In June 2021, I posted my Education Week essay, In Defense of Whimsy. Recently, I dug up some of the notes I kept from my teaching years in Prince George’s County, Maryland; New York City; and Boston, Massachusetts. They made me laugh then, they make me laugh now, and I hope they bring a smile to your Tuesday.
It is a terribly hard thing to try to remember what the world was like when we were small, before the things we see as so mundane had lost their magic. It is easy to forget that an afternoon trip to the park might hold some fascination that thoroughly eclipses the memories of a trip to New York City the week before, or that the most exciting thing about going to the zoo may have been the bus ride there. And when children come to us full of feeling about some incident that we might see as trivial, it is hard to treat it in a way that shows that we are there with them, cupping the moment in our hands, full of wonder.
Many of my favorite interactions with my students have been tiny conversations or observations or experiences that release me briefly from the world of adult thoughts and cares. Here are some of the many such interactions from my nine years in the classroom.
*****
Dale is following me around the room, grabbing my arm, desperate for my attention. He is six, and has not yet learned to stay in his seat and raise his hand. I look at him quizzically.
“Ms. Ehrenfeld,” he whispers. “I have something to tell you.”
“What Dale?”
“Not out loud.”
I sit down so he can whisper in my ear. He cups his hands up next to my head and starts to speak, then stops.
“Do you want to tell me something?”
He nods and gets ready to whisper again. Again he is too shy to get the words out. Instead, he tugs my sleeve, pulling me out of the classroom and into the hallway. It must be something big for him to need so much secrecy.
Out in the hallway, I kneel down next to him. He takes a deep breath, and leans close. “I’m…” he starts.
“Yes?”
“I’m…I’m a Haitian-Bahamian-American!” he states in a loud whisper. Then he grins, full of pride.
*****
Eight-year-old Javon, who has trouble with patience, has gotten in trouble for interrupting a conversation I am having with a teacher. His guilty conscience plagues him, and the next day he brings me in an empty tissue box stuffed with objects. It consists of:
One note that reads: “I’m sorry for talking during your convesashon”
One note that reads: “Do you forgive me”
Several pieces of black construction paper cut into various unrecognizable shapes
One paper mask with glitter
One ‘Bureau of the Census” magnet
One bent piece of metal
One metallic disc with a smiley face cut out of it
One harmonica
One piece of paper that reads: “This is a sorry gift.” Glued to it are fourteen Q-Tips and seven pieces from a broken necklace chain.
*****
Sekwon keeps the plastic size collars for store clothes hangers in his pocket. They fall out as he lines up for lunch, and he scrambles to pick them up and place them carefully back in his pocket.
*****
Dale calls Sekwon a baby and Sekwon bursts into tears. I call them both up to fix the problem. “But I said psych!” protests Dale. Five minutes later they are both sucking their thumbs.
*****
Dale points to his neck and says: “Smell me right here.”
“Dale, I can smell you all the way across the room!” I say. He is wearing so much cologne you can almost see the cloud around him.
*****
It is the end of a grumpy afternoon. I have apologized for my bad mood. Dale runs up and says, “I might forget to give you a hug when I get on the bus, so I’m going to give you a hug now. And a kiss.” Sekwon soon follows suit.
*****
Today’s rule of the day: You may not eat the paper from the bottom of the birthday cupcakes. This is after half of Sekwon’s cupcake paper has already disappeared into his stomach.
*****
Ivan comes in and says: “I went to the doctor. He gave me a TV.”
“Really?” I ask.
He nods.
“A big TV?”
“No! Like a shot.”
“Oh...a TB shot. That’s not nearly as nice as a TV.”
*****
Reginald says: “I know why I got a lollipop today. Because a ladybug touched me and I got cursed by good luck.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Yes and my sister said it laid an egg.”
“On your hand?”
“No, in the cage.”
“Is it in a cage?”
“No, but it gave me an egg and the egg is in a cage. And the ladybug touched me before it flew away and I got cursed by good luck.”
*****
Sekwon is asking me about what Martin Luther King got when he won the Nobel Prize.
“A lot of money,” I tell him.
“Chocolate money?” he asks.
*****
Luzvinda says: “My brother is real sick. He’s in the hospital.”
“Oh no! What does he have?” I ask.
“Rocks,” she says.
“Rocks?” I ask.
“Rocks,” she says.
*****
On a field trip to visit our local city councilor to lobby for more trash cans and trash pickups in our neighborhood, I watch as the children take the conversation –ostensibly about the problem of too much trash on our neighborhood streets – all over the map, drawing the councilor into a discussion of why it is bad to cut down trees, what their homes looked like, what kind of plants their mothers are growing, and the danger of shark attacks at the beach. The councilor, to his credit, follows right along, honoring each question and comment with a thoughtful answer, never trying to force the children back on topic. Had he tried to keep the children “on task” – which is the pedantic term for when we try to keep the children working on something they are likely not to want to work on – he either would have failed completely, or stopped the conversation cold.
*****
Sometimes it is a particular incident with a certain student and sometimes it is some aspect of the curriculum that makes the mood of my classroom fanciful for a short while. And sometimes it is a lovely child, whose every moment is spent in a place not quite like the world the rest of us inhabit, and who, if we pay attention, can open a window for us into that world and let us peek inside. William, who appeared in my third grade classroom in my first year of teaching and then disappeared in January, was the personification of whimsy. (On a sober note: In Oxon Hill, Maryland, where my students’ families mostly lived in dire poverty, a shocking number of my students moved in and out of the neighborhood in the middle of the school year. They often arrived without any school records, and vanished overnight to places unknown. This fact illuminated another way in which housing instability destroys the lives of children.)
He was irresistibly cute, with a piping voice, a bookbag that seemed always to be trailing a jumble of papers, toys, and various interesting objects he had picked up, and a penchant for wrapping his arms around any adult he could find, leaning his head way back, staring earnestly into the person’s eyes, and saying whatever came into his head. Even when he didn’t mean to, he could make me cry with laughter.
He had more energy than I ever imagined a single person possessing. He was up, he was down, he was next to me, he was across the room, darting from place to place like a hummingbird. Inquisitive and mischievous he was either demanding my attention to have a question answered, or needed to be watched because he was on the verge of breaking something. He would sharpen a pencil, and then, oops, it was broken, and he would re-sharpen it, and again it would snap, and his high-pitched voice would narrate the entire process because, as usual, he was completely oblivious to the fact that I was trying to teach. Mostly, with his good humor and his joy, he made me smile, but there was no question that he also made me extremely tired.
Then there was his enchanting habit of saying whatever came to mind. One day he told me he had the “Ms. Ehrenfeld blues.” Another day, I let him stay and help after school. We came back into the classroom and I sat down with my can of soda to collect my thoughts. As I did so, William walked right up to me, arms akimbo, huge grin on his face, and in his high-pitched voice, he asked: “So, what are we here to do besides sit and watch you drink your soda?” As my mouth dropped, he let out a true William giggle and bolted from the room. I could do nothing but laugh, hunt him down, and play-threaten to throw him out the window (which only produced more giggles).
Finally, there was the moment when the mother of another student brought her new 6-day-old son into the classroom. The baby was asleep in his carrier, and the children were crowded around, trying to be as quiet as possible; failing at this, but at least trying. Not William though. Armed with his William grin, he walked right up to the carrier, leaned way over, and shouted: “WAKE UP, LITTLE BABY!” I almost choked, the impulse to laugh was so strong, but I had to be serious so I sent him back to his desk and acted very disappointed in him. That night, in the privacy of my own apartment, I laughed and laughed.
*****
Yanice, a first grader, had a quieter type of whimsy. Here was a girl who could wander off in the middle of a lesson because something in another part of the room fascinated her. We would all be on the rug, then she would be gone, and suddenly her head would pop around the side of my easel and she would smile at me with the faraway look of someone who had just woken up from a dream. Somehow she managed to learn everything I was teaching, but it was never because I tried to teach it to her directly - it seemed more like ideas just floated past her and eventually they would float in through her ear and make themselves at home in her brain.
It was tempting to say that Yanice simply had an attention problem, especially after she had raised her hand for the fifteenth time in a morning, waved it wildly until I called on her, and then looked at me with a blank expression and said, “Huh?” But I do not believe that her problem was her attention span. I think she had some trouble understanding language (she could not repeat a simple sentence back to me, even if I repeated it a few times), and more than anything, I think she was enthralled by the world around her and felt it important to pay attention to what caught her attention at the moment when it caught her attention.
At no time was Yanice’s unique personality more evident than when she was participating in an organized event with specific rules. Running races seemed to be particularly difficult for her. There would be great excitement at the starting line, and she would inch forward as I called out, “On your marks…get set….go!” Sometimes she would even start to run after “get set” because she could not wait for go. She would start off strong, then halfway to the turn-around point she would suddenly forget what she was doing and wander off in a different direction. Eventually she would find her way back to the finish line, where she would burst into tears because she had lost the race. In an effort to cheer her up, I would offer to race her myself. Again, we would start. “On your marks!” She’d hop forward a little, then scootch back. “Get set!” Her whole body would quiver. “Go!” She’d shoot ahead, run for a little bit, and then again slow to a walk and meander off toward the basketball net. “Yanice!” I’d call. “You were winning! What happened?” But she would be gone, off to some new fascination.
*****
Unfortunately for teachers, some of the most charming moments that we have with children are the ones in which they most require us to be solemn, but about some incident or sorrow that to us seems a good deal less than grave. At these times it is critical that I keep a straight face until a private moment when I can smile without wounding them. This has not always been easy.
It is the afternoon of a warm day in early spring, and Darius is at my classroom door, weeping. He is a gentle eight-year-old child; quiet, smart, and well liked. I have never been upset with him and have rarely seen him angry or sad, so his appearance in this state is somewhat of a shock. I give the kids a quick assignment to keep them busy and head for the door, where I sink down onto one knee to be at eye level with him.
“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you in science class?”
He is crying almost too hard to speak. “I g-g-g-got sent b-b-back here.”
“Why? What happened? Are you in trouble?”
Slowly the story comes out. “We were outside, playing a game, and the hawks were hunting the snakes and the snakes were hunting the grasshoppers, and…” He breaks down again, as I hug him. “…And I-I-I wanted to be a hawk, and I had to be…a g-g-g-grasshopper!” This is too much for him and his sobbing starts all over. I am tempted to smile at this boy whose heart is broken over the fact that he has to be a grasshopper, but I know that this is the most serious thing in the world for him, so I keep a solemn expression on my face as I rub his back and say: “Well, it seems like you have to make a decision. If you really want to play the game then you need to be a grasshopper and maybe next time you can be a hawk, or you can stay in here with me and read until science class is over. Which would you like to do?”
He thinks about it, sniffles sadly, then heads back outside. The warm sunshine and the shouts of his friends are enough of a lure to convince him to accept his lot as a grasshopper. Once his little shape has disappeared down the hallway, I permit myself the smile I have been holding in, and the unspoken wish that his dream of being a hawk comes true.
*****
A few weeks later, my third graders return from lunch falling over each other to tell me that Darius and Marcus are fighting. Both are sweet, shy students and they have been close friends all year, so I am surprised to find them out in the hallway, glaring at each other and on the verge of tears. I send all of the curious onlookers who have gathered back to class, and ask the boys to tell me what the problem is.
Darius, his voice shaking, says, “He said…” a long pause while he struggles to control his feelings, “He said my mother smells!”
Marcus immediately chimes in, “He said my mother has big feet!”
They are both shocked by the insults, and ready to fight to defend their mothers’ honor.
I put on my most serious face and say, “Now what if I made you both write letters, Darius to Marcus’s mother and Marcus to Darius’s mother, apologizing for what you said?”
“Oh no, Ms. Ehrenfeld! Don’t make us do that!” Darius cries, horrified.
“Yeah, please Ms. Ehrenfeld!” Marcus joins in.
“Besides,” I continue, “Marcus, do you really think Darius’s mother smells?”
“No,” he mutters.
“And Darius, have you ever even seen Marcus’s mother’s feet?”
“No.”
“Okay, then. I would like both of you to apologize to each other, and I want you to promise that from now on you will not talk about anybody’s mother. Understood?”
The boys agree, apologize sheepishly to each other, and return to class. In ten minutes the fight is forgotten, and I am left wondering what caused the problem in the first place. I chalk it up to the inevitable moments of friction between friends, and let it go.
*****
In my first grade class in Roxbury, we had a series of tragic pet deaths, and the grief with which the children mourned each passing was too genuine to take lightly. Still, it was difficult to find the right way to honor their sorrow, when the sorrow was caused by the untimely demise of a fish or other small creature.
The first pet to go was Dr. Zoofish, our fighting fish (“Ms. Ehrenfeld, why is Dr. Zoofish sleeping on the bottom of the tank?”). I disposed of the body after the kids left school for the day, and then, the next morning, I gathered them on the rug. I knew I had to be serious and let them express their feelings, but after about 15 minutes of their eulogizing, I was finding it hard to keep the appropriate expression of deep mourning on my face. So I decided to distract attention from myself. I told the kids that there was a special kind of music written for when people (or animals) died, and that I was going to play them some of that music while they closed their eyes and thought about Dr. Zoofish and all of the wonderful times we had had together. Then I turned on Mozart’s Requiem and watched as they closed their eyes and listened to the music. I would be willing to bet that is the first time the Requiem has ever been played in honor of a fish.
Later in the year, when our pet moth, Jonathan Jr,, died, my students were hysterical with grief. They begged to give him (her? it?) a funeral, so we trooped outside and stood in the drizzle, mourning.
“Ms. Ehrenfeld, the sky is crying!” called one little one.
“He was my best friend,” wept another.
After the funeral, they sat in their seats sobbing, refusing to be comforted. It was the end of the day and parents were starting to gather in the hall, looking worried at the howls of grief emanating from the classroom. Needing backup, I called Sandy, our lovely principal, to come help me. She came in, took one look at all the teary faces, and said: “Let’s sing a song to remember your moth. How about This Little Light of Mine? Let’s stand and think of the moth as we sing.” The children stood, and she led them in song, their voices shaky and quavering. Her idea was perfect – the song was appropriate to honor the memory of the moth, but they also were a bit distracted by singing it, and by the time they sat back down, their tears were beginning to dry. Seeing them calmed, she gave me a secret smile and left the room.
*****
On the way back from a field trip with my first graders one day in spring, we passed two men taking a lunch break on the steps of their storefront office a block away from school. I was walking slightly ahead of the students, and smiled at the men as we passed.
“Are those your students?” one of the men asked. “Or do they just happen to be walking behind you?”
I turned around, feigning surprise. “Oh, no, sir,” I said, very seriously. “They started following me downtown and they’ve been behind me ever since.”
The man played right along. “Do you know their names?”
I stared at them searchingly. They started to giggle. “Not a one. What’s your name?” I asked one boy. He giggled even harder.
“Hmm,” said the man. “Can I have one?”
“Sure!” I replied. “Here, take this one. He seems nice.” I picked up Reginald, who was shrieking with laughter and kicking me. I put him back in line, then winked at my kids, waved at the men, and we continued back to school.
.