The Pilgrim’s Way
by Christine Fitzgerald
Dick and Jane, the perfect children from the Dick and Jane books, might have had someone like Ms. Cummings for a pre-K teacher. Ms. Cummings’ room was airy and well-organized. Things were done at a specific time, and in a specific order. The children learned to teach themselves, and they grew up to go to MIT and be high-ranking administrators at Google. I only heard from other moms about the paradise of cleanliness and order that was Ms. Cummings’ room. I never visited it myself.
There were two gifted pre-K teachers, and the students were assigned to the teachers using an entirely opaque irreversible method. Our child was not assigned to Ms. Cummings’ class. Our child was earmarked for the class of the other gifted pre-K teacher, the aptly named Ms. Genie (her real name). She was a magical, slightly disheveled overripe middle-aged bleached blond woman with a hearty laugh.
Part of the pre-gifted pre-K ritual is a meeting with the teacher, to see if the parents want to take the plunge and enroll their child. When I arrived to scope out Ms. Genie’s classroom, I was partnerless, as was the other mom present, Mrs. Yang (her real name). Mrs. Yang (whose daughter grew up to be a concert pianist and a nuclear physicist, not kidding), was, like me, initially shell-shocked upon contact with Ms. Genie’s classroom. The room was filled floor to ceiling with stuff. There were puppets and costumes and books and Legos and all manner of trinkets. There was a specially-made table with a rim around it. The table was a rectangle of about two by three feet. The table contained salt. It was like an elevated sandbox. There were several sifting utensils and other gadgets half-buried in the salt. The table was about waist-high for a three year old, and there was just enough room around it for a three year old to belly up to it. There were a couple of other corners of the room in which a few of the kids might be able to sit down, but otherwise the space in the room was taken up with stuff, all of which might be of considerable interest (and a possible choking hazard) to bright three year olds, although some of the stuff would be out of reach for three year olds, as it was stacked to the ceiling.
Mrs. Yang and I refrained from making eye contact. We were in the same boat. We had jumped through the hoops of getting this far into this exclusive program, and we were loathe to turn back, but our mettle was being tested.
Ms. Genie greeted us with extreme enthusiasm. She touted her credentials. She was one of a very few teachers certified to teach gifted pre-K students. She had a Master’s Degree in Gifted Pre-K. She had been to a lot of special conferences about teaching Gifted Pre-K. She had received the highest score ever for something or other, and so had her own children, and so had many of her students. She explained her method, which involved letting the kids interact with all of the stuff in the room, and similar stuff elsewhere if she could take them on field trips and such.
Ms. Genie yammered on for quite a while, then she suddenly paused. Perhaps Ms. Yang and I were looking dismayed or bored.
Ms. Genie looked at us for a split second, then she silently inserted her entire arm into the morass of nearby stuff and fished around for about a minute before pulling out a ziplock bag containing a white glob of what appeared to be a putrid, liquefying food of some sort.
“You know what that is, right?” cried Ms. Genie.
Mrs. Yang and I hesitated to venture a guess. Parents of potential “GT” kids HATE it when they are asked questions. My kid is gifted, but I may not be all that smart. I very well might not know the answer to any questions whatsoever. I decided I would let Mrs. Yang take this one, in the way that I let other people figure out the tip on the bill or how to divvy up the bill at the restaurant. Sometimes laziness is the best policy.
Mrs. Yang was silent.
Ms. Genie was rather visibly disappointed with our lack of umph. She did not say anything, but her pause communicated, “come on now, give a guess.” I assumed she did this with the kids. I was sure that with her “class” she frequently rattled on at a breakneck speed, then came to an overwhelming question, and with a tremendous pause, waited to see what gem of a response her gifted three-year-old students would blurt out.
Mrs. Yang and I had remained silent for an embarrassingly long time. We effectively called Ms. Genie’s bluff. Ms. Genie patiently asked us if we had ever thought about how the Pilgrims managed to eat while they were on the Mayflower. Big pause. How did they store food? Another big pause. They had potatoes, and those potatoes got rancid JUST LIKE THE POTATO IN THAT ZIPLOCK BAG.
“Can you imagine how that potato is going to look by Thanksgiving?” demanded Ms. Genie.
Again, Mrs. Yang and I had no response, but we both shuddered at the thought as the potato was already in an advanced stage of decay. Thanksgiving was about four months away.