Now is the time of year when the school trips are over, the heat index is high, the teachers spend days on end grading stacks of neglected exams, and this whole side of the building takes on quietish and vaguely haunted air. Everything smells like linoleum, dust, and cranked AC. All of the faculty shuffles around in shorts, wondering why we’re still here. It’s during weeks like these that I’m especially glad we’re a K-12 outfit, because our Grammar School is still around and ready for mischief, merrymaking, and maybe even a little work.
Those of you who read my article about Commerce will remember the Minoans. My classroom has maintained a good relationship with theirs—only occasionally darkened by tense trade negotiations—throughout the year. I was therefore delighted when their teacher approached me one hot afternoon during the last week of school and offered the fourth-grade class’s services in the garden. I admire all grammar school teachers. To me, they seem to operate via a combination of intuition and creative energy that I find mystifying and occasionally alarming. But I especially like teachers of any grade or stripe who can participate in their students’ rambunctiousness, even channel it, and this is one of those teachers. She said she was happy to supervise. I said I was happy to oblige.
I sent them on their merry way with a bunch of peppers to plant—supplied by an Upper School parent who had started too many seeds this spring—as well as orders to repair the wattled fences and weed the tomatoes. They retreated, all smiles, and I worked at my desk for around a half hour before it occurred to me to go check on them.
Opening the door on a broad, hot June afternoon and rounding the corner toward the garden, I came to a scene of delightful chaos. The fences had been admirably repaired—there’s something pleasing and homey about wattled fences when they’re well-kept—and the pepper seedlings had all been planted in tidy rows. They had also been, shall we say, well-watered? In fact, the hose was still on and in the hands of a grinning girl, spraying a fine mist that cut a rainbow into the sunny air. She fanned the spray in every direction, soaking her friends to the bone. Their teacher was watching with delight, planning out her apology to any disgruntled parents, and generally reveling in the moment.
The garden looked—and still looks—great. But the kids were the real joy of the afternoon. The smell of hose water in the hot sun is one of those deep-memory summer smells for me, an olfactory conduit to core recollections of childhood, adventure, and the stabbing, transient beauty of what the folk singer Sam Beam calls “our endless numbered days.” If you can find a teacher who will share moments like that with your kids, thank them. They know what they’re about.
Feel free to shout out a beloved teacher in the comments. If I can I’ll pass the word along.
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