Tuesday afternoon in the fifth-grade hall was a challenge for everyone.
Mrs.Akers walked into the music room, sat at her piano, smiled, and said, “My, you are all behaving so well this afternoon—wonderful! Now, please open your songbooks to ‘This Land Is Your Land.’”
As she played the introduction on the piano, she said,“Backs straight, big smiles, deep breaths, and . . .”
No one sang.
The piano stopped mid-measure, and Mrs. Akers frowned at the class. “Now, I know you can all do better than that.”
She began the introduction again, counting in the beats.“One, and two, and three,‘This land is your land, this land . . .’”
Mrs. Akers stopped. She was singing a solo, and
her high, quivering voice made the kids giggle.
She frowned again.“All right, students.This is not funny. And it’s not good. We have less than two weeks before our Thanksgiving program, and we have no time for this kind of silliness.”
She pointed a bright pink fingernail around the room. “Brian, Tommy, Anna, every one of you! I want to hear you sing!”
She banged out the introduction again, and the whole class sang,“This land is . . .” and then stopped.
The piano kept playing, and Mrs.Akers bellowed, “Sing!” And most of the kids jumped in on “. . . my land, from . . .” and then stopped.
After another shouted command, they sang “. . . the redwood forest ...,”and that’s how the whole song went, chopped up into three-word bits.
And when Mrs.Akers, her face bright red by this point, thumped on her piano and said,“What is wrong with all of you today?” the kids didn’t say a word.
Like all teachers, Mrs. Akers understood the “divide and conquer” rule: When you need to get to the bottom of something, you don’t ask the whole class; you ask one student. So she pointed at Lena in the front row and said,“Why aren’t you singing?”
Lena hesitated, and then motioned at the kids all around the room and said,“Not talking today.”
Mrs. Akers said, “What’s that supposed to mean? Not talking?”
Lena nodded.“Only three words.”
The music teacher was even more puzzled. She pointed at James and said,“Explain.”
James had trouble expressing himself even under the best conditions. He gulped and took a deep breath.Then he said,“Not . . . words. Everyone.”
A light dawned on Mrs. Akers’s face. And, still talking to James, she said, “Oh—so, is it like that project kids do, when they take a vow of silence? To protest how there’s still slavery in Africa? I read about that—is that it?”
James looked lost. He shook his head. “Hard . . . explain. Not.”
But Mrs. Akers felt like she had answered the riddle, or maybe partly answered it. And whatever was happening, she decided to be a good sport.
Looking around the room, she said, “So, tell me—can you all hum? Is humming allowed?”
Everyone grinned and nodded like maniacs. “How about clapping? Can you clap in rhythm?” More smiles and nods. “All right, then, here we go again,” and she ripped back into the piano. “One, and two, and three! Hmm hmm hmm hmmm hmmm . . .”
And twenty-four fifth graders clapped and hummed along as Mrs. Akers played all seven verses of “This Land Is Your Land.” Then the whole class giggled and laughed and hummed and clapped their way through the other four songs on the Thanksgiving program.
And they all survived their first wordless music class.
The fifth-period gym class was less dramatic than music. News had gotten to most of the teachers that the fifth graders had gone quiet, which didn’t bother the gym teacher at all.Tuesday was dodgeball day, so Mrs. Henley appointed the two captains, and then the captains picked their teams by pointing, and the first game got under way—all without a word.
Dodgeball, which can be pretty serious anyway, seemed especially grim without the talking and shouting. There were the usual grunts of effort and screams of terror, and when three or four kids with red dodgeballs would silently go hunting for one player on the other team, it was sort of like watching a pack of wolves go after a lone caribou:A motion of the leader’s head, a movement toward the prey, and then, Whack! Whack! WHOMP!—dead meat.
From the gym teacher’s point of view, dodgeball was all about improving reflexes and getting a good
large-motor-skills workout, and to accomplish those goals without any of the taunting and teasing and name-calling? That was just fine by her.
Even so, Mrs. Henley watched all three games with great interest, and she saw how the kids communicated without words.And she noticed herself pointing and shaking her head and blowing her whistle instead of yelling. It was nice to give her voice a rest.
Mr. Burton taught fifth-grade reading and language arts. He was puzzled at the beginning of the class right after lunch, and like the music teacher and the science teacher, he asked questions and got three-word answers. But he kept at it, and after about five minutes, he figured out what was going on, at least part of it.
Unlike Mrs. Marlow, Mr. Burton had a lot of patience and a pretty good sense of humor. And he couldn’t see any real problem with having these kids be this well-behaved. Anything that got the Unshushables quiet was fine by him. Plus, he decided they could all have some fun with this limit of three words in a row.
He picked a funny story from their reading textbook, a really short one, and he had the kids read it out loud, three words each and as fast as possible, with him calling out the name of the next narrator.
And when the story was finished, he said,“Okay, now I want you to make up a story.” He picked up a meter stick and said, “When I point at you, say a three-word sentence.And listen carefully, so you can make the story move forward. Here we go.”
The story started like this:
“A woman screamed.”
“She was scared.”
“It was dark.”
“‘Oh, no—snakes!’”
“One bit her.”
“‘Ow! My leg!’”
“She limped outside.”
“Her neighbor came.”
“‘What’s wrong?’”
“‘Snakes are everywhere!’”
“‘Are they poisonous?’”
“‘Yes, and smelly!’”
“‘Quick, my car!’”
“‘You saved me!’”
“‘Darn! Dead battery!’”
Round and round the room the story went.
The poor woman and her neighbor were eventually eaten by the huge orange lizards that came up out of the sewers and ripped the roof off the car.The lizards also ate all the snakes. But then some ugly tulips in the garden grew razor-blade teeth and ate the lizards. And then the tulips burped giant burps, which created a tornado that made the Statue of Liberty fall over and crush a tugboat, which made a wave that washed all the way to the White House and got muddy water all over the president’s polka-dotted underpants.