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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “New Moon” Down in the Dirt (v135) (the March/April 2016 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

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Friends and Neighbors

Terry C. Ley

    I am sitting on a little oak chair at the front of the classroom that I share with twenty-five other first graders. Only six of us are now sitting in the oak chairs carefully arranged in a semicircle at the front of the room. We are the Robins, and we are the best readers in the first grade at Manual Arts School. Miss Mary Hoagland, our teacher, will never say that, that we are the best readers. A kind person, she does not want to hurt the feelings of the Bluebirds and the Wrens, the vast multitudes now busy with their seatwork, waiting their turns in the reading circle.
    Miss Hoagland takes her seat in front of us, her teacher’s edition of Friends and NeighborsFriends and Neighbors in one hand, a small stack of flashcards in the other. Before we read, we must warm up, like athletes do.
    “What,” says Miss Hoagland, “is this word?” She holds up the top flashcard in her stack. It is clearly red. We all know that word, having met it every day this week in our reading circle, but today my hand is the first one in the air.
    “Terry?” she says, nodding in my direction.
    “Red!” I declare with confidence, though not so loud as to disturb the Bluebirds and Wrens.
    Miss Hoagland doesn’t say “Right!” every time a Robin gets a word right. That would become tiresome for both teacher and Robin. Instead, before she moves on to the next word, she hands me the card with red printed on it, a token of victory to hold until the end of our reading lesson.
    If learning is partly tactile, then I guess whoever invented those flashcards should get a medal. They are sizeable cards, each perhaps a foot long, with letters large enough to be read from the back of the classroom should that become necessary. But I like them most because they are constructed of heavy cream-colored paper, what I call “vanilla” paper until I learn later to call it more properly, “Manila” paper. I love the feel of flashcards in my hand, substantial and cool, and I crave more, more, more, the pure weight of them signaling my superiority as a reader.
     Today, while the other Robins are reading their paragraphs aloud, I examine the cards that I have won: red and ball, look and run. I admire the crisp font in which they are printed, the one that the editors at Scott, Foresman have selected for the stories in Friends and Neighbors. They look exactly the way they look on the pages of the stories we have read this week. I am proud of my observation, tracing with my finger the a in ball, which doesn’t look at all like the a’s we practice printing every day.
    
    I place the flashcards in my lap when it’s my turn to read aloud about Dick and Jane. They have a new ball today, it seems—a red ball—and Spot, their dog, tries to snatch the ball when Dick and Jane toss it back and forth. Spot is a cocker spaniel. I wish I had a cocker spaniel at home instead of a turtle. Turtles are no fun when it comes to playing ball. Miss Hoagland allows me to read two whole pages. She interrupts our reading only to correct our mistakes, and today she sits silently while I read. I am proud.
    Too soon our time in the reading circle ends, and the Bluebirds come to roost where we have made such rapid progress. They are behind us Robins. Before beginning my seatwork I hear them chirping for their flashcards, calling out words that we had called out two weeks ago. Sometimes not even one Wren knows Miss Hoagland’s word, and she has to help them. I pity them. There are more Wrens than either Robins or Bluebirds, and they are reading from a different book altogether, one with only a few words on each page. I really feel sorry for them.
    Today, for seatwork, Miss Hoagland asks us Robins to do page 16 in our Think-and-Do workbook. Dick and Jane—and Spot!—are on p. 16, too. They’re not playing ball here, though. They’re doing something altogether different on this page, but most of the words are the same as the ones we just read in the reading circle. After I read the directions, moving my lips only a little, I read the page, circling some words and drawing lines to connect others. Where it tells me to copy words like red and ball several times at the bottom of the page, I try to make my letter a in ball look like the one in the book and the one printed in the orderly row of letters that march across the front of the room, over the blackboard, right above Miss Hoagland, who is now smiling at a Bluebird as she hands her a vanilla flashcard.

    I love filling in the blanks on the workbook pages, printing my answers very carefully; tearing out my finished pages at the perforations; and placing them on Miss Hoagland’s desk when the Wrens retire and reading lessons end. I really like getting those pages back the next day, too, especially when Miss Hoagland writes something nice at the top. (I like “Good work, Terry!” best. It makes me smile.) I also like taking the pages home to show Mom and Dad, who seem quite happy that I am a Robin, that Miss Hoagland thinks I do good work, and that I like being new in Dick and Jane’s neighborhood.

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