Teacher Finds Science Fair a Metaphor for 5th-Graders’ Lives

At the beginning of May, the Science Fair loomed for all of the fifth-grade classes at Kelly School. According to the rules, the children could form teams of their own choosing or work alone. Each team or child would choose a topic, such as dinosaurs or water power.

Finally, each would construct a demonstration, to fit on a table in one of the gyms for the climactic event, the fair itself.

Part of the plan was to get parents involved. Chris sent home letters, in English on one side and in Spanish on the other, asking that the parents help their children with the demonstrations.

Every day during May, Chris gave her students an hour or more to get ready for the fair.

Many early signs weren’t good.

During an early rehearsal, Kimberly, who teamed up with Courtney, told Chris, “We’re gonna put these foods on the table and tell ‘em what the things are.

“OK. You have foods on your table,” said Chris to the two girls. “Someone comes by at the fair. What are you going to tell them?”

“Like, this is a potato?” said Kimberly.

“Everyone’s going to know what a potato is!” said Chris.

“Like what foods nourish your body?” said Courtney hopefully.

Chris questioned the team of Irene and Mariposa. “Are you just going to have a bunch of rocks in front of you?”

“We’re going to get a lot of rocks from around my house,” said Irene. “And figure out their environment. Like whether they came from a desert. . . .”

“Their environment? Rocks don’t have an environment, and I doubt any around your house came from a desert.” Chris’ eyes got very wide. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

But there were exceptions, and the most exceptional was Claude.

Chris was astonished. Claude joined up with Pedro and Jimmy.

Chris had to insist that Claude’s partners do some of the work. Claude was clearly the leader. She asked the three boys to describe their project, and Claude piped up: “It’s gonna be like on streams and rivers and how they form. How they move.” Talking fast, shaking a hand furiously, Claude described all this while Chris ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, suppressing her smile.

“That’s very good, Claude! I like what I’m hearing!” They were down in the library. Chris turned to the aide there and said, “Would you help these boys find some more books on streams and rivers?”

“And ponds and lakes!” declared Claude.

Later, she overheard Claude say to a classmate, “I’m gonna work on my science project every night!” The next week, he described again for Chris, in remarkable detail, the birth of rivers.

To the class in general, Chris said, “I hope some of you are as well versed on your projects as Claude.”

For a moment, Chris wondered, “Did I really just say that?”

This was the boy who, a month ago, when Mrs. Zajac was putting the heat on him, said he felt mixed up and wanted to go home. Now he raced around, making a chart for his project. The chart was incredibly neat.

Among a generally disappointing bunch of written science reports, Claude’s looked pretty good.

High-pitched voices echoed in the gym. The end of May had arrived, and the fair had begun. The noise was like one unremitting, collective scream, which could only get worse, because to converse in the gym one had to add to the clamor by shouting.

“Today,” Chris predicted, “will be a four-Tylenol day.”

Chris decided to look at the projects from other classes first. She found a pretty good water wheel on one table. At the next table a boy from another class sat, looking hopeful, behind an exhibit that consisted of a rose, still encased in cellophane and planted in the top of an empty soda can.

“What’s your project on?” shouted Chris. She leaned across the table, cupping an ear to catch the reply.

“Flowers,” said the boy, nodding earnestly.

She visited another boy, from another class, who said his project was on electricity. “It comes from plugs,” he explained.

Chris felt a secret relief. She had awakened one night not long ago imagining children from other classes standing behind wonderful homemade rocket ships and expounding on physics, while her students explained to fair-goers, “This is a potato” and “These are rocks.”

Chris told herself now: “At least I don’t feel too embarrassed. Mine aren’t any worse than anyone else’s.”

But then she stopped at Jorge’s table, and her amusement began to wane.

Jorge, from her low math group, often looked exhausted. He had tried to do a science project, a model of a laser made out of colored paper, an electric light, and a cardboard box. Jorge had gotten the idea from a book. He’d followed all the instructions, he told Mrs. Zajac.

“But it doesn’t work,” he said. Jorge had been heard to say a few days before, “I can’t get too much help at home.” An understatement. The floors of his family’s apartment were covered with their dog’s excrement. He wore the same clothes day in and day out, and even now, standing across the table from him. Chris could smell the sad odor, like rotting fruit.

Arnie’s father had arrived. Chris smiled broadly. She extended her hand. Arnie’s father clasped it shyly. Chris noticed that his pants were torn and dirty. An unmistakable, sweetish odor of liquor came from him. It was only about 10 in the morning. Chris visited Arnie’s table. On it lay a store-bought example of an electric switch. Arnie smiled at her.

Other parents had arrived.

There, behind her homemade model of the solar system sat Arabella, smiling sweetly, looking chipper and healthy and confident, telling the judges all the names of the planets, their approximate distances from the sun, the main characteristics of each.

And there, in his electrician’s uniform, moving from table to table and correcting the mistaken notions of the various children who had done projects on electricity, was the explanation for the care behind Arabella’s project and for the progress that Arabella had made this year--Arabella’s father.

Alice’s father wore a necktie and blue blazer. The team of Alice, Judith and Margaret had done electrical generation. Alice’s father had taken them to the Holyoke water power plant a few days ago. Through a friend he’d arranged a special tour for the girls. Their display, a model town on a large piece of plywood, didn’t show how power got generated, but it was the nicest-looking project in the gym.

Chris questioned them. The girls knew their stuff. Chris chatted briefly with Alice’s father. She thanked him for helping his daughter and her friends so much.

She meant those words.

But she couldn’t look around the gym now without feeling sad. The children whose parents had come to the gym--for the most part neatly dressed, confident-seeming adults--had the best projects and knew the most about their subjects.

In general, the forlorn projects belonged to the children with no parents on hand, such as Courtney and Kimberly, who stood behind a table displaying a box of oatmeal, a hamburger bun, a piece of white bread, a carton of milk, an egg, two potatoes and a remnant of iceberg lettuce growing brown.

Chris wished she could call a halt right now.

The whole event looked like a rigged election, distressingly predictable, as if designed to teach the children about the unfairness of life.

She saw one bright spot, though. There was some room in an unfair world for individual achievement. She walked up to Claude’s table.

She felt rescued from this day, for a brief time, when she looked at what Claude had done: on the table, his thorough and neat diagram of a river rising in mountains and flowing to the sea; and behind that, Claude’s model river. He had built his model on a metal serving platter. Little stones were piled up at one end, from which a chute of aluminum foil descended, depicting a waterfall, which led to the river itself, which had banks described by more small stones and a bed of aquarium gravel, and water, too.

In the water lay a little rubber crayfish and a little rubber fish, which if you squeezed it (as Claude would for fair-goers) spawned several smaller rubber fish from its nether end. She’d never dared to hope for this much from him. And the best was still to come.

“All right, Claude,” she shouted over the din, “tell me about rivers.”

And Claude, who for six months hadn’t managed to complete more than a few homework assignments, delivered a lucid description, even better than during rehearsals, of the birth of rivers.

He seemed to know enough to talk all morning. Chris had to move along. “OK,” she said. “Thank you, Claude.”

Hazy sunlight filtered through the gym’s high, frosted windows. The noise, sharp and concentrated, made her feel as if her hands were vibrating, like tuning forks.

Chris looked around. Where was Robert?

Robert had come to school this morning without his science project, saying that he had left it at a convenience store. The counselor had taken him to fetch the project. Chris had told Robert that when he got back, he should come down to the gym right away. But he was nowhere in sight.

Chris sent Courtney back to the classroom to see if Robert was there. Courtney returned in a few minutes.

“Robert says he’s not comin,’ ” she said.

Chris lowered her eyebrows. “Oh, he isn’t, is he.”

From “Among Schoolchildren,” by Tracy Kidder. Copyright, 1989, by John Tracy Kidder. Reprinted by permission from the publisher, Houghton Mifflin. COMING UP SUNDAY: After Clarence, Robert was Zajac’s most troublesome student. But Zajac had liked Clarence. She didn’t especially like Robert. On the day of Kelly’s science fair, she would learn how badly she had failed Robert.