Karen's School Read online

  For my teachers

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Autumn

  2 Karen Has Two Families

  3 Real School

  4 Karen’s School

  5 Mr. Howard

  6 Pumpkins and Leaves

  7 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

  8 The Love Poem

  9 The First Day of School

  10 “We Want Recess!”

  11 Chocolate Factory Day

  12 Smelly Mr. Howard

  13 Karen on Strike

  14 The Flunk-Outs

  15 Andrew on Strike

  16 Karen Is Mean

  17 A Good Teacher

  18 Gold Stars

  19 Friends Again

  20 Mrs. Howard

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Autumn

  “What makes people different?” asked my teacher Ms. Colman.

  “We look different,” said Natalie Springer.

  “Yes,” agreed Ms. Colman. “What else?”

  “We like different things,” said Hank Reubens.

  “Very good,” said Ms. Colman. “Our tastes make us different. Our likes and dislikes. What else?”

  I did not hear the answer to Ms. Colman’s question. I began thinking about my tastes, about the things I like and the things I do not like. Some of my most favorite things are the seasons. Winter, spring, summer, fall. I like every one of them, for different reasons. I like winter because I like snow. I like spring because I like flowers and baby animals. I like summer because I like vacations. And I like fall because I like going back to school and I like holidays.

  When September comes I know that Halloween is just around the corner. After Halloween comes Thanksgiving. And then comes Christmas and then New Year’s Eve and then Valentine’s Day and then Easter. My friend Nancy Dawes celebrates some different holidays. In the fall she celebrates Rosh Hashanah (that’s the Jewish New Year), and then Yom Kippur and then Hanukkah and then Passover….

  “Karen? Are you paying attention?” Ms. Colman asked me.

  “Yes,” I said, even though I wasn’t.

  Usually, I try to pay attention, since I like school so much. I am Karen Brewer. I am in second grade, and Ms. Colman is a gigundoly excellent teacher. I love her. I plan to work very hard. I want Ms. Colman to think I am a gigundoly excellent student. But it was a little hard to pay attention on a warm September day when the windows in our classroom were open. I could look into the courtyard outside. I could see the leaves beginning to turn red and yellow. And I could see a garden. The garden made me think of Daddy’s vegetable garden, and that made me think of my pumpkin patch, and the pumpkin patch made me think of pumpkins, and pumpkins made me think of Halloween….

  “Pssst. Karen!” Ricky Torres was nudging me. Ricky sits next to me. We sit in the front row. That is because we wear glasses. Ms. Colman makes glasses-wearers sit near the blackboard. Natalie Springer wears glasses, too. She sits on the other side of me.

  “What?” I whispered to Ricky.

  “Pay attention!” he hissed. (Ricky is my pretend husband. We got married on the playground one day. That is why he cares about me so much.)

  I sat up straighter. I looked around my classroom. I looked at Ms. Colman standing by the board. I looked at Bobby Gianelli (the bully) and Hank Reubens, who are Ricky’s friends. I looked at Terri and Tammy (the twins) and Addie (who uses a wheelchair) and Pamela (my enemy) and Jannie and Leslie (Pamela’s friends). Then I snuck a peek at the back row. There were my two very best friends, Nancy Dawes and Hannie Papadakis. I could sit with them, if I did not wear glasses.

  “What else makes us different from each other?” asked Ms. Colman.

  I had an answer. (I remembered to raise my hand.) “Our families,” I said. “We come from different kinds of families. And families that are different sizes.”

  I should know. Nobody in Ms. Colman’s room has a family like mine. In fact, I even have two families.

  Karen Has Two Families

  Yup. I really do. I have two families. One is small and one is big. I did not always have two families, though. A long time ago, when I was a little kid, I had just one family. Daddy, Mommy, Andrew, and me. (Andrew is my little brother. He is four now, going on five. And I am seven.) My family lived in a gigundo house. It was the house Daddy had grown up in. I thought we were very happy. But then Mommy and Daddy began fighting. They fought a lot. They were not happy at all. Finally they told Andrew and me that they were going to get a divorce. They loved us very much, but they had stopped loving each other.

  After the divorce, Mommy and Andrew and I moved into a little house. Daddy stayed in his big house. (Both of the houses are here in Stoneybrook, Connecticut.) Then guess what. Mommy and Daddy got married again. Mommy married Seth. He is my stepfather. Daddy married Elizabeth. She is my stepmother. And that is how Andrew and I got two families.

  This is my little-house family: Mommy, Seth, Andrew, me, Rocky, Midgie, and Emily Junior. Rocky and Midgie are Seth’s cat and dog. Emily Junior is my rat. I live with my little-house family most of the time.

  This is my big-house family: Daddy, Elizabeth, Kristy, Charlie, Sam, David Michael, Emily Michelle, Nannie, Andrew, me, Shannon, Boo-Boo, Goldfishie, and Crystal Light the Second. Kristy, Charlie, Sam, and David Michael are Elizabeth’s kids, so they are my stepsister and stepbrothers. I just love Kristy. She is thirteen and she babysits. She is the best, best big sister. Charlie and Sam are old. They go to high school. Sam teases, but he is really okay. And Charlie is nice (usually). Sometimes he takes me for a ride in his car, the Junk Bucket. David Michael is okay, too. He is just my age. But he does not go to my school. He goes to Stoneybrook Elementary. I go to Stoneybrook Academy. Guess who Emily Michelle is. She is my adopted sister. Daddy and Elizabeth adopted her from the country of Vietnam. That is very far away. Emily is two and a half. I named my rat after her. Nannie is Elizabeth’s mother. That makes her my stepgrandmother. She helps take care of us kids. Shannon, Boo-Boo, Goldfishie, and Crystal Light are our pets. Shannon is a big floppy puppy. Boo-Boo is a cross old cat. Maybe you can guess what the other two are. (Andrew named Goldfishie.) I live with my big-house family every other weekend and on some holidays and vacations.

  Andrew may not be very good at naming things, but I am. I made up special nicknames for my brother and me. I call us Andrew Two-Two and Karen Two-Two. (I thought of the names after Ms. Colman read aloud a book called Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang.) Andrew and I are two-twos because we have two of so many things. We have two houses and two families, two mommies and two daddies, two cats and two dogs. Also, I have two bicycles, one at each house. And Andrew has two tricycles. We have clothes and books and toys at each house. (That way we do not have to pack much when we go back and forth.) I have two pieces of Tickly, my special blanket. I have two stuffed cats, Moosie and Goosie, that look just the same. Moosie stays at the big house and Goosie stays at the little house. And of course, I have my two best friends. Nancy lives next door to Mommy. Hannie lives across the street from Daddy and one house down. I even have two pairs of glasses. The blue pair is for reading. The pink pair is for the rest of the time. (Well, I do not have to wear them in bed or in the bathtub, of course.)

  So those are my two families. I bet nobody else in Ms. Colman’s class has two families, at least not just like mine.

  Real School

  “Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day. I want to go out and play,” sang Andrew. My brother was standing at the kitchen window. He was watching the rain and singing sadly.

  “Andrew, rain is good,” I told him importantly.

  “Not when you want sunshine,” he replied.
r />   It was a Saturday morning at the big house. And rain was pouring down. The trees bent back and forth in the wind. The leaves were tossed to the ground. I liked our rainstorm. But Andrew did not. He was bored. That was because he did not have any homework.

  Almost everyone else in the big house had homework. Kristy and Sam and Charlie were working in their rooms. Daddy and Elizabeth were working on papers from their briefcases. Emily and Nannie did not have homework, but they were busy cutting shapes out of colored paper. David Michael and I were sitting at the kitchen table. David Michael was filling in the blank spaces on a page from his math workbook. I was writing sentences using words from my new spelling list.

  Only Andrew was not busy.

  “Karen,” said Andrew, “what are you doing?”

  “Homework,” I replied. “I already told you that.”

  “What are you doing, David Michael?” he asked.

  “The same thing.”

  “The same homework as Karen?”

  David Michael sighed. “No. I am doing math homework. Karen is doing spelling homework.” He paused. “And we are very busy.”

  Andrew edged closer to the table. “What do you do in real school, Karen?” he wanted to know. “In big kids’ school?”

  Here is the thing about Andrew. He goes to school, but he is only old enough for preschool, even though he can already read. This year his teacher is named Miss Jewel. Andrew loves Miss Jewel. He likes school, too. But in his school he mostly paints and listens to stories and plays with trucks and wishes he were five already.

  I showed Andrew my homework paper. “This is one thing I do in school,” I told him.

  Andrew looked at the paper. “ ‘A friend is someone you can play with,’ ” he read slowly.

  “See? ‘Friend’ is one of my spelling words,” I said. “Ms. Colman told us to make sentences using the words.”

  Andrew nodded. “So that is what you do in real school. You write. I wish I could write.”

  I thought about that. Maybe I could teach Andrew to write. After all, I was the one who had taught him to read.

  “Andrew, do you want to do big kids’ work?” I asked.

  “Yes,” replied Andrew.

  “Well, us big kids learn to write. We also learn about numbers and science and animals and people from other countries.”

  “And weather,” added David Michael.

  “You do?” said Andrew.

  “Yes,” said David Michael and I.

  “Would you really like to learn what the big kids learn?” I asked Andrew. (He nodded.) “Okay. I have an idea. But I cannot do anything about it until I finish my homework.”

  “Then I will be very quiet,” said Andrew. He pulled out a kitchen chair. He sat on it. He folded his hands in his lap.

  David Michael and I went back to work. I had a little trouble concentrating on my sentences. I was thinking about my big idea.

  Karen’s School

  “There,” I said. “All finished.” I read my last sentence over again and made sure I had spelled every word right.

  Andrew jumped up. “What is your idea?” he asked me.

  “I am going to make a real school for you,” I told him. “It will be a place where you can learn what the big kids learn, especially how to write. That is very important.”

  “How are you going to make a real school for me?” asked Andrew.

  “Don’t worry. I have already figured it out. First I just need a little peace and privacy. In the playroom. I will call you when I am ready.”

  I put away my homework. I ran upstairs to the playroom. For a moment I just stood in the doorway and looked around. Then I got to work.

  I searched through the toys until I found a chalkboard. I set the chalkboard on an easel. Then I found an eraser and some chalk. I put a little chair at our coloring table. I stood the easel in front of the table. I made a teacher’s desk by setting a grown-up-size chair in front of a writing table.

  After that I found paper and markers and scissors. I sat at my big desk. I worked busily for a long time. When I finished, I called to Andrew.

  He came running. “Is my school ready?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Now, Andrew, this is your first day at your new school. I am your new teacher, and we have never met before.”

  “We haven’t?”

  “No,” I said. “Now knock at the door.”

  Andrew knocked on the doorway to the playroom. “Hello?” he called.

  “Hello,” I replied. “Welcome to school. I am Miss Karen. Who are you?”

  “I am Andrew Edward Brewer.”

  “Won’t you come in?” I said. “Now let me see. First I will find your name tag.” Andrew’s name tag was on my desk. I stuck it to his shirt with a piece of tape. “Now I will not forget who you are,” I told him. “Okay, Andrew. This is your desk. Please sit down.”

  Andrew slid into the seat at the crayon table. “Teach me to write,” he said.

  “I will. In just a minute. First I have to tell you about school rules. We have lots of rules in real school. If you want to say something, raise your hand. And wait to be called on. No shouting out. Let me see. No chewing gum. No bare feet. No eating unless it is snacktime. Most important, if you do not understand something, be sure to ask questions.”

  Andrew raised his hand. “When am I going to learn to write?” he wanted to know.

  “Now,” I replied. I placed a sheet of paper in front of Andrew. On the paper I had written the alphabet in big letters and small letters. I handed Andrew a pencil. “Okay. Trace over these letters,” I said.

  Andrew began to trace the letters slowly. He stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. He erased a lot. After a few minutes he said, “You — ”

  “Raise your hand and wait to be called on,” I reminded him.

  Andrew raised his hand and started over. “You know what?” he said. “This is fun, but a real school would have more kids.”

  More kids? Hmm. That was a good idea.

  “Andrew, stay right here and keep tracing,” I told him. “I will come back in a little while.” I raced to the phone. I called Hannie.

  “Hannie!” I exclaimed. “Great idea! We can start a school for little kids. I will be the teacher and you can be my helper. Andrew is our first student, and we can find some others. Like Emily Michelle.”

  “And Sari,” said Hannie. (Sari is Hannie’s little sister.) “Ooh, that is a good idea, Karen. You know who else we could ask? Callie and Keith.” (Callie and Keith live down the street. They are four, like Andrew. And they are twins.)

  “And we can have school on big-house weekends,” I added. “Oh, Hannie, come over right now, okay? We have lots of work to do.”

  Mr. Howard

  Hannie and I could not just start a real school like that — snap! We had to plan for it. We had to find students and set up the classroom and decide how we would teach our students. We were going to be very busy for the next couple of weeks.

  On Monday, Ms. Colman gave me something to think about besides our school. First thing in the morning, she made one of her Surprising Announcements. She started off by saying, “Girls and boys, do you know how a person becomes a teacher?” She looked at us with raised eyebrows.

  “Does she go to school?” asked Pamela.

  “Yes,” replied Ms. Colman. “First a teacher is a student, just like you are. And she or he goes to school to learn how to be a teacher. Then she practices teaching for a while. She practices in a classroom with someone who is already a teacher, and can help her and show her what to do. She is called a student teacher then.”

  “Were you a student teacher once?” I asked.

  “Yes, I was,” said Ms. Colman. “And now it is my turn to help a new student teacher. His name is Mr. Howard, and he is going to practice teaching right here in our classroom. You will meet him later today. He is going to come in to meet you and to watch me teach. He will come in every day for the next six weeks. At first he w
ill teach you for just half an hour or so. Then he will take over the class a little bit more and a little bit more. For the last two weeks of his stay, he will be your only teacher.”

  “Ms. Colman, where will you be?” I asked. I did not want some new student teacher. I wanted Ms. Colman.

  “Oh, I will be here,” she replied. “Right here in school. Mostly I will be in the room so I can watch Mr. Howard. But sometimes I will leave the classroom and let him be in charge.” Ms. Colman cleared her throat. “Boys and girls,” she added, “when Mr. Howard is teaching, I want you to pretend I am not even nearby. And I want you to be polite and well-behaved. I want you to treat Mr. Howard the way you would treat me.”

  We met Mr. Howard that afternoon. He stood next to Ms. Colman while she introduced him. Mr. Howard smiled at us. One front tooth was crooked. His tie had big blops of color all over it. And his hair was slicked back with tonic. I could smell that tonic from my seat. Right away, I knew I was not going to like Mr. Howard.

  Pumpkins and Leaves

  I tried to forget about Mr. Howard by working on my school with Hannie. Since I would not have another big-house weekend for almost two weeks, we had plenty of time to get things ready. Sometimes we talked about our plans on the playground. Sometimes I went to Hannie’s house after school. A couple of times we went across the street to the big house to work in the playroom. But we could not do that too often.

  We kept asking Nancy if she wanted to help us with our school, but Nancy said no. She was not being mean. She just seemed busy. Or something. She looked as if she were daydreaming all the time.

  “Nancy,” I said, “are you positive you do not want to help us with our school? Hannie and I are having fun. And we might need another teacher.”

  Do you know what Nancy replied? She said, “What? Karen, did you ask me something? Sorry. I was not listening.” Then she went back to her daydreaming. A funny little smile was on her face.

  So Hannie and I worked by ourselves.

  “Ms. Colman has lesson plans,” I said to Hannie on the playground one day. “We should have lesson plans, too.”