Always first to finish whatever the others dawdle over, Lizzie gets bored, which leads, of course, to mischief and detention and punishment, for her as well as Garth Emmons, usually her co-conspirator. Instead of providing the kind of material that would challenge Liz, which I think the teacher should do, Miss McKay punishes her, with increasing disproportion. One night at dinner, Lizzie cried telling how she was not being allowed to take part in the Cornucopia Project, third-grade's contribution to Thanksgiving festivities, because she was bothering classmates who still labored over the workbook. Lizzie loves arts and crafts, as Miss McKay well knows.
        I initiated parent/teacher conferences to try to warm up Miss McKay. I even brought homemade refreshments. She'd accepted a warm farmers' doughnut and a floral paper cup of coffee, but her emerald green eyes never softened beneath the helmet of her shellacked beehive hairdo. She talked about all the material there was to digest in third grade. “It doesn't help when one child diverts so much of my time and attention.”
        “But she wouldn't, if the work was more . . . inspiring.”
        “Your daughter needs to work within our parameters.” Miss McKay set down her doughnut firmly on the paper plate, and wiped her fingertips with a matching paper napkin. “If she can't do that now, think of the problems she'll have in the upper grades with all the material they have to get through.”
        Nauseating to hear Miss McKay portray education as getting through material. Calves pummeled into conformity by narrowing corrals! I taught full-time before becoming full-time Mom, and I plan to return some day, but not if it means sapping the learning process of zest the way the public schools do now.

        On the way to get our kids, I try to figure out what to do. I've got to find a way for my kids' unique qualities to be championed instead of being disparaged.
        Two teachers to deal with now: one young, one old, both rigid and punitive. And who knew about next year when wildly creative Regina would join the mix.

        Clayton stands on a kindergarten chair in front of the high sink, washing a bucketful of paintbrushes one after the other, his slight shoulders sloping as in defeat. The whole front of him is soaked. With Regina on my lap, I face Miss Thomas at her desk. Marsha awaits us in the hall.
        Miss Thomas sits straight against a backdrop of perfectly aligned stenciled orange pumpkins. Between thumb and forefinger, she holds one stencil with orange streaks dribbling down. She says, “Little boy won't stay within margins as directed.”

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