Reporter-At-Large: An 8th Grade English Project

Reporter-At-Large

A 8th Grade English Project

Note: This piece was written for my English class in 8th grade. My entire class was given a day off from school, during which time we 'shadowed' a professional in a career that interested us. We took notes over the course of the day, and then wrote up a paper describing our experience. I chose to shadow my younger sister's fourth grade class, in my old elementary school. Oh, and in case your wondering, I got an A :-)

The door I was walking through looked almost the same as it had three years ago, the last time I had shut that door as a student of Edgewood Elementary School. Just one thing was different; now on the glass there was a sign announcing a seminar about ‘Bullies and Victims’ which, I noted, would be given by the youth counselor from the Scarsdale Middle School.

No one was in the halls and although my ears reported it was quiet, my eyes said otherwise. The hallway was covered in bright colors. Pictures, poems, stories and more leaped off the wall into my eyes, filling them with their bright colors. Walking down the hall, I glanced into the music room and instantly noticed a difference, the old scratched black grand piano that once had lounged in the middle of the room was gone. The row of blue plastic chairs was gone. Instead there were bleachers in the back and in the middle of the room there was a slightly lopsided circle made up of patriotic red, white and blue tape. I knew that Ms. Begin, the chorus teacher when I had gone to Edgewood had quit and now Mr. Edoph taught music, but I didn’t know the room had gotten a facelift too.

The next door to my right was my destination: Room 19, Ms. Tyler’s room. The bulletin board by her classroom was a sun yellow and had a bright red border. On it were poems by Ms. Tyler’s class and musical notes. In big black letters in the middle of the board it said ‘Poetry is Music’.

The door to Room 19 had a sign on it with a quote that, I would later learn, looked like the many other quotes hanging around the room. The room inside was dark, not pitch black like midnight but the dark blue of dusk after the sun has set. I looked around the hallway, not sure if I should wait out here for Ms. Tyler, go inside and wait there, or go back outside to the playground and talk to Eve, a friend of mine who was also here as part of our Report-At-Large project for English.

I was about to go outside and wait for the bell I remembered so well, to call me and tell me that Ms. Tyler was in her room when the doorknob turned in my hands and the door opened. A woman was standing there. Her short hair was a light brown dusted with blonde streaks. She had on a pastel pink sleeveless dress that came down to about mid-calf over a white T-shirt; she also had white stockings and leather sandals. On her wrists there were a silver bracelet and watch, and a gold cross hanging on a gold chain around her neck. She had small hoop earrings. "Hi you must be Catherine. I am going to get a cup of coffee, so do you want to go outside?"

"Okay, I’d better turn on the lights" The florescent lights hanging from the ceiling flooded the room with artificial rays. "Here you go, I’ll be back."

I walked through the now lit room to the corner opposite the door and sat down on a tall stool with a black leather seat. There I was surrounded by shelves filled with books and yellow folders almost identical to the many I had at home that were filled with poems, stories and reports I had written during my first five years in Scarsdale. To my right there was another bulletin board with poems but these poems were made by both the students and more well known authors. This bulletin board was red with a yellow border and pictures accompanied the poems. Behind me there was another board with photographs decorating it. These pictures were of this year’s class, mostly of when they were younger.

The silence of the hall was but a memory as my ears filled with the sounds of the radio by the door tuned to a classical music station.

In what was about the middle of the room there were three groups of desks, with seven desks in each group. These desks were the same ones that had been there when I was there. Unlike the ones in the middle school, there was a space under the desktop with enough space to store pencils, papers, books, erasers, staplers and the assorted trinkets that the student collected. All the desks had an upside-down reddish-brown chair on top of it; none of the students had come and removed the desk’s burdens yet. In all other ways they were different, some messy, some neat, some almost empty, some full. One desk even had a jacket spilling out of it on to the floor.

I started to hear kids talking out in the halls, mumbling about this and that, but no one had walked through the door since Ms. Tyler had left.

Two wires were strung across the room, too high up for me to reach and much too high for the fourth graders. On these wires hung large pieces of paper, which had obviously come from the large easel in the front of the room. Papers from the same easel were also stuck to the wall. On these papers, in the black marker, lists of spelling words, the ‘said’ list and the TMS laboratory procedure were displayed so the whole class could see them. Around the room quotes were hanging, on the same white paper with the same black marker as the quote on the door. Eleanor Roosevelt and others offered children their wisdom.

Across the room in the little indent used as the coat rack, there stood one lone Scarsdale Travel Team jacket, the maroon standing out against the white walls and brown wood.

I was just about to get up and see what was to the left of the coat rack (a bookcase that jutted out from the wall was blocking my view) when my ears started screaming. The bell! I had forgotten how loud it was. This sharp sound was followed by a stampede, as feet carried the students to their classes.

The first one inside was Carolyn, my sister. She looked at me, said ‘hi,’ and put her lunch and jacket away. She was the exception, not the rule. As the other kids filtered in they kept glancing at me, putting their lunch away, glancing at me, talking to their friends, glancing at me, taking down their chairs, and glancing at me.

The kids wore T-shirts, leggings, jeans, mesh shorts, and sweatshirts. The girls’ hair was about shoulder length, the colors ranging from black to blonde, and they wore it either in a ponytail of just let it hang down.

Ms. Tyler walked back in. ‘Ms. Tyler, remember . . .’ a child prompted. ‘Oh, Margarita, we have something for you. Carolyn go get it please’

Carolyn went to get a flimsy, colorful piece of folded paper that I recognized as a book order. A book order was a semi-monthly catalogue that was given to students. Inside books for that age group were mixed with comics, fan clubs and computer games.

Ms. Tyler starting writing on the easel in the front of the room with the same black marker as she had used to write the quotes and signs with.

‘Today we welcome Catherine Fisher
to our class. She will be shadowing
us for the day. Also standardized
TESTING!’

After reading this, one boy mentioned that his sister had to go to a place also today. Ms. Tyler’s voice rose above the drone of voices, ‘Morning meeting in 5 minutes.’ I noticed that there were two girls sitting on two desks placed out of the way to one side of the blackboard, angled so that a person sitting there could easily see the whole blackboard. On the blackboard, which was actually a dark green color, not black, another quote and the letter ‘w’ were written in cerise letters. On the end farthest from the desks, closer to the door I had come through (the other one was blocked off by one of the kids’ projects) was today’s schedule.

I focused on just listening for a second and heard when this was due, who had won that kickball game and who was still in the running. I also learned some tips for a Star Wars video game. Many kids were settling down now and copying the writing on the board, so I decided to take a closer look at the project hanging on the unusable door. It was a poster of Egyptian numbers. It had a table that showed the Arabic number, a verbal description of the hieroglyphic that represents that number and a drawing of the hieroglyphic. It had the numbers 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 1,000,000. In that corner of the room there were also two dream catchers hanging from the wooden trim of the wall. One was about the size of my fist and the other was about three times that size. On the other side of the door were bulletins telling when the kids had to go to their separate band and orchestra practices.

The second bell was as loud and surprising as the first and I saw that the kids also seemed to jump slightly when it rang. A few more kids came in.

Ms. Tyler sat in the chair next to the easel; kids started to sit on the floor around her in a messy half circle and the morning meeting started.

Lindsay B who took attendance had taken down the attendance card of someone who was here. Ms. Tyler called the nurse and explained it to her, problem solved.

The way standardized testing interferes with their class activities. Ms. Tyler asked for people’s opinions about this. Some people complained about how they didn’t get to do exercise or spelling (which for me would not be a big sacrifice). Although there wasn’t any real solution, today’s test was the last one so there would be no more problems.

During their discussion, I realized that this class was much more organized then my fourth grade class was. In my classes it was, ‘we will do the DMP math booklet for about 30 minutes or until everyone is done.’ The only things that had a certain time were specials (art, gym, music) and times when we were signed up for the computer room. Here it was 11:30 math, 2:00 computer room and 2:40 reading.

There were only 24 days of school left and who would get the pillows? ‘Getting the pillows’ means that for one whole day you could use one of the two pillows for whatever you wanted (except pillow fights). It became a math problem as the kids tried to figure out how many people could use the pillows, and how many times they would get one. Ms. Tyler told the kids that if they had any solutions to tell her.

-"We have a lacrosse game on…" "Is this a sports thing? Save sports for Monday."

-"I read a book on gardening in class and now me and my mom are making a greenhouse in back of our house."

-"I got these stones from my relatives. They are from Saudi Arabia, Russia, Asia and Poland. They are really small." "Why don’t you put them on the back table or on your desk so that everyone can look at them later."

-"Professor Doggy Bone is going to a basketball game." Professor Doggy Bone is a stuffed Dalmatian made by Ty ™ but he wasn’t a Beanie Baby ©. He is a little taller then a normal one and he can sit up by himself. He also has a pair of glasses and a collar made from beads, some of which have letters on them. Ms. Tyler had a response to that comment "You should write a story about Professor Doggy Bone. That way you can expand his character"

After everyone was finished, one girl said what the date was and what the weather was supposed to be like. Then we said the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’, facing the flag hanging by the door with the Egyptian numbers on it.

And now for the standardized test. I had had many of those tests, at least one every year, and they were all the same. Multiple choice, you can only use the pencils given to you, color in the dot. Even the test booklets used the same style, same sign to tell you to stop, to turn the page, do this, do that, almost identical directions (I had them memorized almost word for word by fourth grade). But these were different, the state was testing out a new kind of standardized test. These were not multiple choice. You had to show your work and some of the questions were questions that asked ‘why?’ not ‘what?’

They still passed out pencils; they also passed out clear rulers and plastic Baggies holding colored plastic shapes. The tests were stapled together, not glued into a book. After everything was passed out, ("Does everyone have 14 pattern piece and 6 tiles?") everyone moved their desks out of the groups into separate areas. There were tons of movements in the room, people sharpening pencils, handing out things, getting thing they didn’t have and moving the desks. And there was the slight undertone of talking that always seems to pop up when a teacher stops talking.

"Will you trade your blue diamond for my white diamond?" "Oh-oh, we don’t have enough rulers, does anyone have a clear ruler with centimeters on it?" "Mine’s clear, but it is yellow." "Mine’s broken." "Mine only has inches." "Why don’t you use the yellow one? It’s clear enough. And you can use her ruler." "Andrew sit down."

Lauren hung a sign on the door that said "testing, please don’t disturb" and closed the door.

"Count your blocks. You should have 14 tiles and 6 blocks." "I have 15 tiles" "I don’t have a diamond." Blocks were passed out to those who needed more. "Is everyone ready? Ok, this test is part 3 of the sample tests." "When do we use the blocks?" "You can use the blocks whenever you need them, a problem needs blocks if it has a symbol on it like the ones on the front page." "Will this be harder then the other two?" "Probably, now don’t open the books until I tell you to."

That was a familiar phrase. But the books were not, they were white (not the gray newsprint that we had used) and were stapled together into a packet. On the front page there were directions, which Ms. Tyler read to the class.

The directions told the students they would have one hour to complete the test and they could use the tools, the tiles, pattern blocks, and rulers, whenever they needed them. If you needed to use the ruler there was a little ruler. If you needed the tiles there was a square made up of 4 smaller squares and if you needed the pattern blocks there was a dark triangle on top of a white rhombus on top of a dark rectangle. All work must be shown in the booklet, no scrap paper would be given. Undo the ties around the bags with the blocks now. Write the answers on the lines given. Write you name, last name first, on the first page in the space given, write the name of your school on the line below.

One last instruction was given, "Make sure you have a book to read." People took books out of their desks and I glanced at some of the titles:

The kids looked at the teacher or just into space. "And you may begin." The sound of hands turning pages almost in unison was the start of the test. Like our silent sail this test wasn’t very silent. Ms. Tyler’s shoes squeaked, the window grated as it was opened. Pages turning, pencils writing.

Ms. Tyler gave me a copy of the test so I could see what they were doing. On the front was a picture of three kids, which reminded me of my DMP math books. DMP math books were the ridiculed booklets that had been almost the only math that I had ever done from 1^st grade to fifth grade. They taught in a style that was more appropriate for kindergartners then fifth graders. They were full of pictures, which by the time we had finished the book, were covered with scars, blood, fangs and other oddities. As I flipped through the booklet, I noticed the pictures, not just the number of them but their size, some of them took up half the page.

But the problems were similar to the problems I remembered were in the standardized test I took. They taught percents by talking about how many people like a sport and they taught fractions by asking what fraction of the cookies are chocolate chip.

After looking through the booklet I started listening again. A groan from one of the kids who couldn’t get the answer, writing, turning pages, music coming from next door. The music class was singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Some one coughed, whispers were exchanged as Ms. Tyler explained a problem to a kid. Nothing was happening, so now was a good time to continue describing the room.

On one of the wires six Easter Egg look-a-likes were hanging. They were decorated with purple, pink, blue and white stripes and lines and yellow chicks and multicolored flowers. On the end closest to the board there hung a piece of blue construction paper. The side facing me had nothing written on it and I decided against moving to the other side of the paper to see if anything was there. I might disturb some of the kids who were taking the test.

The second wire had a red calculator with yellow and white buttons draped over it, along with some lists of rules and procedures.

I caught a glimpse of Ms. Tyler’s desk, piled high on the desktop were many, colorful things that reminded me of the backpack that I had bought in Puerto Rico with its rainbow fish and birds.

I also saw the tops of the students’ desks. All the desks had a strip of white paper laminated onto the desk. On it was the alphabet in cursive letters, capitals on the top and lowercase on the bottom. Some desks had the time’s tables up to 12 on them; they were taped to the desks right below the cursive letters. One girl had colored hers in with a marker so it looked like a checkerboard with green, red and yellow squares. A black-brown phone stood on the wall over the now quiet boom box, occasionally uttering a sharp ring to announce a call.

On the other side of the door there were three glass boxes, one for the guinea pig, Chip, one for the two gerbils, Tickle and Nickel and one for the four snails. In back of the menagerie was a large calendar for the month of May with paper cutouts of flowers pinned on the days past. Newspaper clippings adorned the sides of the calendar.

I snapped out of the describing trance I was in, and checked the student progress, a lot of kids were done and were reading their books or watching the clocks. I looked at the clock and saw the minute hand move to the 9. 12 minutes left. Only a few kids were still working on the test.

I looked out the window and saw snowflakes painted on the window with white acrylic paint; the janitors must love that. "Stop writing, pencils down." A quick glance at the clock proved Ms. Tyler right; it was 10:21.

"Ok, count your pieces before putting them in the bags, 14 tiles and 6 pattern blocks. No talking. When I call your name come up and give me the booklet. Tim . . . Greg . . .Daniel . . .Sara . . .Lauren collect the rulers, Margarita collect the pattern blocks, Tim collect the tiles, Jennifer collect the pencils"

"Mumble, mumble, yak, yak" "Who’s collecting the pencils?" "I am" a blond-haired girl replied. "Count all the pencils, please. Put your desks together and get your snacks and jackets."

Those words had a magical effect on the class. A living traffic jam by the coat racks, so much talking I could only hear snatched of it, "No… I…256…have to… your desks...take your head- er -hat off" Laughing erupted.

Ms. Tyler had put on a white sweater with flowers embroidered on it and carried a water bottle. "Line up." A crowd slightly resembling a line formed, and was lead out into the hall. Some stragglers were still at the coat rack, and I waited for them. Strangely, in the hall the kids were quiet and it wasn’t until they reached the empty playground that they started talking again.

As the kids ran to be first on the slide, swings or monkey bars other kids ran out from what was the first, second and kindergarten section of Edgewood. Only one big difference between the playground that lay before me and the one I remembered, someone had put in a new set of money bars where the bone shaped ones once were. A red fire engine shaped unit complete with tires replaced it. I sat down on the wooden bench on the side of the blacktop and Ms. Tyler sat down too.

"How’s your paper going so far?" Ms. Tyler inquired. "Ok, that test was different then the ones I took, a lot of things are different." "You should mention the differences when you write the paper." I was just about to ask her some of the questions I had thought up during the test when a flood of girls swamped me. Carolyn and her friends had decided to make sure I wasn’t writing anything bad about them in the little white notebook I was always scribbling in.

"Let me see it Catherine." "You have really messy handwriting." "Mine is neater." "Your right it is." "Let me write in it." Soon a page in my notebook was filled with signatures that actually were neater than my hurried notes. Now the question, "Did you write anything bad about me?" "Of course, I saw you cheating on the test." I jokingly replied. After making sure that I hadn’t written anything bad (that was legible) they moved about two yards away and started playing hopscotch. But they came back, and we talked, and somehow the subject turned to ‘Mercy’, a game for two people in which you hold each others hand and twist their arms until you or they say "mercy". I told them how I knew a girl who could beat anyone at mercy. Margarita, the best in that group, asked if I would play her, "Sure".

That was a mistake. Although neither of us won, I carried two red marks just below my knuckles for the rest of the day. After they decided to leave me alone I was free to write in peace. The playground was almost full of screaming kids playing many of the games I played. Box-ball courts, the swings, and the money bars were popular places as was the blacktop were the kids would just wander around talking.

Unfortunately the flock of girls returned. They tangoed, they stole my notebook, they made more comments about my handwriting, and mostly they convinced me they were all crazy. Finally the toot of a whistle ended their madness and they lined up in front of the double doors that would lead them back to their classroom.

The walk back up the stairs was uneventful. Instead of going back to the classroom the kids ran in, threw their jackets in the direction of the rack, and ran out. Then they filed into the music room and sat on the bleachers in the back of the room, the girls on one side and the boys on another. On one side of the room there was a cabinet that lined the wall that came up to my knees. I sat on it and waited.

Mr. Edoph walked in. He was wearing a dress shirt and dark pants; his brown hair was pulled back. Seeing that everyone was here he announced "We will sing two songs and then we can use the instruments." The first song was from Grease. "We go together like boop ba dowa boop de bo wa. Together, forever, like…" harmonious voices proclaimed. The light brown piano belted out the harmony. There were two large books leaning against it. But the group of girls who had terrorized me at recess decided they weren’t going to sing, instead they kept leaning over and making strange faces.

At the end of the song he passed out the music for the second song. Not photocopied pieces of paper with the words on it but the actual music with the notes and words. The kids were not the most attentive, they talked, they lay down on the bleachers, and they leaned over to talk to kids they couldn’t see. After the song, which I couldn’t make out the words to, the kids seemed to wake up slightly. "Who wants to play the xylophone?" That woke them up. Half the class raised their hands, "Choose a partner" Each kid he pointed to looked at, grabbed the hand of, or had already chosen another kid. Everyone else then got up and took a pair of bongo drums. As the kids sat down on the floor a huge racket arose. Xylophones rang and drums pounded until "Stop". "The people who have the bells play this, F A B G" Mr. Edoph said pointing to the notes drawn on the board. The xylophones complied. "Drums do something that goes with that." Pound, pound, boom, pound. "Together now." A short melody over a steady beat commenced. The music class consisted of mainly just that, Mr. Edoph told the kids what to play and they did. Or some did, some didn’t. Some got it right, some got it wrong causing the sound that emerged to be a melody just barely overcoming a jumble of notes.

When they returned to the class it was time for math. The kids sat on the floor in front of the easel after getting their homework out from the lair of their desks. "We haven’t corrected Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights’ homework yet so get those out." After everyone was sitting down again Ms. Tyler spoke again, "Sara, did you do DAP 48?" "Yes" "Lauren did you do it?" "Yes."

After she found out whether or not they had done Monday night’s math homework she asked, "What was the first question?" Find the factors of 52. She wrote a 52 on the easel. "How did you do it?" I put a little carrot under the 52 and wrote 26 and 2 and I put a carrot under the 26 and wrote 2 and 13, then I circled the…." Math is not my favorite subject and soon my bored hand, which refused to take any more notes about math, had doodled all over my page of notes. The page now looked like one from my math class. The words and numbers danced with faces and shapes until my already bad handwriting was almost unreadable.

After math it was time for lunch. There was a scramble for lunches and a stampede down the stairs. I noticed a poster for the Middle School play, "Bye-Bye Birdie" on the landing of the stairs by the lost and found, which was itself lost in a pile of jackets, lunch boxes, hats, gloves, and other assorted articles of clothing. I stopped by the art room and Eve joined me with her lunch in hand.

Outside the kids, were playing the same games as during recess. When we saw some of the kids in Ms. Tyler’s class go into the lunchroom we went in also and ate lunch. For me this was a bagel with butter, a small salad with slightly wilted leaves of lettuce and a can of iced tea. After we were done eating we went back to the art room were Ms. Pasternack was painting flowers on huge pieces of colored paper for the spring concert. We helped her, like we had when we were in Lunch Bunch, a group of kids in fifth grade that helped in the art room after and/or before they ate lunch.

When we came back after lunch, the class talked about what they were going to do about the pillows and a mistake Ms. Tyler had made when explaining a experiment they had done yesterday. Then she announced that they were going to the computer room to research rocks and minerals on the Internet.

Ring, ring. "Hello" pause "Who do you need?" another pause "Jenny and Margarita go to the publishing center." As this conversation was going on, the kids got up and got their Computer books and binders. When everyone was ready the class went to the computer room. As they walked through the halls a change occurred. There was less, almost no, art on the walls, lockers lined the walls and piles of jackets and balls lay beneath them.

When we got to the computer room Ms. Tyler said, "Turn on a computer and go to the Internet folder, then I will come and type in the password." Kids hurried to chose the computers closest to their friends and got to work. They were going on the Internet to find out what three rocks or minerals looked liked and get some information on them.

On all four sides of the room there were tables with computers on them, mostly Power Macs, but there were a couple older ones that had been the only kind when I was there. There was also a scanner and a printer on the opposite side of the room. I helped Lauren find another rock, "Click that link, try that, nope, guess not" and watched the other kids trade tips and insults across the room. I looked down at Lauren’s computer notebook and saw large hearts and stars along with faces and words. After an hour, a familiar face popped into the room, talked to Ms. Tyler, and popped out. It was Ms. Kenny my fifth grade teacher, "We have to leave, Ms. Kenny’s class has the computer room now." Kids started turning off the computers and getting all their papers in order and then we journeyed down the hall back to the room.

After we got back to the room the usual confusion started as kids put things back, took things out and just stood around and talked. Then after a minute they started to get organized. Some kids sat down and started to copy the homework for the night that was being projected onto the white screen in front of the poetry board. "Four pages of math!" "It’s really not that much." Others started washing the black board in the front of the room or taking care of the animals.

After everyone seemed to be done, Ms. Tyler took the status of the class. She asked every student what were they reading, what page were they on and how easy or hard it was. Some of the kids, I learned, were reading books that I had read. When she was done, silent reading began, but it wasn’t very silent. Voices, shuffling papers, a chair being pushed in, desks being rifled through, a chair kicked, coughs, pages turning, people moving, all these sounds filtered through the air. After 40 minutes Ms. Tyler broke the almost silence, "Find a good place to stop."

The day was almost over, just 20 minutes left. The rest of the day would be spent listening to Ms. Tyler finish the book she had been reading to the class. As I made sure I could read my notes, her voice penetrated my thoughts with the story of a lion that became a man. And in the end I forgot about my notes and just listened.

Now if this was a fictional report, the bell would ring just as Ms. Tyler finished the story and was closing the book, but this isn’t fiction. This is what really happened on Thursday May 14, 1998 and the bell didn’t ring when she finished reading. It rang a good 30 seconds before she was done, but the kids didn’t rush to get their jackets and race out of the room. They sat and listened till they heard: