“I don’t know. It sounds like a pretty terrible life.”
“Well, Joey, consider the alternatives.”
“What’s alternatives?”
“Other choices. Like failing second and having to stay back and have Mrs. Madden all over again.”
“Oh, boy.”
During the fourth week of school I decided to drop in on Mrs. Madden. If my phone calls didn’t work, I had to find some other way to discover what was going on in school.
At ten after three I walked down the hall to second grade, nodding to the janitor. I’d been in the school many times to talk to other children’s teachers, but I’d never encountered Mrs. Madden before.
She was seated at her desk going over papers when I tapped on the window. Her grey hair was neatly and tightly curled against her head. The bow of her blouse hung in two perfect loops between the lapels of a maroon suit. Mrs. Madden got up and walked slowly across the room.
She opened the door and stood without smiling.
“Mrs. Madden? I’m Mary MacCracken,” I said.
“Yes. I thought as much.” She made no move to invite me inside.
“May I talk to you for ten minutes?” I knew all teachers were expected to stay until three thirty.
She looked at the clock over the door. “Three twelve. All right. Come in.”
I followed her to the front of the room, and she motioned me to a chair beside her desk. I sat facing Mrs. Madden, aware that the room was much more pleasant than I had expected. The large, sunny windows to my left were filled with leafy green plants of all sizes. A fish tank hummed on the window sill. The blackboard had the day’s homework assignment printed neatly in the left-hand corner, and five short sentences about a trip to the police station were lettered in the middle. Had Mrs. Madden actually taken her class to the police station?
I held two of Joey’s folders on my lap. One contained the written report of the testing I had done (I had asked the Stones’ permission to bring it), the other some of his recent work. But I didn’t open either. I was there to try to find out how Mrs. Madden and Joey were getting on. Did she realize the potential he had? Was he working? Was he learning?
“May I ask how Joey is doing?”
Mrs. Madden reached for her grade book. “You have the parents’ permission, I assume.” I nodded, and she read from the book: “Arithmetic: 68, 75, 90, incomplete, incomplete, 80. Reading workbook: 55, 72, incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, 84, incomplete, incomplete. Spelling: 45, 25, 60, 50. There are no incompletes in spelling because everyone takes the test on Friday, ready or not. Phonics: 60, 50, incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, 60.”
Mrs. Madden snapped her grade book shut. “You will have to consult with the specials about gym, art, library, and remedial.”
“Thank you,” I said, putting my notebook back in my purse. “There seem to be a lot of incompletes.”
“Yes. Joseph often doesn’t complete his work. This is partly due to his not paying attention, so he doesn’t understand what to do. He always wants me to go over it again with him. I do not believe in this. He must learn to listen.
“The other reason he gets behind is that he’s out of the room so much,” Mrs. Madden continued. “Out with the reading teacher, out for some program or other. Out for this. Out for that. No wonder he gets behind in his class work.”
I got the strong impression that Mrs. Madden didn’t believe in remedial help any more than she did in tutors. Well, at least she didn’t seem overly anxious to get Joey out of her room, and that was a positive sign.
The clock ticked its way toward three twenty-five, and I stood up, to reassure Mrs. Madden that I would not linger.
“One last question. Would it be possible to borrow an extra copy of any of Joey’s books? Spelling, arithmetic, phonics?”
Mrs. Madden shrugged, stood up, smoothed out her unwrinkled maroon skirt. “Call Mr. Templar, our principal. That’s up to him.”
“Thank you,” I said as I walked toward the door. “I appreciate your time and your interest in Joe.”
Mrs. Madden accepted my appreciation with a nod as she eased me out the door. “I will tell you one thing,” Mrs. Madden said magnanimously. “It doesn’t show in the grade book, but that boy is a lot smarter than those Child Study Team tests show. A lot smarter!”
I stared at Mrs. Madden, restraining a nearly overwhelming impulse to hug her. “I agree,” I almost shouted. “But how did you find out? Did you give Joey some tests of your own?”
Mrs. Madden turned back to her classroom. Like a queen in her kingdom she pronounced, “After thirty years, I don’t need tests.”
Joey dragged the heavy plastic bag across my office floor. “Mr. Templar said to bring you these.” He dumped the contents onto the carpet beside the desk and moaned out loud as his reading, math, spelling, and phonics books fell out. “Oh, no. It’s horrible to have to do them in school. It’ll be even horribler to have to do them all over again here.”
We didn’t, of course, “do” the books, but Joey could show me where he was and what he didn’t understand. It was much easier for him than trying to explain it. Also, since Mrs. Madden proceeded page by page, chapter by chapter, I could look ahead and see what was coming up next, and let Joey become a little familiar with it before Mrs. Madden introduced it in class.
Mrs. Madden was still curt, but she was doing her part. She now answered my phone calls if I timed them right and sent Joey’s test papers in a sealed envelope on Fridays. She hadn’t complained or called the Stones in, except for the scheduled fall conference. All she told them then was that Joey still needed a lot of work, but that he was making progress. The main thing was what she didn’t say. There had been no mention of a special class.
My phone rang around noon one day in February. It was snowing hard and I had gone down to pick up the mail, so it took me five or six rings to get back to the phone.
“Mrs. MacCracken? This is Mrs. Madden. I almost hung up. I thought you must be out.” Disapproval edged her voice.
“Sorry.” I was so glad she’d initiated the call that it was worth sounding penitent.
“Yes. Well. Joseph is getting further and further behind in his B book. Phonics book, that is. He always has to go out when it’s time for phonics. Now he’s twenty pages behind – hasn’t even touched the magic e rule. I’d like him to do pages ninety-eight, one hundred one, one hundred five, and one hundred seven with you. That will give him an idea of what the others have covered. Don’t do the work for him. I want to see his own work. Send it in so I can check it. I’d have the specials do it with him, but they say they have too much work of their own.”
“All right,” I said, writing on the telephone book. “Page ninety-eight … could you give me those other pages again?”
I knew how the specials felt. This would take time that I would much rather spend on other things, but what mattered was that Mrs. Madden was becoming a member of our team. And that was a top priority.
There was no doubt about it. In spite of missed pages in the B book, Joey was flourishing. He added, he subtracted, he even multiplied a little. His facts still weren’t totally automatic and he sometimes got mixed up during subtraction and regrouping (another word for borrowing and carrying), but he understood