An Incident

The Secret School

Written by Avi

Illustrated by Brian Floca

THE STORY SO FAR: Ida was chosen by her classmates to be teacher at their one-room school. Aside from being harder than she thought, it has taken her from her own studies.

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Ida’s dilemma — how to be teacher, student, part of her family, plus herself — remained. Even as she constantly reminded herself that she needed to spend more time on her own studies, she was discovering she enjoyed teaching.

At school, using patterns firmly established by Miss Fletcher, she drove the students on. That included reading and memorizing from their 15-year-old set of McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers, reviewing bits of geography, (names of states, capitals, and rivers), and going over the facts of United States history, (names of presidents in order, famous battles, important heroes). There were times for penmanship, bookkeeping, and grammar exercises — which meant parsing sentences or doing problems on the blackboard. Singing selections from the Old Favorite Song Book plus recitations of memorized literature passages rounded out the day.

On Friday afternoon the weekly spelling contest was held, with Natasha Ashneski, as usual, setting down all others. Tom won in mathematics. Ida added “High Marks” for both in the school ledger.

Each day, Ida worked with or listened to each student. Sometimes it was in twos or threes. Or alone. While she wasn’t spending time with them, the children were either working by themselves, memorizing, working with each other, studying together if on the same level, or helping one another if they were not. When they became tired, or bored — which happened — they sat quietly, day dreaming, staring out the windows at the mountains, listening to the other lessons that buzzed ceaselessly around them. Of course there were arguments, spats, even mean words — some of which brought tears. Each bit took sorting out.

Then there were school chores. Sweeping, mopping, cutting and hauling wood, dusting, taking out ashes, polishing desks, cleaning the privies, window washing. Everybody did some of everything.

Ida was beginning to think things were truly going well. Even Herbert was in school more than out. Then one day, as they were driving home, Felix said, “Ida, guess what Tom said?”

“What?”