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CONTENTS
Chapter 1: New Kid Gets Old Teacher
Chapter 2: Roof Blows Off Schoolroom
Chapter 3: Ancient History, Modern Mystery
Chapter 4: Missing Teacher Found in Nearby Suburb
Chapter 5: Homework: Hard But Important
Chapter 6: Top Stress Cause for Kids? One Word Fear
Chapter 7: Fans Brace for Grudge Match
Chapter 8: Volunteers Line Up for Danger
Chapter 9: K-9 Unit Sniffs Suspicious Activities
Chapter 10: New Team Picks Up Steam
Chapter 11: Tremors Point to Major Quake
Chapter 12: Growth Spurt Doesn’t Hurt
Chapter 13: Strong Winds in forecast
Chapter 14: Law for All, All for Law
Chapter 15: Ref Makes Tough Call
Chapter 16: Salvage Crew Inspects Wreckage
Chapter 17: Rescue Squad Tackles Cleanup
Chapter 18: Censorship + Computers = No Way
Chapter 19: December to Be Warmer than Normal
Chapter 20: Home Team Goes for Broke
‘Keepers of the School’ Excerpt
About Andrew Clements
For my brother Denney— a good writer, a good journalist, a good man
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
AMENDMENT I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
CHAPTER 1
NEW KID GETS OLD TEACHER
“CARA LOUISE, I am talking to you!”
Cara Landry didn’t answer her mom. She was busy.
She sat at the gray folding table in the kitchenette, a heap of torn paper scraps in front of her. Using a roll of clear tape, Cara was putting the pieces back together. Little by little, they fell into place on a fresh sheet of paper about eighteen inches wide. The top part was already taking shape—a row of neat block letters, carefully drawn to look like newspaper type.
“Cara, honey, you promised you wouldn’t start that again. Didn’t you learn one little thing from the last time?”
Cara’s mom was talking about what had happened at the school Cara had attended for most of fourth grade, just after her dad had left. There had been some problems.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Cara said absentmindedly, absorbed in her task.
Cara Landry had only lived in Carlton for six months. From the day she moved to town, during April of fourth grade, everyone had completely ignored her. She had been easy for the other kids to ignore. Just another brainy, quiet girl, the kind who always turns in assignments on time, always aces tests. She dressed in a brown plaid skirt and a clean white blouse every day, dependable as the tile pattern on the classroom floor. Average height, skinny arms and legs, white socks, black shoes. Her light brown hair was always pulled back into a thin ponytail, and her pale blue eyes hardly ever connected with anyone else’s. As far as the other kids were concerned, Cara was there, but just barely.
All that changed in one afternoon soon after Cara started fifth grade.
* * *
It was like any other Friday for Cara at Denton Elementary School. Math first thing in the morning, then science and gym, lunch and health, and finally, reading, language arts, and social studies in Mr. Larson’s room.
Mr. Larson was the kind of teacher parents write letters to the principal about, letters like:
Dear Dr. Barnes:
We know our child is only in second grade this year, but please be sure that he [or she] is NOT put into Mr. Larson’s class for fifth grade.
Our lawyer tells us that we have the right to make our educational choices known to the principal and that you are not allowed to tell anyone we have written you this letter.
So in closing, we again urge you to take steps to see that our son [or daughter] is not put into Mr. Larson’s classroom.
Sincerely yours,
Mr. and Mrs. Everybody-who-lives-in-Carlton
Still, someone had to be in Mr. Larson’s class; and if your mom was always too tired to join the PTA or a volunteer group, and if you mostly hung out at the library by yourself or sat around your apartment reading and doing homework, it was possible to live in Carlton for half a year and not know that Mr. Larson was a lousy teacher. And if your mom didn’t know enough to write a letter to the principal, you were pretty much guaranteed to get Mr. Larson.
Mr. Larson said he believed in the open classroom. At parents’ night every September, Mr. Larson explained that children learn best when they learn things on their own.
This was not a new idea. This idea about learning was being used successfully by practically every teacher in America.
But Mr. Larson used it in his own special way. Almost every day, he would get the class started on a story or a worksheet or a word list or some reading and then go to his desk, pour some coffee from his big red thermos, open up his newspaper, and sit.
Over the years, Mr. Larson had taught himself how to ignore the chaos that erupted in his classroom every day. Unless there was the sound of breaking glass, screams, or splintering furniture, Mr. Larson didn’t even look up. If other teachers or the principal complained about the noise, he would ask a student to shut the door, and then go back to reading his newspaper.
Even though Mr. Larson had not done much day-today teaching for a number of years, quite a bit of learning happened in room 145 anyway. The room itself had a lot to do with that. Room 145 was like a giant educational glacier, with layer upon layer of accumulated materials. Mr. Larson read constantly, and every magazine he had subscribed to or purchased during the past twenty years had ended up in his classroom. Time, Good Housekeeping, U.S. News & World Report, Smithsonian, Cricket, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Boys’ Life, Organic Gardening, The New Yorker, Life, Highlights, Fine Woodworking, Reader’s Digest, Popular Mechanics, and dozens of others. Heaps of them filled the shelves and cluttered the comers. Newspapers, too, were stacked in front of the windows; recent ones were piled next to Mr. Larson’s chair. This stack was almost level with his desktop, and it made a convenient place to rest his coffee cup.
Each square inch of wall space and a good portion of the ceiling were covered with maps, old report covers, newspaper clippings, diagrammed sentences, cartoons, Halloween decorations, a cursive handwriting chart, quotations from the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence, and the complete Bill of Rights—a dizzying assortment of historical, grammatical, and literary information.
The bulletin boards were like huge paper time warps—shaggy, colorful collages. Whenever Mr. Larson happened to find an article or a poster or an illustration that looked interesting, he would staple it up, and he always invited the kids to do the same. But for the past eight or ten years, Mr. Larson had not bothered to take down the old papers—he just wallpapered over them with the new ones. Every few months—especially when it was hot and humid—the weight of the built-up paper would become too much for the staples, and a slow avalanche of clippings would lean forward and whisper to the floor. When that happened, a student repair committee would grab some staplers from the supply cabinet, and the room would shake
as they pounded flat pieces of history back onto the wall.
Freestanding racks of books were scattered all around room 145. There were racks loaded with mysteries, Newbery winners, historical fiction, biographies, and short stories. There were racks of almanacs, nature books, world records books, old encyclopedias, and dictionaries. There was even a rack of well-worn picture books for those days when fifth-graders felt like looking back at the books they grew up on.
The reading comer was jammed with pillows and was sheltered by half of an old cardboard geodesic dome. The dome had won first prize at a school fair about fifteen years ago. Each triangle of the dome had been painted blue or yellow or green and was designed by kids to teach something—like the flags of African nations or the presidents of the United States or the last ten Indianapolis-500 winners—dozens and dozens of different minilessons. The dome was missing half its top and looked a little like an igloo after a week of warm weather. Still, every class period there would be a scramble to see which small group of friends would take possession of the dome.
The principal didn’t approve of Mr. Larson’s room one bit. It gave him the creeps. Dr. Barnes liked things to be spotless and orderly, like his own office—a place for everything, and everything in its place. Occasionally he threatened to make Mr. Larson change rooms—but there was really no other room he could move to. Besides, room 145 was on the lower level of the school in the back corner. It was the room that was the farthest away from the office, and Dr. Barnes couldn’t bear the thought of Mr. Larson being one inch closer to him.
Even though it was chaotic and cluttered, Mr. Larson’s class suited Cara Landry just fine. She was able to tune out the noise, and she liked being left alone for the last two hours of every day. She would always get to class early and pull a desk and chair over to the back corner by some low bookcases. Then she would pull the large map tripod up behind her chair. She would spread out her books and papers on the bookshelf to her right, and she would tack her plastic pencil case on the bulletin board to her left. It was a small private space, like her own little office, where Cara could just sit and read, think, and write.
Then, on the first Friday afternoon in October, Cara took what she’d been working on and without saying anything to anybody, she used four thumbtacks and stuck it onto the overloaded bulletin board at the back of Mr. Larson’s room. It was Denton Elementary School’s first edition of The Landry News.
CHAPTER 2
ROOF BLOWS OFF SCHOOLROOM
AFTER THE COMICS and the crossword puzzle, the sports section was Mr. Larson’s favorite part of the newspaper. He always saved the sports for the last hour of the day, as a reward for himself. On this particular Friday afternoon in October, Mr. Larson was reading an important article about the baseball pennant races. He was trying hard to give the article his full attention, but he couldn’t.
Something was wrong.
There were no shattering windows, no toppling chairs, no screaming or yelling. It was worse than that. It was too quiet.
Mr. Larson looked up from his paper and saw all twenty-three kids gathered around the bulletin board. Some girls were giggling, there were some gasps and pokes and whispers, and some of the bigger boys were elbowing to get in closer. Over the top of his reading glasses, the scene came into focus for Mr. Larson, and he could see what they were staring at: a large sheet of paper laid out in columns, with a banner at the top, The Landry News.
Mr. Larson smiled. It was a pleased, self-satisfied smile. “There—you see,” he said to himself, as if he were talking to the principal, “that is my open classroom at work! Here’s living proof. I have not been involved one bit, and that quiet new girl—Laura . . . or Tara? Or . . . well . . . that little Landry girl—she has gone right ahead and made her own newspaper! And look! Just look! All the other kids are getting involved in the learning!” Mr. Larson kept talking to himself, now imagining that he was defending himself in front of the whole school board. “Go right ahead. You’re the principal, Dr. Barnes. You can put all the letters you want into my file, Dr. Barnes. But here’s proof, right here! I do know what I’m doing, and I’m the teacher in my classroom, not you!”
Mr. Larson carefully folded up his newspaper and put it onto the large stack beside his desk. He would have to finish that World Series article on Monday.
He carefully straightened his long legs under his desk, then tensed his back and stretched his arms, tilting his head slowly from side to side. He was getting ready to stand up. This was the perfect time for some meaningful interaction with the class. Also, it was only five minutes before the end of the day, and he’d have to stand up then anyway because he had bus duty this week.
Moving carefully among the jumble of desks and chairs, Mr. Larson got close enough to the bulletin board to read The Landry News. He nodded at the headline of the lead story: SECOND-GRADER GAGS ON OVERCOOKED JELL-O. Mr. Larson remembered. That little problem had required a call to 911.
A sports column caught his eye, and squinting, he could read the neatly printed description of a noon-recess touch football game. The game had ended with a fist fight and one-day suspensions for three fifth-grade boys. Mr. Larson read slowly, smiling in approval. The writing was clear, no spelling mistakes, no wasted words. This girl had talent. He was just about to turn and compliment . . . Sara? . . . no—well, the Landry girl, when something caught his eye.
It was in the editorial section. There, in the lower right-hand corner of the paper, Mr. Larson saw his own name. He started reading.
From the Editor’s Desk
A Question of Fairness
There has been no teaching so far this year in Mr. Larson’s classroom. There has been learning, but there has been no teaching. There is a teacher in the classroom, but he does not teach.
In his handout from parents’ night, Mr. Larson says that in his classroom “the students must learn how to learn by themselves, and they must learn to learn from each other, too.”
So here is the question: If the students teach themselves, and they also teach each other, why is Mr. Larson the one who gets paid for being a teacher?
In the public records at the Carlton Memorial Library it shows that Mr. Larson got paid $39,324 last year. If that money was paid to the real teachers in Mr. Larson’s classroom, then each student would get $9.50 every day during the whole school year. I don’t know about you, but that would definitely help my attitude toward school.
And that’s the view this week from the News desk.
Cara Landry, Editor in Chief
The kids watched Mr. Larson’s face as he stood there reading. His jaw slowly clenched—tighter and tighter. His face reddened, and his short blond hair seemed to bristle all over his head. Instinctively, the kids backed away, clearing a path between Mr. Larson and the bulletin board. With one long stride he was there, and the four thumbtacks shot off and skittered across the floor as he tore the paper down.
Mr. Larson was tall—six feet, two inches. Now he seemed twice that size to the kids. He turned slowly from left to right, looking down at their faces. Without raising his voice he said, “There is a kind of writing that is appropriate in school, and there is a kind that is INappropriate.” Turning back to look directly at Cara, he held up the sheet and shook it. “THIS,” he shouted, “is INappropriate!”
Folding the paper in half, he walked quickly to his desk, ripping the sheet into smaller and smaller bits as he went. It was deathly still. Mr. Larson turned to look at Cara, still standing beside the bulletin board. Her face was as pale as his was red, and she was biting her lower lip, but she didn’t flinch. No one dared to breathe. The silence was shattered by the bell, and as Mr. Larson dropped the shredded paper into the trash basket, he barked, “Class dismissed!”
The room emptied in record time, and Cara was swept along toward the lockers and the waiting buses. Mr. Larson was right behind, on his way to bus duty. He hurried out to the curb, still angry but back under control. The hubbub and confusion of the scene was a we
lcome distraction, and during the next ten minutes buses one, two, and three filled up and pulled away with their noisy loads.
The last person to get on to bus 4 was Cara Landry. She was running, dragging her jacket, her gray backpack heavy on her thin shoulders.
Mr. Larson did not smile, but he did manage to say, “Good-bye, Cara.” He knew her name now.
As she climbed aboard, he turned quickly and went back into the school. Bus 4 pulled away.
Mr. Larson went to the teachers’ room, got his empty lunch bag off the shelf, and went straight from there out the back door of the school to the staff parking lot. He did not return to room 145 to get his red thermos of coffee. He did not want to go back there until he had to, until Monday.
And it’s a good thing he didn’t go get his thermos. Because if he had gone into the room and up to his desk, he probably would have glanced down into the wastebasket. And he would have seen that every scrap of The Landry News was gone.
Someone had returned to the empty room to pick up all the pieces.
CHAPTER 3
ANCIENT HISTORY, MODERN MYSTERY
THERE WERE SIXTEEN fifth-graders on Cara’s bus, and seven of them had been in Mr. Larson’s class. Cara usually sat by herself on the bus, but today LeeAnn Ennis slipped into the seat beside her.
As the bus pulled away LeeAnn looked over her shoulder to watch Mr. Larson stomp back into the school. “He was so mad! I’ve never even heard of him getting mad before. But he was mad today, real mad. I can’t believe you wrote that, Cara! Oh . . . you know, I don’t think we ever met, but I’m in Mr. Larson’s class with you.”
“I know who you are,” said Cara. “You’re LeeAnn Ennis. Ellen Hatcher is your best friend, you like Deke Deopolis, your sister is a cheerleader at the high school, and your mom is secretary of the Denton School PTA. Math is your favorite subject, you love cats, and you went to the big sleepover party at Betsy Lowenstein’s house last weekend.”