NOTES: In this chapter, we look at the greatest part of any teacher's life: meetings. (Please note the heavy sarcasm in that statement.)
"I will crack their skulls with a cinderblock," Carol threatened.
Across the table, Clint frowned until all the lines on his face crinkled. "Let's not open with that," he suggested.
Maria Hill was running late. Of course she was; she was the administrator of a middle school with two little hellions of her own to pack into the car and off to school. Or, this morning, into Carol's classroom, devoid of all children. She'd parceled out the couple who usually started their day with her to the other special education teachers so she could participate in this farce Clint insisted was a conference.
She tapped her pen against the table. Clint shot her a dirty look, and she rolled her eyes. "What?"
He raised his hands from the tabletop. "I thought a weekend would mellow you out," he admitted. She suspected that the corner of his lip was twitching in a tiny smirk.
"Saturday mellowed me out. Yesterday, I started getting ready for work. Getting ready for work meant thinking about this. You can guess how it snowballed."
"Obviously."
"Barton, I'm trained in five forms of hand-to-hand combat. Do you really think you should be—"
A light knock at the door interrupted her train of thought, and when Carol glanced up, Maria Hill was standing in the doorway. "Are you ready for us?" she asked. She was smiling, but only in that forced-polite way.
Carol forced the same smile back. "Sure," she said.
It wasn't that there was anything wrong with Maria Hill, necessarily. She was a single mom, she worked hard, she cared about her kids and her job, and she showed up to every school event imaginable. There were a lot of parents who did worse. But as she walked into the room and the two messy-haired brats she called her twins trailed in behind her, Carol still couldn't quite shut off the part of her brain that was pissed.
Though, points went to Maria when the boys sat in exactly the chairs she pointed to without a moment's hesitation.
"Thanks for meeting with us," Clint said. He stood to shake her hand, and Carol followed. "We figured sooner was better."
"Absolutely," Maria agreed, sitting down. "And trust me when I say I've already talked to both of them, repeatedly, about this incident. They're sorry."
"We are," Keith offered. Colin said absolutely nothing.
"I'm sure they are," Clint replied, sporting his own version of the polite smile. "And if this was the only incident that'd happened in the last couple days, I'm not sure I would've asked you to come in."
"I would've," Carol volunteered, and then ignored Clint's dirty look.
"The point is, Miss Hill, that it looks like the boys are trying to pick off every easy-looking target they can find, and that's not something we tolerate around here."
Maria frowned. "Can you explain what you mean?"
"Sure: your boys are victimizing the kids they think won't fight back." Carol felt the heat of another of Clint's sharp looks, but purposely ignored it. "It's the same thing as last year, only there are no older brothers in the building to shove them down on the playground when they get caught."
Colin rolled his eyes. "I never did anything to Tom's sister."
"You sure?" To Clint's credit, he asked the question in the same breath as Carol. Then again, since everybody in the school'd heard about that playground fight, it would've been harder not to ask.
Colin crossed his arms and slunk down in the chair. "Look, I believe every year's a new start," Clint continued. "I don't know you, some of your classmates don't know you, you can be whoever you wanna be. And now's the time for you to do it, because peer pressure's gets worse when you're in middle school, not better. But this stops. Now."
"Or?" Keith asked carefully.
"Or you're going to be grounded for the rest of your natural lives," Maria snapped, and he flinched. "Do you know how embarrassing it is to get calls from the school next door about how both of you are harassing your classmates?" Her head twisted toward Colin, who looked at the floor. "To explain to my boss why I have to come in late today? I don't know why this keeps happening, but I'm not spending another year where I have to meet with your teachers twice a month to keep you from tormenting all your classmates!"
The last comment was punctuated by the first bell of the day. It echoed down the hallway, and Keith squirmed. On the other side of their mother, Colin glared at the floor. "Can we go to class?"
"Not until we're done here," his mother retorted.
"Might be good for them to head that direction." Carol frowned over at Clint, who shrugged. "Mister Rogers is probably looking for them, and it might be good to talk in private for a couple minutes."
Maria nodded, and the boys immediately each bolted to their feet. In the doorway, Colin shoved Keith, who shoved him back hard enough that he almost tripped. Carol considered shouting at them, but then they disappeared. The door slammed behind them.
Maria sighed. "I don't know what to tell you. They're not like this outside of school—well, except when they're tormenting each other—but they walk in this building and it's like they flip a switch."
"Have you tried them in different classes?" Clint asked.
"They were worse," Carol answered.
Maria nodded. "Third grade was open season on all their classmates. We end every year okay, summer camp goes fine, then they get back from Ed's and it all starts over again."
Clint glanced at Carol, who shrugged. "Ed?"
"Their dad," Maria replied with a hand-wave. "He lives in Virginia. They spend from their birthday—July nineteenth—until a week before school starts with him, his wife, and her kids." She shook her head. "I swear, they're just punishing me for making them come back."
"How long have you been divorced?" Carol asked.
"Most of their life." Maria's tone almost held a half-laugh. "I don't know what's going on with them, but I'm going to make sure this stops. Even if I have to sell every electronic in the house on eBay."
Carol barely resisted her urge to roll her eyes. "Have you considered maybe that there's more going on than—"
"Thank you, Miss Hill," Clint interrupted, standing. Carol scowled at him, but Maria followed suit. "I'm gonna keep calling if they keep acting up, get some of the other teachers in on this too. Maybe if we're coming at it from all the angles, they'll get that we're done."
"I hope so." Maria shook his hand again, leaving Carol to scramble up and follow suit. "Thank you."
"No problem," Clint said, and waved at her until she left the room.
Carol barely waited for the door to close before she turned on Clint. "What is wrong with you? She basically said, 'The kids only turn into hell-beasts when they come back from their dad's' and you toss her out? What happened to having this under control?"
He rolled his eyes. "Think about it, Carol," he returned. "This isn't like when you test a kid for the first time and you've gotta break it to his parents that he needs services. If she doesn't see it, us waving a flag's not gonna fix it."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"Pepper, for a start." He crossed his arms and shrugged. "Maybe pulling in last year's teachers and the specials and figuring out what they're into. Give them an outlet."
"Give them an outlet? They're bullies, Clint."
"And I was a fucking shithole of a kid 'till somebody pointed me in the right direction, too." He caught her eyes and pinned her with a serious look. "You really think it's gonna make more sense to bring her back in here? 'Cause I'll run down and stop her from leaving. But maybe we rope Pepper into this now and see if it does any good."
"Pepper'll want us dead."
"No, she'll want me dead. And probably them." Clint's mouth twisted into a tiny half-smile. "You can blame me."
Carol rolled her eyes. "Already on the agenda. But listen up," she said, and jabbed a finger into his chest. "This thing has a shelf-life of one mean-spirited shit show. Because if there's even a whiff of them picking on anybody the way they did Anna—and I mean anybody, not even one of my kids—and we're having my kind of heart-to-heart with Mom."
Clint held her eyes for a few long seconds before he finally nodded. Only when she dropped her finger did he add, "You're fucking terrifying, you know that?"
She shoved him in the shoulder. "Five forms of hand-to-hand. You don't want to mess with this."
"But what a way to go," he said with a grin, and she tossed her pen at him on his way out.
Pepper looked up from the files laid out on her desk when she heard the IM ping on her computer. She knew from the sound that it wasn't from Tony—he'd customized any ringtone that could possibly be associated with him. This was from Darcy, letting her know that her two o'clock appointment was here. Pepper gave the cumulative folders—one for a second grade girl and the other for her brother in kindergarten—a final glance before making her way into the main office.
Sitting in a chair in front of Darcy's countertop was an elderly gentleman. Pepper guessed that the striped collared shirt he wore was at least a decade old, and the khakis were dated as well. But he looked clean, didn't reek of cigarettes, and his eyes weren't bloodshot; that was more than a number of parents she'd met with before could say. "Mister Garrison?" she asked as she stepped around the counter.
"Yes, ma'am," he said standing from his chair.
She waved off the formality. "Please, call me Miss Potts. I'm the guidance counselor here. Miss Lewis said you requested a meeting with me?"
"Yes, I did." His left hand tinkered with some change in his pocket and even though he tried to maintain eye contact with her, his gaze kept shifting to the ground.
"Well, why don't we go back to my office so we can talk?" Pepper led him around the counter and into the short hallway where her office was located. She waved him to the one of the overstuffed chairs in her office. The kids liked them because they could almost disappear in them. "So, what brings you here today?"
"My grandkids—Macy and Devon—well, they're under my care for the time being."
Pepper flicked her eyes down to the folders on her desk to confirm what she already thought. "On their files, we have them listed in the custody of their mother, Diane."
The gentleman nodded, and Pepper saw his jaw tighten for a second. "My daughter. She and her husband—Gary—divorced about three years ago. He's moved out of state and recently remarried. He gave up his share of the custody when he moved away."
Pepper felt a knot growing in her stomach. "And Diane?"
He shook his head. "She dropped the kids off a week ago, saying she was going to go spend the night at her new boyfriend's. She hasn't been back since."
"Have you heard from her?"
He nodded. "She calls every night to talk to the kids, but I can't get two words in before she hurries off the phone. I drove past his place a few times; her car's there, but his is gone. I don't have a way to get in contact with him. I only knew where he lived because my granddaughter has a good enough sense of direction to lead me there." His fingers clenched into fists. "I didn't raise my daughter in a way that should make her think it's okay to abandon her kids."
"I'm sure you didn't, sir. But," and Pepper hated to ask the question but knew she needed to go through with it, "is that what you think she's done? Do you think she's run off for good?"
He paused a moment before answering. "I don't think so. She keeps telling the kids she's going to come back. And I know that could be a lie, but she loves those babies. I don't think she could stay away from them for too long."
Pepper nodded. "I certainly hope that's the case, too. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to see if she'll sign a letter stating that you have the ability to approve of medical care just in case—God forbid—something were to happen." She reached for one of her business cards and flipped it over. On the back she wrote a phone number she knew by heart. "This is the number for a friend of mine. His name is James Rhodes, and he's a social worker. He can help you get that letter if you want it. And he's another person who'd be happy to answer any questions you may have."
The older man accepted the card with a nod and placed it in his wallet. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll take all the help I can get."
Pepper tilted her head. "What else do you need assistance with?"
He shrugged. "Things are just so different than when I was raising Diane. I feel like I'm having to learn how to be a parent all over again. I just feel like I don't always know the right thing to do, the right thing to say. I'm not good with words. My wife—Cynthia—she always knew just what to say to make those kids smile." A wistful expression came across his face that quickly faded into one of loneliness. "She passed away last year."
"I'm so sorry."
He nodded and took a minute to collect his thoughts. "I barely survived being a parent with her; I have no idea how I can do this without her being around." He ended the thought with the rough noise of clearing his throat. Removing a handkerchief from his pocket, he quickly swiped at his eyes.
Pepper felt something break in her at the sight. "Are you making sure they're going to bed at a decent time?"
"Eight on the dot every night after they take a bath." He paused. "Is that a good time?"
She gave him a reassuring smile. "That's just fine. And baths are good, too. You're feeding them dinner?"
He nodded. "And a snack when they get home from school. And breakfast, too."
"Good. You know we serve breakfast here in the mornings, too. In case you run a little behind schedule."
He gave her a small smile with the first gleam of light in his eye she'd seen since they started talking. "I'm former military, ma'am; I don't believe in running behind schedule."
She laughed. "Can you give my husband a few tips on that matter?" His smile grew a bit more at her words. "And the food you're feeding them, it's not fast food every night or junk food all the time?"
"No ma'am. I don't know how to cook much, but I can grill with the best of them still. And the kids, they like those steamer bags of vegetables from the frozen foods aisle." He shrugged. "I think they just like to watch the bag get bigger in the microwave."
"Whatever it takes to get them to eat broccoli is fine. I haven't heard any complaints from their teachers, so I'm guessing they're coming to school in clean clothes everyday."
He nodded. "We've been staying at their house. I sleep in my daughter's bed. That way they can have all their clothes and their toys with them. Be more comfortable, sleep in their own beds."
She leaned forward in her seat. "It sounds like you're doing a better job than you give yourself credit for." He ducked his head at the compliment. "And they're doing okay here at school?"
He grinned. "It's all they talk about when they get home."
Pepper's eyes glanced at her files once more. "Miss Drew is Macy's teacher and Devon is in Doctor Banner's morning class?"
"Yes. Devon and I work on his worksheets when he gets home and he reads me stories while we wait for Macy to get home. Sometimes he makes up his own tales; he can't read all of his books yet."
Pepper smiled. "It shows a great imagination, and I like that in a kid. Besides, Doctor Banner is a great teacher. You're going to be amazed how much Devon will learn this year."
The man gave what could only be classified as a proud Grandpa smile. "Macy was in his class two years ago. She still talks about the day the baby chicks hatched from their eggs."
She nodded. "That's always an exciting time around here. What other questions do you have?"
He shook his head. "I think I just needed someone to listen to me for a minute. You've been very kind."
She smiled. "The card I gave you has my extension on it, if you ever need to call. Or you can talk to Miss Lewis again and make another appointment. I'd be more than happy to help. I'll make sure to talk to Macy and Devon in the near future and see how they're doing. And please let us know whenever you hear something about their mother. And—just so you know—you're doing a better job than most parents I talk to on a given day. Give yourself some credit."
He ducked his head again. "Thank you, ma'am."
"Miss Potts, please."
He looked her in the eye with grin. "Yes, ma'am."
She walked him out to the main office and had Darcy give him the extensions for both Jessica Drew and Bruce so he could call them and let them know what was going on. After waving him goodbye, she came back to her office to find Tony lounging across the oversized chair Mister Garrison had just vacated. "Shouldn't you be dodging the bodily fluids of first graders right about now?" she asked.
"It's Monday," he said, eyes never leaving his smartphone. "I'm on planning."
"Ah," she answered and sat in her chair with a sigh.
The noise caught his attention, and his face crinkled in concern as he looked up at her. "You okay?"
"We can't ever have kids. If something happens, they'd have to live with my parents. On the farm. I grew up on that farm. My hair is just now devoid of the fine aroma of pig manure."
"And they say I'm the one in this marriage who speaks with zero context going on," Tony muttered.
"I spend more time during the week than I want in meetings with parents who could not care less about the life they brought into this world. And then I spend this afternoon with a grandfather who's worried sick he's going to screw things up for his grandkids who are already having a hard time."
"Which kids?"
"The Hendrixes."
"Marcy and Purple Shirt?" he asked.
Pepper shook her head at him. "Macy and Devon."
"Yeah, that's what I said." He paused and swung his feet from dangling off the arm of the chair to down on the floor. "Do I want to know?"
"Their mom's an idiot. I hate stupid parents," she muttered as she put her feet up on her desk.
"Good lord, why on earth do you need shoes that big? You're already eight feet taller than the fifth grade girls without them."
"But then I wouldn't be eye-level with you, and that's kind of a deal breaker."
"For who?"
"Fury." She laughed as Tony's entire body shuttered.
"How did we draw the short straw?" Tony complained for about the fifteenth time in the last fifteen minutes, slouching down in his chair and crossing his arms. "We could be watching TV, or having sex, or having sex with the TV on like good red-blooded American— Ow!"
Pepper smiled like an innocent little flower and finger-waved at a few of the moms filtering into the room before digging her pink-painted death-talons out of the flesh of Tony's arm. Tony glared at her and her sly side-eye. "For the tenth time," she told him out of the corner of her mouth, "they're discussing the after-school program funds tonight."
"So we have to be here?" he retorted. "You know how this works. They decide what they want, I anonymously donate the rest, everybody's—"
"You cannot fix every problem by throwing money at it, Tony."
"Says who?"
"Says Fury, for one, who purposely threatened me that if you kept this up, he would—"
"Hey! Martial privilege! What's said in our bed stays in our bed, you can't tattle on me to Fury and expect to—"
"Friend Stark!" boomed a voice loud enough to shake the classroom windows, and Tony resisted his urge to slide right out of the uncomfortable plastic chair. Oh, sure, Thor Odinson was a great guy to know if your siding needed redone or you wanted to pave paradise to put up a parking lot, but not so much in these situations. Because in these situations, his meaty hand thundered down on Tony's shoulder, and Tony cringed. "I had hoped you'd attend this fine evening! After Henry told me about the incident involving the game with frogs and fractions—"
"Incident?" Pepper asked, raising her eyebrows.
Tony raised his hands to fend off the potential reappearance of her death-talons. "'Incident' is a pretty strong word for 'he got pissed and tossed the wireless mouse at the wall,' nothing I couldn't handle."
"—we had a long discussion about respecting others' property. And," Thor added, his grin growing, "Jane assembled a platter of apology brownies. She will be in with them momentarily."
"Take your time," Tony assured him, flashing his best thanks for the meddling but please don't slap me on the shoulder and give me a bone bruise grin. "I mean, it's not like I'm going anywhere. Have to be here for the big discussion on the technology budget."
"Of course," Thor replied. He grinned, shook Pepper's hand, and then wandered off to mingle with the rest of the parents.
When he was finally out of earshot, Tony glanced over to catch Pepper half-glaring at him. "What?"
"I can't decide whether I'm annoyed that you didn't tell me about the wireless mouse, or if I'm annoyed that you obviously just played up the whole situation for brownies."
"Okay, one," he returned, holding up his index finger, "it was a ten-buck off-brand mouse that was only on that computer because I needed to switch out the proper mouse port. It died a soldier's death, I buried it in a Kleenex box and everything."
Pepper raised one very pretty, very shapely eyebrow.
"And two," he added, employing a second finger for emphasis, "you know how this Odin-spawn thing works. They do something terrible, their mom bakes, we profit. Nobody criticizes lions for picking off the slow wildebeests."
"That's your defense?"
"That, and how they're really fantastic brownies." He leaned over to nudge her shoulder, and she rolled her eyes. Luckily that they'd gotten good at this marriage thing, though, or Tony might've missed how her lip'd started curling up in a smile. "C'mon. You don't want me to spend the next two hours acting like a petulant kid, here's your solution."
"Baked goods," she deadpanned.
"Delicious baked goods. And if you're good, I'll even share."
"Oh no," Pepper informed him, her eyes flicking in his direction while she stayed facing forward, "you will be sharing."
By the end of the PTA meeting, Tony'd made at least three witty and also helpful comments (he'd counted), explained twice why they really still needed some of the PTA discretionary funds to help out the parts of the after-school program not covered by the school board (like the parts where Tony's computers went through three times the wear-and-tear when all the kids who didn't have parents to come home to or babysitters waiting for them at the last bell trailed upstairs and sent him sad eyes until he let them play fraction games or Mavis Beacon) and how, yeah, he'd love to help pick out a couple tech gifts for the next fun fair raffle, just shoot him an e-mail—or shoot Pepper an e-mail, because she'll actually respond to it.
Proof positive, as if anybody needed one, that he maybe didn't completely hate meetings as much as he hated missing his couch. (The suggestion of holding future PTA sessions over Skype was voted down twenty-three to one, however. Tony was, unsurprisingly, the one.)
And also, as a side note, Jane Foster-Odinson seriously made the world's best brownies.
"You guys, uh, really go all-out," Bucky commented.
Bucky'd worked on the Accelerated Reader team at his previous school, heading up the fourth-grade team and helping to coax newer teachers through the process. But like most things, the AR program'd been plagued by cliquish in-fighting so immature that Bucky'd been surprised it came from the teachers rather than the students.
This, he decided as he read over Phil's agenda for their AR meeting, was very different.
"No," Clint corrected as he dumped creamer into his coffee. "Phil goes all out. Just wait another month or two, then come over to our place. Charts on the wall, post-its with reminders, notebooks filled with crazy AR code. You'd think I married a bookie."
"You'd like that," Phil returned.
"You just like the fantasy where I break kneecaps for you, baby." And while Bucky laughed at Clint's eyebrow-waggle and flash-bang grin, Phil rolled his eyes.
Besides himself, Phil, and Clint, the AR team consisted of Bruce (who'd settled behind one of the desks already and was sorting through a fresh batch of photocopies for his class the next morning), a first-grade teacher with a shock of red hair named Jean, a third-grade teacher with an unpronounceable last name Bucky was still struggling his way around ("Like 'Aurora,'" she explained indulgently, "but with an 'o' at the end."), and a fourth-grade teacher named Wanda who, last Bucky'd seen her, had been arguing loudly on the phone with her teenaged son. They took turns filling up paper cups with coffee stolen from the teacher's lounge and claiming the desks that'd been moved from Clint's usual pod formation into a rough approximation of a circle.
"Please tell me we're not handing Stark spreadsheet duty this year," Wanda commented as she settled into a chair. Next to Bucky, Clint nearly snorted his coffee.
"I still don't know how he embedded commentary in the hover-over on every cell," Jean agreed.
"No spreadsheets for Stark," Phil assured them both as sat down. Clint perched on top of the desk next to him, and Bucky picked the seat between he and Bruce. "I don't want to keep any of you too long, because everyone has a lot to do—"
Any joke about to spring from Clint's mouth was quelled with a quick look, and Bucky bit down on his smile.
"—but I wanted to make sure we're all on the same page getting started. As classes come in for library time next week, I'll be talking to them about competition and handing out the first sets of score sheets. Or, in the case of the younger ones, handing them out to teachers."
"You have to admit, Allison's 'unicorn and rainbow' drawing on every score sheet last year was a nice touch," Bruce offered with a tiny, sly smile.
"Until I had to add up the first-grade scores and couldn't read anything, sure," Jean replied.
"And until Stark could accuse everyone besides Bruce of cheating," Aurora-with-an-O added, which only caused Bruce's smile to grow.
"Right," Phil echoed, but his smile suggested that he hadn't minded the cheating debates.
"Next Monday, Darcy and one of our former students, Kate, are going to come up and help me relabel the last batch of books in the library," Phil continues. "As long as they don't get too distracted by nail art and Clint—"
"Hey!" Clint protested.
"—we should be ready to go by a week from Monday. I'm trying to work with the PTA and Fury to expand the monthly winners to include a quarterly and semester-long win, but there's some question as to whether the pizza budget can stretch that far."
Wanda sighed. "Maybe it's just me," she said, "and the fact I have two teenagers at home, but maybe it's time we tried something besides pizza. Extra recess, a movie day, some bartered-for computer lab time from Stark—"
Bruce snorted a tiny laugh. "Bribed-for, maybe."
"—home-baked PTA treats, something other than pizza."
"Those amazing Odinson brownies?" Clint suggested and, when Phil didn't immediately pick up his pen, leaned over to write it on Phil's legal pad for him.
Phil smacked his hand. "That might be a good compromise. I talked to Mister Odinson this morning—"
"Listened to him yell down the phone at you this morning," Jean murmured, and Aurora-with-a-O chuckled.
"—and he said that individual monthly winners will get extra tickets for some of the kid-friendly raffles at the fall fun fair. One of the prizes is an iPod."
"There are going to be brawls over that," Wanda pointed out.
"At the fun fair, yes," Phil admitted, "but it's on a Saturday. Hopefully, they'll work out most their drama before Monday."
Every teacher in the room turned to eye him, Bucky included.
"I said hopefully."
"I have to ask," Bucky finally said, putting down the painstakingly-prepared agenda to look over at Phil. "Is there a plan to help the special ed kids keep up? Maybe it's just me, but I always worried about that at my last school. It's probably not as big a deal with the little ones, but with the fourth- or fifth-graders, there might be more conflict."
"That's a P.C. way of putting it," Wanda said with a little smile.
"Carol's pretty on top of her kids, and she manages the other special ed teachers to make sure nobody feels left out," Phil explained. "The classroom teachers are pretty good at monitoring it, too, and there's a reason we have grade-level leaders to keep everything running smoothly."
"Next time you have an hour to kill, nab Wanda and ask her about the Great Dyslexia Battle of Aught-Eight." Wanda sat up a little straighter at Clint's proclamation, and Clint grinned. "Never before or since has a fourth-grader felt so bad about calling a classmate stupid."
"AR's serious business," Wanda declared, "and there's no way I'm letting anyone feel bad because they can't rack up the thousand points their speed-reader second-cousin can."
"She's the great equalizer," Aurora-with-an-o filled Bucky in with a slight wave of her hand.
"And terrifying," Bruce added quietly, and Wanda's laugh promptly filled the room.
They walked through the rest of Phil's agenda, mostly outlining processes and procedures for the upcoming AR launch. Phil encouraged each grade-leader to meet with the three other teachers at their grade level, as well as the appropriate special education teacher, to hammer out details before the frenzy started.
"Frenzy?" Bucky'd mouthed to Clint.
Clint's eyes had grown three times the size, and his nod was funeral-solemn. "Frenzy," he'd mouthed back.
After the meeting ended, Phil headed back to the library to lock up and double-check the library aide's work—"Micromanager," Clint accused, but his fingers lingered against Phil's arm as he nudged him in the direction of the door—and Bucky stuck around to help Clint rearrange his classroom. "He takes this pretty seriously," Bucky noted as he shoved desks back into their pods.
Clint nodded. "The way he tells it," he said, upturning chairs as he went, "one of the conferences he attended when he was getting his master's basically called library science a dying art and suggested they start going digital. I mean, before we even had the Kindle, they said this." He shrugged. "He loves the kids, and he loves what he does. And if it gets kids reading, it's worth it."
"And nobody worries about kids getting left out?" Bucky asked. Clint raised an eyebrow, and Bucky shook his head. "I probably worry too much about it, but any time you assign points, I just always feel like the end result is somebody ends up feeling awful about it. I mean, I wasn't a great reader when I was their age, and my only learning disability was that I was a stubborn little asshole."
Clint laughed. "We worry about it," he admitted after a couple seconds, "but I think about it this way: for every one kid who might feel left out, there's at least one of us keeping an eye on the whole situation. There's a whole classroom of kids with scores that'll keep them in the running for prizes, there's a special education teacher with her own prizes squirreled away in her desk, and there's Phil. And the second anybody's snotty about it," he added, "Wanda'll light them on fire."
Bucky snorted and shook his head. "Literally, or figuratively?"
"On her behalf," Clint replied, holding up his hands, "I plead the fifth."
"Alright, let's get settled, people." Fury's voice rang out over the group of staff members clustered in the library for the monthly team lead meeting. There was a representative from each grade level, as well as one for the specials teachers and one for the Special Education team.
Clint snagged one last cookie from the tray before taking his seat between Phil and Carol. His husband gave him a side-eye. "How many of those have you had?" he asked.
"Not enough," Clint answered.
Carol leaned around him with a predatory smile. "If you're worried he's going to pack on extra pounds, he could always go running with me after school instead of you, Phil."
Clint's head snapped to Phil. "Don't let her do that. Please. You'll become a widower, you know you will."
Phil gave a long-suffering sigh and shook his head at the pair of them. "My only concern is that the sudden sugar intake is going to cause him to bounce off the walls, and since the walls in here are covered with my books, I'm trying to contain a mess."
"Sounds like that's a constant theme in your relationship," Carol snarked.
"Can we get started please?" Fury demanded, glaring the trio down with his one eye. Clint raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and caught Bruce hiding a smile behind his hand at the next table over. "Alright, we have an hour to get through everything or some teacher's union is going to throw a fit at me for keeping you too long.
"Welcome back, everyone, to our first team lead meeting of the school year, and a special welcome to the newcomers. Joining us this year we have Ororo representing the third grade and Carol taking the lead for SpEd."
There was a smattering of polite applause, and Clint elbowed Carol in the side. "Congratulations on getting sucked in to a ton more work for barely any more pay."
She returned the elbow and smiled when Clint almost doubled over in pain. "Thanks, pal."
"Now that we've talked about who's new in here," Fury continued, "let's talk about the other new faces on the staff." He paused to turn to Missus Howard, the graying first grade team leader. "How are things going with Mister Parker?"
The older woman took a deep breath, and it was evident from the look on her face that she was choosing her words carefully. "He certainly gets along with the kids well. He just needs a little more focus."
Fury smirked at the answer. "I'm sure you are more than willing to help keep him in line."
Clint let his eyes flicker back and forth between the pair of them. He could always tell when he had a kid from Howard's class sitting at one of his desks. Four years later, and they were still sometimes too scared to ask questions or share their opinion with the class. He'd heard Jessica Drew wonder out loud if she needed to bring Pepper in to deal with PTSD cases once the kids moved on to second grade.
But on the other hand, Clint had heard numerous stories about the student teacher, Peter, over the years from May. If the kid had to be paired up with anyone on the staff, the resident Nazi drill instructor may not be a bad choice.
"And what about Miss Henson?" Fury asked the first grade team lead.
Mrs. Howard's shoulders rose and fell in an uninterested shrug. "I don't understand why there needs to be so much singing and dancing going on to learn things, but I suppose she's doing alright."
Fury turned his attention to Jessica Drew. "How's Mister Barnes working out?"
The young woman shrugged her shoulders. "I haven't heard any complaints from anyone. Helps that he already has a number of years of experience under his belt. And he hasn't killed the Odinson kid yet, which is more than I could say if he'd ended up on my roster."
Fury raised an eyebrow in the second grade teacher's direction. "You didn't happen to use some sort of influencing powers over my office staff to make sure he wasn't in your class, did you?"
Jessica's face was a textbook example of innocence—something Clint had grown to understand as a warning sign for trouble. "I have no idea what you're talking about," Jessica answered. Carol's shoulders vibrated next to Clint in silent laughter.
The principal shook his head. "Moving on. I've got complaints from the janitorial staff that the upstairs bathrooms by Barton's room are getting clogged with random objects and overflowing."
Clint felt his stomach go sour as Phil leaned over to whisper at him, "The Hills?"
The fifth grade teacher shook his head. "Doesn't sound like their MO, but they may be going all out this year. Who knows."
Fury continued. "It seems to be happening in the morning between the time fourth and third grades are switching for specials."
Wanda, who was seated on Bruce's right, muttered something under her breath before speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. "I'll take care of it."
"Thank you," Fury answered. He rose to hand out packets of information. "You don't get to keep these just yet; we'll be discussing them in our staff meeting in two weeks. But since I just got these today, I wanted you all to have a look."
Clint accepted a stapled set of papers and immediately flipped towards the back. In his hands was the newly printed breakdown of scores from last school year's state assessment. His index finger traced down the page until it stopped on the reading data for fifth grade. He pulled a face as Phil looked over his shoulder to read the information.
"Your kids scored higher than the state average, and had the second highest reading scores for fifth grade for the district. Quit pouting."
"They could've done better. And you know I'm going to hear it from Van Dyne about how her fifth graders read better than mine."
Phil rolled his eyes. "Janet teaches at the most affluent school in the district. They hardly have any English as a Second Language students. She'd better have the top score."
"Yeah," Clint muttered, but his eyes were focused on which sections within the reading questions were the weakest for his kids last year. His brain quickly began thinking of mini-exercises on those topics to reinforce information with this year's kids.
"Overall," Fury said over the sounds of pages being flipped, "I'm quite pleased with how we did last year. I know you all will want to do better, and that you're going to push our kids to do better this year."
"Do we know if there are going to be any changes to this year's assessment? Anything we should prepare for?" Ororo asked.
"Only rumors I'm hearing are another set of changes for what is and isn't acceptable resources for SpEd students to use," Fury answered, pointing his look at Carol.
She sighed. "Great. Any chance they'll know for sure before they actually give us the tests in May or are we going to have to cover our ass—I mean selves? I don't want my team threatened with accusations of cheating and letters about having our licenses removed."
"It hasn't gotten that bad," Fury countered.
"Yet," Carol responded under breath.
"We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Try not to stress about it too much. I know that's like telling Stark to stop fixing his hair every time he walks past a reflective surface, but oh well." Fury looked down at his notes. "Let's go around the room with updates. What do you all have for me?"
There wasn't too much to discuss since they were now easing into the lull that always followed the madness of getting a school year started. Staff and students alike were getting into their new routine.
Phil brought everyone up to speed on his first AR meeting of the year and how things were progressing with that. Clint took the opportunity to share his plans for the upcoming canned food drive he and Steve put on every year at the beginning of November in order to get groceries to some of the lower income families in the area by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. "We all know the real battle is going to be for any place below third since there's no doubt Thor is going to be bringing in palettes of canned vegetables to make sure his kids' classes take the top spots."
Bruce smiled at him. "The one upside to having an Odinson in your class."
Fury went on to discuss how the PTA agreed to give some discretionary funds to go towards technology for the school, and Clint watched out of the corner of his eye as Phil made a note in his phone to talk to Tony about that.
"Anything else?" Fury asked from the group. When they were all silent, he rose from his chair. "I'm going to need those assessment data packets back since they haven't been officially released yet. You will deny seeing them if anyone asks."
Clint skimmed through the data once more in an effort to burn the information into his brain before Fury came around to him, but the numbers were all starting to swirl around each other.
Phil leaned in to whisper in his ear again. "I snuck pictures of it on my phone; don't worry about it."
"That is so hot."