CROSS-PURPOSES

My third year at Seven Hills School I was promoted to teacher at $5 an hour—and co-taught the five-day preschool, again with Karl. It was a rough start, though. As an aide, I’d heard the teachers around us complain that Karl’s kids were out of control, and I’d resolved to do my best that fall to remedy the situation.

Both Karl and I were too permissive, I recognized, neither of us adept at wielding authority. But I thought that one of the ways we could manage the kids better was to create more structure for them, routines they could become familiar with. I also knew that structure gave children a sense of security. Karl balked at my efforts to establish routines, however. While he threw himself wholeheartedly into teaching, he resisted anything that felt to him like regimentation, and with the two of us working at cross-purposes, in the end I had to give up. Unfettered spontaneity ruled the day, with the result that the class—now our class—was loud and chaotic and yes, often out of control.

  “Luckily,” as I wrote Ella, “Karl and I have fewer children this year—16—and a larger repertoire of activities, more materials—I’ve been on a game-designing binge—and more help. In addition to a crafts teacher and movement instructor, we have a parent to supervise gardening work and play. Even the weather has been a boon. Concord ordinarily has colder winters than Berkeley, but this year the warm weather has persisted through November. And we haven’t had one day when we’ve had to keep the kids in from the playground because of rain! Only a teacher can appreciate what that means.”