeasure.

            “Mr. Morse.”

            Silence.

            “Mr. Morse. Answer me.”

            “What?”

            “What did you just say?”

            “Yes, ma’am.”

            “I saw you throw the pencil, correct?”

            “Well, I . . .”

            “Think very carefully before you say one more word, Mr. Morse. Once again. You threw the pencil, did you not?”

Feeling the eyes of twenty-two fourth-graders and one infuriated teacher upon him, Donald’s face reddened as he grudgingly replied, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Mr. Morse, that pencil hit Susan about an inch below her left eye. A little higher and you could have blinded her. Do you realize that?”

“Well, it was just a joke. I didn’t think—”

“No, Mr. Morse, you didn’t think.”

A silence fell.  Donald remained seated at his desk, at once surly and more than a little frightened.

After pacing for a full minute, Mrs. Bowman seemed to calm herself and resumed quietly.

            “Mr. Morse, come up here, please.”

            In an ill-judged moment of indignation, and likely quoting another ill-informed source, Donald stood, puffed out his chest, and replied, “You can’t make me do anything. I don’t have to do anything.”

            The class drew a collective breath.

            I’m pretty sure that it was not in any of our realities to sass Mrs. Bowman. It fell under the heading of “things you just don’t do.” It was beyond consideration to go there. And yet, Donald had.

            In a disarming change of affect, Mrs. Bowman returned to her seat in silence, smoothed her skirt, sat, took off her glasses, and rubbed the bridge of her nose as if she were weary. The class waited. She arched her left eyebrow, and spoke again.

            “Mr. Morse, I want to thank you for bringing to light an important lesson I want to share with you and your classmates.” At the desk next to mine, Cynthia Dixon was instinctively pulling out a notebook and pencil when Mrs. Bowman continued. “There’s no need to write anything down. You will remember this.

            “Mr. Morse, you are absolutely correct. No one, not even I, can make you do anything.” Mrs. Bowman rose, looked thoughtfully out the window at the robins that had nested on the ledge, and, smiling, continued. “Mr. Morse, there are only three things that you absolutely must do in this life: be born, die,” she turned to Donald with a laser-like gaze, “and suffer the consequences in between.”

            At this moment, the classroom door clattered as Susan returned, her cheek freshly re-bandaged. She seemed a little embarrassed by the fuss. Mrs. Bowman motioned Susan over, asked if she was ok, smiled, and sent her to her seat.

            “Mr. Morse, do you have anything you would like to say to Susan? And keep in mind, you don’t have to say anything. In fact, you don’t have to do anything, Mr. Morse. Except suffer the consequences. And those, Mr. Morse, at this moment, are entirely up to you.”

            Mrs. Bowman locked eyes with Donald. Donald’s hands shook. He broke her gaze, and his mouth seemed to struggle to form words. Looking then at Susan’s bandaged face, the enormity of his thoughtless action seemed to land on him. Tears began to run in tiny rivulets down his face as he struggled and then half-whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Susan.”

            Mrs. Bowman walked slowly between the rows of desks until she reached Donald, standing limply, tears flowing. She pulled a fresh tissue from her sweater pocket, handed it to him, drew him into her arms, and held him quietly adding, “Thank you, Donald.”