IPB-118 Second Grade Teacher by Carole Wilson


Chapter 1


Indian Summer carried well on into the beginning of the school year, 
and the hills of Lincoln, New York in the center of the state were 
bathed with the warm rays of the sun, even though it should have been 
much cooler. The trees were changing color, turning the landscape into 
a picture-postcard setting. On the first day of the school year, just 
before her classes were to begin, lovely Karen Heller stood at the 
window of her second grade classroom and looked toward the hills. It 
was hardly a day to be teaching school, she thought to herself. And 
it's certainly not a day to keep children indoors in a stuffy classroom 
when she knew they would rather be outside playing. In a month, perhaps 
less, the ground would be covered with snow, and the air would be icy 
cold. Then would be the proper time to be studying. But now ... Now 
children should be running around the small wooded area, she thought. 
God knows they had enough to do without being denied the pleasure of 
childhood.

Karen sighed as she thought of the things she wanted to do for her 
students. It's a shame, she thought, that they would all be boys. The 
school was somewhat experimental, and the Superintendents believed that 
if all the students were one sex, they would be more able to 
concentrate on their studies. It was a belief that the voluptuous 
twenty-three-year-old redhead did not share. At any age, people should 
be with members of the opposite sex. There would be no way they could 
avoid it in later life, and the longer inter-action was postponed, the 
harder it would be for children to understand about life and love. 
There were enough problems in the world without making things worse.

When she had been a student in college in Buffalo, New York, Karen had 
developed the belief that it was a teacher's duty to teach everything, 
and not just those things that were written in the textbooks. At best, 
books were only a partial education. Her students, she believed, should 
have as much experience as possible. When she had learned about the 
experimental school, she had applied, not quite understanding that it 
was an all boys school. When she had been accepted and learned that 
there were not only no girl students, but also no other female 
teachers, she had almost refused the job. It was not the type of 
situation she had envisioned herself in. But then she thought the 
better of it. It would do the children no good if she deserted them 
when she Felt they needed someone who thought the way she did. She 
believed that she might be able to do some good if she joined the 
faculty. She wasn't exactly sure, at that point almost two weeks ago, 
about what she could do to. but she had joined the faculty anyway, 
believing that something would present itself in such a way that she 
would be able to put to use some of her own ideas about education

After all, this was supposed to be an experimental school.


End of Page 1. See ipb-118.txt for full story.