TKAM 1

Journal #1

Chapters 1-3

Perspective of Mrs. Caroline

Chapter 3
I came into my first grade class room on the first day of school to find a lovely assortment of young minds. Some were dirty, some were clean, one boy had no shoes, but they all looked ready too learn. I started the class by reading them a childrens story about sweet little cats. Then we went on to the alphabet. I was amazed by how many of the kids already knew what they were. I called upon Scout whom I had met the week before. To see what level she was on I had her start to read the book My First Reader then parts of the stock market quotes in The Mobile Register. It was obvious that her father must have taught her to read. This was going to make my job so much harder.

I would have to first brake her of her bad habits. Then I would have to teach her all over again. I had to ask her to tell her father to stop teaching her. That was my job of course. If the parents taught them everything they would not be coming to school every day. And if they did not come to school every day I would not get payed and that would be bad, very bad. The the poor darling started going on about how her father did not teach her anything and that she was born a bullfinch reader, or something like that. I had to put her strait. You can't just let things like this go or they will grow too strong to fix. After Scout went back to her seat I started the next lesson. Then the children went out to recess to burn off some steam.

After recess I started teaching the class how to read simple words like: “the”, “cat”, “man”, “you”, and “rat”. I noticed that scout was not paying attention and so I went to get back her attention. I found her writing a letter to someone. I had to re-insist that her father should not be teaching her these things and to try to forget them so that we could start anew. She was starting to frustrate me and that was bothering. Instead of pursuing this problem I asked the kids about lunch arrangements. Some of the kids went home to eat and others brought out their lunch pales. There was one little boy though that did not have any lunch but was not going home to eat.

I asked him if he had forgotten his lunch, but he just mumbled. I got out a quarter from my purse and told him to come get the quarter and buy something for lunch and that he could pay me back tomorrow. He just shook his head and said “No thank you Ma'am”. When I asked him again Scout stood up and stated that he was a Cunningham then sat back down as though that made everything clear. I was shocked at her tone. Just because his last name is Cunningham, that does not mean that he can not take a quarter for lunch. When I asked her what she meant, she just stated once again that Walter was a Cunningham. I did not see what that had to do with anything. Then she went on to criticism this boy's family. Stating that he was poor and never took things that he could not repay. Then she continued to tell me that I was shaming Walter because he could not repay me in quarters or in firewood. This girl irked me and was going to need some straitening out, I could see.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her to the front of the classroom, told her to put out her hand and proceeded to slap it with a ruler. I felt like I had condescended to the level of the children, but I could not let this go unpunished. Then I made sure that she staid in a corner until lunch time. The children laughed at her, but she still did not seem to understand her wrong doing. Then to make everything a little worse, Miss. Blount came to advise me on controlling my class. Finally it was lunch time and the children left for home or the playground. I put my head in my hands. This was going to be harder then I thought.

Chapter 4
After lunch we returned to class and as I was walking through the desks looking at the students I saw this thing crawling in and out of a boys hair. I screamed, right there in the middle of class. The kids came rushing up to see what was wrong. They must have thought it was a rat because they asked me which way it went. I asked what the thing in the boys hair was and the children told me that it was called a cootie. One of the kids brought me some water wile another got the cootie out of the boy's hair. I had to insist that he should go home and wash. When he asked me what for, I told him to get rid of them cooties. I found him a remedy in a book I had. Then I asked him to come back tomorrow nice and clean.

One of the kids made a pronouncement just like Scout had, that he was a Ewell. Apparently all of the Ewells in the school come to school for the first day and then they leave. The kids told me that he was a bad boy and that I should just let him go home. After one of the kids threatened to kill him, he left the class. It seemed like a silent compromise between the two. Ewell would leave and nobody would get hurt. When he was far down the hall he called me a bunch of nasty names and ran off. It was the first day of school and more bad things had happened to me then in my entire teaching carer. I could not help it. Right there in front of all the kids I broke down and cried until I had run dry. Then I read the kids another story and dismissed them for the day. This town and these kids are very eccentric.