“I really need you in fourth grade, Anne. You’re one of our best.”
The memory of her conversation with Principal Reed still set Anne’s heart pumping. John was not one to dole out compliments flippantly, and the idea that she was considered important to the school after only two years of teaching was unnerving. Image may be NSFW.
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She still didn’t feel like she had settled into her role as a teacher and she was half hoping she would be able to fly under the radar her first few years. It was great to be appreciated, but it reminded her she was being watched as someone with a lot of potential, someone who would be held to a higher standard. It had been a month since he had called her into his office as the school year was ending, and Anne couldn’t tell if her stomach was twisting with fear or excitement. Whatever the cause, she discovered all she could do at the moment was push her mother’s Sunday dinner slowly around her plate.
“Annie, are you alright?”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Anne sighed. “Dinner is wonderful. I haven’t been feeling that great since John asked me to leave first grade.”
“Well, I don’t see what you’re worried about, Honey, you’re a great teacher and it’ll be a good opportunity for you. You should do it.”
“Of course I’m going to do it, I love my job. It’s a great school, I work with good people—I just don’t know if I can do it,” Anne explained, sawing through her chicken in four swift strokes.
“I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.”
“Fourth grade is completely different. The way some of those teachers talk in the upper grades, it’s—I don’t know, I’ve never had to deal with those issues. Now I have, what, a summer? Less than three months to learn how?”
“Oh, you’ll be fine. You’re a good teacher, and you’ve always been good with your kids. How different could it be?”
Anne shook her head as she hurriedly swallowed a mouthful of chicken. It was amazing how well an argument stimulated her appetite.
“You know who’s in fourth grade? Kira’s son Emmanuel. And you know what he does all day? ‘Annie! Annie! Did you know that, uh, a whale is a mammal? And did you know that um, there’s a whale, it’s called a blue whale and it grows 18 stories long? And did you know boy seahorses have babies? Why aren’t they just called girl seahorses, huh? Did you know that, Annie? Did you?’”
“Just because a kid watches too much Animal Planet doesn’t mean he knows more than you, Anne. This isn’t Are You Smarter Than a Fourth Grader, they aren’t expecting you to have every little thing memorized you learned 15 years ago.”
“I know, I know,” Anne sighed, finishing off her mountain of mashed potatoes. “It’s just—this is a testing grade, and I’ve never done that before. They’re counting on me to bring their scores up and I can’t even remember how to do long division.”
“So take a class. Didn’t your friend, uh, what’s his name? Michael?”
“Mike?”
“Yes, isn’t that what Michael did?”
Anne took a sip of her iced tea, furrowing her brow. “Yeah…yeah, I think he did. Last year, when they moved him to fifth.”
“Figure out all the areas you need help on and take a few classes,” Her mom said, waving her fork in the air for emphasis. “If it’ll help you feel confident in your teaching, it’s worth it.”
“That’s actually a really good idea, Mom.”
“I have those occasionally,” she replied with a wry smile.
Anne set her fork on her empty plate and leaned back in her chair. She took out her phone and found the picture she had taken with a few of her first graders on the last day of school. She smiled at the memory of the amazing kids she had spent nine months with crowding around her.
I wanna stand in front of Miss Hart!
No, me, me!
She couldn’t bring herself to scold them. All she could do was laugh and pull them all closer. They really
were an amazing class.
“You’re a great teacher, Annie,” her mom repeated as she leaned over to pat her hand. “You are. And I know you’re worried and frustrated, but that’s not going to change just because you move a grade. It will be tough, but I know you; you can handle tough. You just have to call Mike.”
“I will,” Annie promised as she got up from the table and began gathering the dishes together. She wasn’t the most patient daughter and they had their moments, but her mom always knew what to say. And as she stacked their plates and forks into a neat pile and brought them to the kitchen, Annie couldn’t help but notice she was carrying a few less butterflies in her stomach.