Chapter 8, School Trip Over the Bridge

Chapter 8, First Draft

Teresa Winslow was the most popular math teacher at the Lewis Bay Charter High School. She taught the gifted kids their trig and statistics (“Never trust election polls until you check the margin of error, and even then. . .” ); she taught her students with special cognitive needs in creative ways that brought the best results in the state, she taught all the kids the principles of economic math, from credit card interest to compounded interest in savings accounts,  to reading electric bills (so complicated these days) to examining the annual town budget- what a way to learn percentages. Who knew a police department could cost so much, and look at the overtime pay for traffic detail. . .

                Teresa also taught algebra, geometry, and knitting. Yes, knitting. Once her Special Ed kids mastered the ergonomics of how to hold the knitting needles when taking a stitch, and could cast on and then transfer over to the other needle, it was magical- the clicking rhythm of the needles as her students caught on and raced to get to the end of their row first was the sound of success.

                You Tube was so helpful, how did people learn things without it? Teresa made sure You Tube was up on the flat screen in the classroom, with a video on an endless loop demonstrating with giant hands the precise method of knitting each type of stitch, and then the backwards purl.

                The counting of stitches was necessary; the estimation of length, the gauge of the stitch, all of this improved concentration and calmed the kids down. She had a sign at her door, “All cell phones off or pay the consequences!” No one ever knew what the consequences might be, when she heard someone texting or saw the head bobbing, she rooted out the phone and made up the consequences on the spot.  Usually it was classroom cleaning and she had one of the most well dusted and swept classrooms in the building.

                By mid-October all fifteen of the kids with special needs had managed to produce a sampler scarf and passed their basic midterm on rations, scale and metric conversions.

                Miss Teresa had promised her students a field trip if they all passed their exams, and this was accomplished after generating several peer tutoring groups where they all helped each other study as never before. The exam was “open book” and each student had their notebooks to refer to. All above board, and according to their own individual education plans.

                The field trip was a blending of two of her classes- the special needs groups and the gifted groups.

                The Mensa Club students were blessed with brains that grasped and remembered everything easily. They were easy to teach. They were always hungry for the next thing they wanted to learn. But in Teresa’s opinion, the rarefied air they breathed did not allow the socialization skills other kids had by the time they were in high school.

                So first, Teresa taught them the foundational concepts of social service, via handout and discussion. And then she had them tutor the kids who needed help during study period, one on one. Then they took their field trip.

                The budget was tight. They could have a school bus for one school day. They had to be back when the final bell rang and because that bus would then take the girl’s field hockey team to their game off cape. Because it was Friday and the traffic back to Cape Cod would be intense due to the Wellfleet Oyster Festival, they couldn’t go far.

                Theresa decided upon the Plimouth Plantation. She had two appointments set up, one with a character actor who played a Pilgrim wife in the recreated village, she was scheduled to demonstrate to them for a half hour the arithmetic involved in her day. . . estimation of firewood for the day, week, and winter ahead, recipe measurements, the threading her loom for the weaving of her textiles, the number of sheep that needed to be shorn to spin wool enough for a woven blanket, how many ounces of herbs to make her medicinal health tonic.

                The second appointment was away from the Pilgrim settler’s meetinghouse and fort, down a path at the Wampanoag encampment. This appointment was with a real Wampanoag, Brown Turtle. He was an interpreter, not an actor, who needed help building a new winter wetu. This would take a day, the students were to help for a few hours. Precise geometric placing of the long cedar poles was necessary to create the long domed lodge that would have housed several Wampanoag families comfortably through the winters of the 1620’s, almost four hundred years ago. Sixteen generations ago or so, if each generation was given a twenty-year span before the next generation was born, the kids estimated, when she threw the question out to them.  

                Progress on the wetu was slow. The kids wanted to skip rocks in to the Eel River. They were excited by the almost naked Brown Turtle who wore only a tanned deer hide loincloth and an impressive carved antler necklace. Tanned and strong, he demonstrated what human beings had done for thousands of years- worked physically with their own strength to create whatever was necessary for survival. Brown Turtle picked up two steamed cedar poles and instructed the students on how to insert them into the ground. They were bent into an arch and lashed together, and then held in place until the next poles were placed to stabilize them. The idea was to form a strong framework first, and then shingle over the poles with wide slabs of tree bark, all held in place by pulling plant-based twine through drilled holes in the bark, and then tied to the frame. Another framework of poles would then go over the layer of bark. A smoke hole in the center of the roof would allow ventilation, and the interior benches would be covered with furs for sleeping. The Wampanoag lodges were much warmer through the winters than the settler’s cottages with their huge chimneys, which let out all the heat their fires created.

                Another Wampanoag worked on a new canoe. A large wide log had been cut and stripped of its bark on one side. Little fires set along the top barkless side of the log slowly burned toward the center. A sharp chiseling rock in his fist, the man chipped away at the burnt wood to hollow the log until it was deep enough to carry a person on the water.  The women in the encampment were busy with the food supply. Dried corn was ground by hand, a fresh stretched deer hide that wanted tanning indicated a fresh kill of meat to be dried for the winter. A roasting turkey was turned by hand over the fire, and smelled as delicious as any turkey baked in a modern oven.

                Teresa’s students looked out of place with their Nike fluorescent sneakers and sports jerseys. The flashy artificial colors against the natural setting of buckskin, wood fires, the flowing river and the blank faced Brown Turtle was almost comical, like a sitcom about nerdy kids stepping out of a time machine into pre-colonial Massachusetts.

                At 1:30 PM, Teresa had to stop the progress, what little had been made. She gathered her students in a circle. “We have to thank Brown Turtle for his time and patience,” she told them. “I want you all to go over there, and each one of you shake his hand and make eye contact and tell him what you appreciated about today.”

                There was a slight collective groan, but they all moved over to the wetu and surrounded Brown Turtle, murmuring their thanks. Teresa was the last to say good-bye before they left the encampment and walked back through the woods to the parking lot and their waiting school bus.

                “We learned so much. I really think they will remember what you’ve shown them, in so many ways,” she said.

                He nodded. “My pleasure,” he said.

A very modern way of speaking, Teresa thought. She turned to the gently flowing river.

“It’s so naturally beautiful here,” she said. “There is nothing at all to indicate that we are walking in the 21^st century.”

Brown Turtle’s calm face rippled with a scowl. “Right over there, four miles to the east of us? There lies the biggest threat to our whole existence here. Pilgrim.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said after a moment.

“The nuke. The nuclear power station. That goes, we all go. It’s right over there on the edge of Cape Cod Bay, and I can tell you, we are constantly on alert here in Plymouth. They’ve had to power down twice in the past two months with safety issues- the equipment is worn out, and they've deferred maintaining key components. More of the same corporate mindset- profits over people. 

Teresa’s students were all up the path out of sight now. “I have to go,” she said. “But thank you for the wake up call. I've never thought much about that power station.”

“Look it up,” Brown Turtle said, “And join me in my nightmares.”

Teresa shook his hand and walked quickly away. Then she broke into a trot, she had to catch up with the kids. How strange was that? A nuclear power station in “America’s historical home town.”  She’d find out how strange in just a few hours.