by Lorri Horn
DEWEY FAIRCHILD,
TEACHER PROBLEM SOLVER
Lorri Horn
Amberjack Publishing
New York | Idaho
Amberjack Publishing
1472 E. Iron Eagle Drive
Eagle, Idaho 83616
http://amberjackpublishing.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, fictitious places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Lorri Horn
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, in part or in whole, in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Horn, Lorri, author.
Title: Dewey Fairchild, teacher problem solver / by Lorri Horn.
Description: Eagle, ID : Amberjack Publishing, [2018] | Summary: While sixth-grader Dewey is trying to help schoolmates solve their teacher problems, the school itself enacts bizarre changes that lead Dewey and his friends to commit acts some would call vandalism.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018006336 (print) | LCCN 2018014295 (ebook) | ISBN 9781944995867 (eBook) | ISBN 9781944995850 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: | CYAC: Middle schools--Fiction. | Schools--Fiction. | Teachers--Fiction. | Humorous stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.H664 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.H664 Dew 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006336
Cover Design & Illustrations: Agnieszka Grochalska
To Mom, my first democratic teacher.
And to all the amazing teachers who ignite within children a sense of intellectual and emotional compassion, curiosity, and critical thinking regarding themselves, their environment, their community, and their world.
One named Bryan made especially good husband material too.
“I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.”
—John Dewey
The Miracle
Her mouth twisted to the right, and her lips pursed when she spoke. “Missus DECORDAAAYYY,” she had told Bryan Frenchie and the other students that first day of class, her Humpty-Dumpty head bobbling gently up and down as if attached to her body with a spring. Mrs. Décorder had short flaming-red hair and wore Revlon’s Candy Apple Red lipstick that smudged on her teeth. It always looked to Bryan like she’d taken a bite out of someone’s arm or something.
When she spoke, it sounded like she was working half an apple slice around in her mouth. Vowels pooled on the back of her tongue and became three syllables long, consonants got caught between her teeth and lips. It’s not that the kids couldn’t understand what she said. They just couldn’t understand why she spoke that way. They all persisted in calling her Mrs. DEE-CORD-ERR.
Bryan and his best friend Ryan had been friends since kindergarten. There were plenty of ways to tell them apart. Bryan had short, wavy brown hair that arched heart-shaped over his eyebrows and rose a couple inches above his head. A nose, a bit large, sat squarely in the middle of his handsome suntanned face, and big, brown doe eyes belied hints of him being a goof-off. Ryan stood about the same height as his partner in crime, but appeared a good inch or so shorter due to his stick-straight, dark-brown hair that stuck flat against his head. His bangs lie plastered unevenly like piano keys across his creamy brow, perhaps a promise of the talented piano player he would one day become.
Nope, they looked nothing like one another, but just as some kids mix up words like “principal” and “principle,” poor Mrs. Décorder, who taught all the fifth-grade science classes, just couldn’t keep Bryan and Ryan straight. She’d call Bryan, Ryan, and Ryan, Bryan. It became amusing for them to mix her up, and they’d confuse Mrs. Décorder with an endless loop of her calling Bryan by his correct name and Bryan telling her, “No, Mrs. Deecorderr, I’m Ryan,” and Ryan telling her, “No, Mrs. Deecorderr, I’m Bryan,” until finally, she became so befuddled she just bunched their names together as one. “Ryanandbryan, are you paying attention?” she’d ask. Or, “Ryanandbryan, please hand in your homework from last night.”
Today, Ryanandbryan and the rest of the class prepared to watch a movie all about babies, called “The Miracle of Birth.” They had been talking all week about the birds and the bees in their PE class. Bryan and his friend Ryan didn’t really understand why something as ticklish as this topic would be left to those whose job it was to check out yard equipment and blow loud whistles. Be that as it may, they couldn’t very well watch a movie out on the track field, so the administration asked Mrs. DECORDAAAYYY to show it in science.
Tech-savvy would not be counted among Mrs. Décorder’s many attributes. To help her, she had created a list on the board of what she called “Tech-No-Helpers.” Ryanandbryan found it comical that she spelled it that way and felt it left their level of assistance open to interpretation. Each week, it would be one student’s turn to set up the SMART Board, get the laptops working, or turn off the lights—“Thomas Edison being one of our earliest tech-no innovators,” she’d thrum. “Ryanandbryan” topped the list this week, and since Ryan had already had his turn, Bryan’s arrived today.
“Ryanandbryan, can you please turn off the lights and get our film going?” Mrs. Décorder’s voice sounded a hundred years old to them, though the difference between fifty-five and one hundred was pretty incidental.
Mrs. Décorder always, without fail, had on a white blouse, and she usually wore long, brightly colored slacks. Today she had chosen forest green, which accentuated her long legs. Bryan thought she looked like one of those inflatable moving advertisements made from long green and white fabric tubes as she flailed her arms around, gesturing above at the lights.
He got up from his seat, turned off the light, and set up the “film”.(Mrs. Décorder always used such old school terminology).
He couldn’t explain the source of his inspiration when Dewey Fairchild later asked, only that it seemed too good an idea not to do. It was the miracle of a baby being born. And Bryan played it—backwards.
Mrs. Décorder sat at her desk grading papers while the students watched aghast as the baby made its magical journey—that’s right—into its mother instead of out! Their stunned silence quickly moved into laughter. Wes laughed so hard that he fell to the floor clutching his sides, and Ynez had tears streaming down her cheeks. If each kid had a control button, it was at full volume. The room sounded like the complete explosion of sound that only the many voices together can create.
“Ryanandbryan! Now, stop that! No, no. Now, I’ll have to get you in trouble for that.” Her long green legs strode over, and her head was in full bobble throttle as her extended finger wagged.
“Play that the correct direction, young man.” As she spoke her warning, the piece of invisible apple tumbled around in her mouth.
She hurried to the screen and tripped on the area carpet, her long green bean legs splayed like a peace sign on the ground. “Ryanandbryan. You fix that,” she admonished again. Bryan moved to comply, but not before he realized that if he moved the projector just a few baby inches over, Mrs. Décorder, still spread out on the carpet, could assume the role—of the screen! The class burst out again in an uproarious laughter as the projection of the baby now appeared on their teacher’s back. As she slowly put her hands on her l
ong legs and bent over to get back up, things got worse before they got better. When she finally regained her composure, Mrs. Décorder’s hair looked like a red umbrella blown inside out after a windstorm. “Ryanandbryan, now, you let that baby come back out!”
Bryan played “The Miracle of Birth” the right way, but it was too late. No one paid any attention because nothing seemed more miraculous than what Bryan had just done.
Out
When Mrs. Décorder spoke, each word carried about 1.55 seconds per word—1.55285714285 to be precise. Bryan had timed her one day and taken an average. 1.55 seconds per word may not sound like a lot, but 1.55 seconds per word in a sentence of fifteen words dragged on, slowing everything down like gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe.
1.42
1.71
1.55
1.86
1.48
1.33
1.52
Without Bryan and Ryan, no one would have made it through a day. But try telling that to his mother or the principal. Once again, Bryan had landed in her office, trying to explain his “unsuitable behavior.”
His principal, Mrs. Thais, believed in being fair-minded when it came to children, but she had grown tired of seeing this particular pair of boys in her office. Today, in her doorway, stood Bryan. Tomorrow, it would be Ryan.
She motioned Bryan with her eyes and chin to come in as she finished up a call. Still speaking as the long cord on her phone followed her around to the other side of her desk, she cradled the receiver on her shoulder and walked one chair from the wall and slid another from under a round table. She set the chairs across from one another.
“Sit, sit,” she directed, pointing again with her chin as she spoke. “No, no,” she continued her phone call laughing. “A student. Right. Okay. Tomorrow should work just fine.” She hung up and flipped open the pages of a calendar.
“Just a minute,” she said to Bryan. “If I don’t write this down now, I’ll never remember.”
Bryan watched her turn the pages of her calendar. Mrs. Thais had a lot of lines on her forehead, and as she concentrated he thought of the smooth raked lines in the sand of the Zen Rock Garden at the Golden Gate Park.
She sat before him today, as she appeared every other day, her grey hair streaked with ribbons of black in a tight bun on her head. A pair of reading glasses nestled in her bun, and another pair peeked out of her breast pocket, like a pair of birds in their nests. She always wore a well-made suit jacket and a skirt. Today it was powder blue and accentuated her violet eyes which had read more books than Bryan could imagine if he’d ever bothered to wonder about such things about his principal. The walls around them were lined with a small fraction of them. Her office had a couch, a round table, the chairs they sat on now, and her big desk. Framed artwork painted by children hung on her walls.
“Mr. Frenchie,” she sighed, smoothing out her skirt and sitting down. She also managed to smile now that she could give him her full focus. Despite how he and Ryan tired her, they really weren’t bad kids. “Would you be so kind as to read to me Mrs. Décorder’s referral, and then explain to me, in your own words, today’s particular transgression?” She handed him the paper. Bryan fidgeted about in his chair a bit and first read to himself:
“Student Name: Ryanandbryan.” She doesn’t even learn my real name for the paperwork?! He knew better than to say anything about it at this moment.
He began aloud, “Reason for Referral: Ryanandbryan determined it best to run the class film on how babies are miraculously born, backwards. The infant went in instead of out, upsetting several of the children and making many others laugh for the duration of the film.”
He looked up, trying hard not to smile.
“So then?” she asked, prompting him to address the issue at hand.
“Um, well, it says that I played the movie in the wrong direction, and that it disrupted the class.”
“That’s right. And while you’ve caused a disruption many times over your short career in room 32D, I must say that this is one of your more unsuitable moments of conduct.”
It was some of my finest work, thought Bryan to himself. How he’d come up with the idea of reversing that baby’s trajectory on the spot seemed nothing short of sheer genius!
“Let me make it as simple and clear as possible for you,” continued Principal Thais, interrupting his reverie, “one more transgression and you’re out.”
Out. Bryan didn’t know what that meant, but he felt his face flush. Out of chances? Out for the day? The week? His whole life? He could tell by her tone that she meant business though, and he thought better than to ask any questions for fear of what she might say.
“Do you have any questions?” she asked, hands on her hips as she stood up and looked down at him.
“N-n-no, Mrs. Thais.” He looked her directly in her eyes to show that he was paying attention.
As he walked out of her office and down the hallway, he regained his composure, but he knew he needed help. And he knew just where he should go to get it.
Teacher Problem Solver
Dewey’s backpack weighed a ton. He started the year with five separate three-ring binders, and each class had a heavy textbook. He managed to reduce it down to three binders, but it still probably weighed about fifty pounds and felt like he carried around a backpack full of bricks. It didn’t matter how many times his parents picked it up and declared it too heavy for his growing back—it didn’t get any lighter. They wanted him to use one of those rolling backpacks, but he wouldn’t be caught dead with one of those. You couldn’t just throw them on your back and run with them.
He still wore his thick camel-brown straight hair below his ears. Maybe it was a bit longer this year in what his mother called a California-messy boy way. That was more about not bothering to get a haircut though. He’d never liked to wear his hair showing his ears, and he certainly wasn’t going to start in sixth grade. He must have grown taller because his parents’ friends said stuff like, “Oh my goodness! He’s a full head taller!” He hadn’t really noticed that himself, though he did stand taller than Colin by about an inch now. His mom complained that he outgrew his Vans before he wore them out. She’d started having his dad buy them on eBay, which meant that he’d ended up with a pair of slip-ons, so he took over searching for them himself. This fall began with a pair of the Authentics with laces in navy blue. He begged his dad to sell the slip-ons.
Tons of new kids he’d never even met filled the classrooms and hallways. That could be good for business, but Dewey got this dull empty feeling inside with so many faces in class he didn’t know and the bigger crowds during lunch and break. He and Colin both had Humanities together, and Seraphina shared Spanish class with him again, but otherwise, the only class they had together was study hall. He had new teachers, a new campus, lockers, vending machines. Vending Machines! Snacks on demand! Now, there was an improvement over elementary school.
This afternoon though, he’d left his backpack behind. He was sitting in his office, conveniently and secretly, located in his attic. His desk and chair sat just where and how he’d left them. Clara, although she didn’t live there, sat already waiting for him too, with a warm plate of cookies and her eighteen-pound black-and-white Havanese dog, Wolfie.
“I just don’t understand the entire Snapchat concept,” Clara was saying. “You post it and it disappears?”
Clara sat on the floor with a pile of papers before her. To look at Clara Cottonwood and try to determine her age would be a lot like looking at a tree in the forest. Without the benefit of counting its ninety-four rings, you’d hardly know more than that it stood solid and grand.
“Well, it stays there ten seconds.”
“Ten seconds? What’s the point of that?” asked Clara. She stood up with ease, a full four-foot-nine-inches tall, and lowered the blinds to block the sun shining directly in their eyes.
“Hmm,” Clara sounded suspicious as she moved to join him again on the floor. She’d been trying to recreate all their files as hard copies on paper so they’d have a backup of all their work. As she sat, she pulled her soft cotton, grey pants gently just above her knees to make room to sit. She wore a turtle neck today, which accentuated the neat grey bun on her head. The papers all over the floor were a mess, but not a hair stuck out of place. Dewey could feel in that “hmm” that she felt dissatisfied with his explanation.
“You know,” Dewey reassured, her slate grey eyes holding his own, “you can do random stuff that doesn’t matter cause it’s just going to disappear.”
“Like what?” she arched her eyebrow.
“Just like hanging out with friends. Or a picture of Wolfie. Come here, Boy!” He took a shot of Wolfie, with his pink tongue sticking out and curled up against his black button nose like a strawberry fruit roll up and wrote, “hmu if you love.”
“Oh, I see!” Clara smiled warmly at the picture of Wolfie, appreciating his white bushy brows jutting out like an old man’s over his soft marble-black eyes. Clara loved how he had the little white fur around his mouth and how his chest and front paws were silky snow white against his black body and those crazy white brows. Evidently others appreciated this charm as well, as Dewey’s phone kept vibrating with all the “love.”
“But the bigger thing is that all these clients chatted me their info. So now it’s just gone, poof. It’s not like regular texts ’cause these delete instantly.”
“And let me guess,” Clara remarked. “Some people chat stuff they don’t want saved.”
“Right!” encouraged Dewey. “No one texts anymore ’cause no one gives out their numbers. You don’t even need a user name for Snapchat, just a picture to add. See? Get it?”
