It was the start of a new school year. The summer was over and it was my first day teaching at a school. I had arrived in Maycomb County only a few weeks earlier and found a home boarding in Miss. Maudie Atkinson's house.
As it was my first ever teaching job I was teaching the first graders, and I sure hoped I could handle it. Young Children can be very, um, boisterous, or so they warned me at the job interview.
I started the day introducing myself to the children, then by reading to them my childhood favourite book. The one about the cats and the chocolate malted mice.
"Wasn't that nice?" I said when it was finished. The children seemed slightly restless, but I'm sure they enjoyed it. When the story had come to it's thrilling conclusion (or I'm sure the children thought so), I decided it was time to get started on the more tedious part of the teaching job, (although I'm supposed to be zealous and love every part of my work, as my work is my life, according to Mr. Smith, my college teaching professor), and teach my student the alphabet. I printed the letters in a neat row (or as close to neat as you can get while writing on a on a huge and vertical wall) along the blackboard and asked the class, "Does anybody know what these are?"
Everybody did.
It seems it was not everyone's first year in grade one.
I appealed to Jean Louise Finch, as she was the only person whose name I knew at the time, living across the road from Miss. Maudie Atkinson, and asked her to read the alphabet out loud. She did. I frowned. What was this?
I asked her to read from the My First Reader book. She read it with ease. Then I gave her the stock market quotations from the Mobile Register. She read then too. It seems someone was a little ahead of herself. Little Jean Louise was quite literate.
This was not good for me. If all the students in my class already knew these things, then what was I supposed to teach them? It was obvious that her father had been teaching the girl long before she had started school. I asked her who had taught her to read, "Somebody did. You weren't born reading the Mobile Register." I said pleasantly. The child started rambling about bullfinches and being swapped at birth, so I told her to tell her father to stop teaching her. I'd just have to try to undo the damage he had done. It was my job to teach, not his. Mine. Parents do not know how to teach. They do it wrong. I went to school to learn that kind of thing. My job.
The children went out to recess and when they came I began with the flashcards. I held up cardboard cards which were printed with words the children should have been able to understand, like 'cat', 'man' and 'rat.' The class listened in silence.
Then I noticed something. Jean Louise seemed to be doing something. She wasn't paying attention to me and the 'cat man rat', that was for certain. I went to investigate and caught her writing. Writing! A letter. Of all the impertinence. Reading and then writing! I felt like screaming, "How dare you!"
How dare you learn from someone else. How dare you come into my class and be better. Better that me at that age. Better than my teaching.
But I stayed clam, pointing out that you don't write in grade one anyway, you print.
It was time for lunch. I checked who was going home for lunch and who had brought their food from home. I walked up and down the rows of desks checking children's lunch containers. I stopped when I came to Walter Cunningham. "Where's yours?" I asked. Walter didn't answer me.
"Did you forget your lunch this morning?" I asked again.
"Yeb'm," he finally replied.
I went to my desk and got out a quarter from my purse. I offered it to him, but he refused to take it. I didn't understand why he wouldn't take it. He could pay me back tomorrow. Then Jean Louise stood up and said, "He's a Cunningham."
I didn't understand what she meant.
"What, Jean Louise?" I asked her.
"You're shamin' him, Miss Caroline." She said, "Walter hasn't got a quarter at home to bring you, and you can't use any stovewood."
Stovewood? I stood still, trying to comprehend what was being said to me. I had had just about enough of this, humiliating the poor Cunningham boy.
"Jean Louise, I've had just about enough of you this morning. You are starting off on the wrong foot in every way, my dear." I told her to hold out her hand. I picked up my ruler and gave six little taps and told her to her to stand in the corner. I didn't want to hurt the girl; the smacks were more for show than actual pain. All of a sudden the whole class burst out laughing. I, personally, didn't have a clue why they thought of such a thing as a whipping funny!
Unfortunately they laughed a little too loudly. Miss. Blount next door stormed into the classroom.
I didn't catch quite how she threatened us, but it had something to do with pyramids.
I was quite humiliated. My first day and I was already in trouble.
The bell sounded, and the students filed outside for lunch.
As they were leaving I buried my head in my hands. Things had not gone quite to plan.