Ruth looked out over the rows of faces. She smiled, but no one smiled back. The first order of business was seeing who all was here. She laid her Bible down on the desk to pick up the attendance list and called out their names one by one and attempted to commit them to memory.
"Teresa Hernandez?"
The kids all pointed at a little girl with sleek black hair carefully plaited into braids and olive skin.
"Teresa only speaks Spanish," Mercy almost whispered. She became extremely soft spoken in a public setting, and she had to strain to hear.
She looked back at the girl. She surely knew her own name. She looked a little coldly at her. She wondered how good of a teacher the short-lived Mr. Daly had been.
"Hugh Kelley."
"Hugh speaks Gaelic and Spanish," Mercy informed her as a ginger-haired boy raised his hand.
"But not English?"
She shook her head.
How could she teach students who didn't even know English, but she wasn't about to turn them away. She'd just have to be more creative with their lessons. At least Teresa had someone she could talk to.
"Okay, children, start your lessons, and I'll call you up as I need you."
Some of the younger children had trouble getting started since they couldn't read, and Teresa and Hugh had nowhere to start as they didn't know English. She got the older girls to pair up with them, since she couldn't work with them all at once.
The classroom got quiet as they all began to study their lessons. This might turn out to be easier than she thought. She decided to use the attendance list to call them up, and Margaret Brannon was first.
"Margaret, I need you to come recite your lesson."
"I don't want to," she mumbled.
"You might not, but you have to."
"I don't want to," she yelled. Then the girl flinched, realizing her mistake. She obviously expected a blow to come either with a ruler or a pointer.
Ruth couldn't say it wasn't tempting, and it wasn't that she was altogether against physical discipline. She believed there were times it was warranted when it wasn't born of a parent or teacher's anger or frustration. She also believed there were better ways for a child to learn right from wrong. Instilling fear wasn't as effective as a child learning why it wasn't the right thing to do.
"We'll talk about this at noon," she said, keeping her tone so calm and even. The girl's eyes grew twice their normal size, fearing it all the more for not knowing what the punishment would be. "Now, it appears you got to your second lesson," she said, pointing to the open book. "I need to hear you read it."
The girl stumbled through the lesson from the McGuffey's Reader, and she wondered if she was truly ready for the 2nd reader. It seemed forever before she got through the first paragraph and started the next.
"I hop," Margaret said.
"Hope," Ruth corrected.
"I hope you have said your..."
"Prayers."
"Prayers and..." the girl began stumped once again.
Ruth finished the sentence for her. "Thanked your Father in heaven for all His goodness. Why don't you study Lesson 1 again for tomorrow, and we'll see how you do with that."
The girl all but ran for the safety of her seat. It made sense now why reciting the lesson had evoked such emotion her, but she still couldn't excuse her disrespect.
With the 2 non-English speakers, she simply tried to teach them some English, using the pictures in their books. Hugh seemed to be trying, but Teresa mostly stared at her, making her wonder if she might be a little simple.
Later that morning, she had to turn her back to the class to write the topic of the theme she had decided to give the older children: Why Did the Roman Empire Fall?
She hadn't even gotten to Roman yet when a tiny white piece of paper that came from the paper she had just handed out flew and hit just above the i in Did.
Annoying but maybe if she just ignored it, it would stop. That theory quickly proved untrue and a larger wad landed in her pulled-back hair. She picked it out, shuddering slightly to find it wet.
She turned to find the source of the wads and wasn't terribly surprised to spot Walter in the process of flicking another. This one aimed at a girl on the third row. And his two companions were in the process of joining him if their laughter were any indication.
"I expect the oldest children in here to set an example for the younger, and if ya'll can't do that and if you all ain't interested in learning, maybe you boys should ask yourselves what you're even doing here."
"Our parents pay your salary, so it shouldn't matter to you," Burr said, eliciting a few chuckles from the back rows.
"That may have been true for Mr. Daly, but your parents don't pay my salary."
"Plus, it gets us out of chores," Lemuel said with a wide, lazy grin as he leaned back in his seat.
Walter's new spitball became lodged in the hair of the younger boy in front of him.
She felt the heat on her face at barely controlled anger. "Lemuel, if you're going to slouch in my classroom, you can spend the noon hour with me, where we can work on the proper way to sit. And Burr, seeing as how you and your parents are getting a nearly free education, you can meet me after school to clean my chalkboard. And you, Walter, you can sit up here on the front row until you learn to act your age." She took his paper and pen from him and laid it on the desk.
Walter turned a bright red up to the tips of his ears as he skulked up to the front and took his seat by the youngest boys, slouching worse than Lemuel.
She was happy when noon came and all the children ran out except for Mercy and Margaret. She'd almost forgotten about Margaret. She hadn't even thought of a punishment beyond missing recess. She came up with one on the spur of the moment. "You will quickly eat your lunch because you're going to write sentences, a 100 of them."
She wrote out the first line for her, "I will not raise my voice in anger."
"My hand hurts," the child complained after filling the board completely with 20 of them. "And I don't have room for no more."
"I'm very sorry about that. Erase and write again. You know it's good for your penmanship and good for your character. Next time maybe you'll remember to use a soft voice when communicating, and for the record, what you should have said this morning was yes, ma'am." She did feel sorry for her, but the last thing she could do was back down or the children would take it as she didn't mean what she said.
She ought to have forced Mercy outside to play and eat with the other children, but she didn't have the energy for it at the moment.
Halfway into lunch, shouts suddenly arose from outside, and she ran to the window to see what was happening. The students were surrounding two boys, who were really pummeling on each other.
"Oh, good heavens!" Ruth exclaimed.
"There's always a fight at the nooning," Mercy said matter-of-factly.
"The same children?"
She shook her head.
So the kids took turns wailing on one another. What had she gotten herself into? Was she in charge of a school or a prison?
She wasted no more time and ran outside to put a stop to it. She grabbed each boy by the back of his shirt. Fortunately, they were small enough that it wasn't hard to physically separate them.
"If we have a problem with each other, we work it out by talking. You ain't a going to solve problems this way. Understood?"
One of the boys swiped at his bloody nose but continued to look sullenly at her and the other child. The boy mumbled an unconvincing, "Yes ma'am." She forced them to apologize to each other and brought them in to sit out the rest of the hour.
The afternoon was fairly uneventful compared to the morning, but she believed she was more joyous than the children when 2:00 came.
"Look at all that chalk dust," Burr complained, which had mostly been created from all of Margaret's sentences. "I got chores waiting for me at home. And a theme paper to write."
"I'm sure you can find time to fit it into your schedule, or I can find the time to fit talking to your parents into mine."
If looks could kill, but she met his stare until he buckled and made his way to the board.
"You'll need a bucket of water. I have the rag at my desk, and you'll also need to take the erasers outside and clap them." To Mercy, she said, "You can run on home. Tell your father I'll be along directly."
She stood up and picked up her book and slate, but she hesitated.
"Go on. I won't be long."
Mercy walked out, looking back only once. She clearly wanted to say something, but Burr's presence kept her from doing it.
Ruth waited until Burr had finished about 15 minutes later and then she did some last little cleaning before being the last to leave.
She got the fright of her life to find Walter, Lemuel, and Burr waiting for her outside.
"Ya'll gave me a start," she told them. "Was there something you boys needed?"
"You humiliate us, we'll humiliate you," Walter warned.
They all took a step closer to her in an act of intimidation. She took a deep breath and didn't move an inch. She was not afraid of children. Even children who were much bigger than her. She wondered though as they walked away if perhaps she should be.
