“All right,” said Ms. Lollyheart. “Will everyone please give me your attention? We need to get started.”
The room grew quiet.
“Thank you. I hope you’re all settled in nicely at your cottages and ready to give your full attention to our traditional Allbright orientation exercise. I think that by the time it’s over, you will have learned a great deal—about yourselves, about this school, about cooperation and leadership, and about the way things work in the real world. It may seem silly at first, but please bear with me.
“Now, to begin, we need to divide you into two teams. Adriana Gomez and Prescott Bottomy, will you please come up to the front?”
My heart sank, because I knew what was coming next. Adriana and Prescott would be asked to choose teams.
Every kid who has ever played baseball knows this routine. It’s a chance to shine if you happen to be popular or a really good athlete, but for the poor kid who can’t catch a ball to save his life, it’s slow death by humiliation. I am not terrible at sports, just not particularly good. As in so many things, I am kind of medium. I can always count on being chosen a little past halfway through. But even once you’re safely on a team, it’s still gut wrenching to watch those last few kids squirming with shame and embarrassment, wondering which of them will be chosen last.
“Ms. Lollyheart,” Prescott said, “can you give us some idea of what our teams will be doing? So we’ll know how to choose?”
She gave Prescott a wry smile. “Actually, hon, you won’t be needing any kind of strategy today. I will be selecting the teams.”
I let out a deep breath. Once again, Allbright hadn’t let me down.
Ms. Lollyheart proceeded to read out names, and one by one we got up and went over to stand by our team leader. There were twenty of us in total, ten to a team. Brooklyn and I were in Prescott’s group, Cal in Adriana’s.
Ms. Lollyheart unlocked a closet door and pulled out two large wooden boxes set on little wheels, each with a rope to pull it by.
“Now,” she said, “this exercise was designed to use many different talents and thinking styles, all of them abundantly represented here in this room. But what makes it so challenging is that within your teams, you will each work entirely alone on your assigned task—without help from any of your teammates. If each of you does your job properly, then the whole thing should come together like clockwork. Independence and interdependence, just like in the real world.”
She raised her eyebrows in an expressive way, and paused for a moment to let what she’d said sink in.
“You will have two days to complete the exercise. At four P.M. on Wednesday, you need to be finished and ready to roll. By then, each team must take the contents of one of these boxes”—she opened a lid and showed us what looked like the sale bin at a hardware store—“and use them to create a robot. It’s important to use every item in the box. You will lose points for every piece you leave behind.
“Now, I know some of you hotshots could build a perfectly good robot out of these materials completely on your own, without needing any directions. But chances are that, left to your own devices, you won’t figure out how to use all of the pieces and use them correctly. So we have put the instructions on the Internet. Naturally, we didn’t want to make this too easy, so don’t waste your time looking it up on Google.”
“Aw, shucks!” said Claire. She was a National Science Fair runner-up, and you could tell she was cool with any computer challenge you might throw at her. Ms. Lollyheart smiled patiently.
“Now, one of the items in the box is a tape recorder. It’s there because your robot is going to tell us the story of its life. One member of your team will be in charge of writing that story. He or she will then pass it on to another member, who will translate it into a special robot language. This language needs to be more or less intelligible to the audience. Be clever—you can do it. And no Pig Latin, please. You’re better than that.
“Another team member will read this material into the recorder. So that’s five tasks I’ve mentioned so far: the computer research, building the robot, writing the story, translating it, and recording it.
“Of course, your robot will not just stand still as it talks but will move in expressive and interesting ways. A sixth team member will program it to do these things.” She held up an intimidating remote control device with multiple switches and an antenna.
“This is going to be a performance, so the seventh team member will compose the sound track—original music, folks, not your favorite rock tune. And team member number eight will create a backdrop. Number nine is in charge of lighting and any special effects you may devise (You will, of course, be under the supervision of someone on the theater staff. They aren’t allowed to help you, but they will make sure you don’t destroy the equipment or electrocute yourself).”
There was a ripple of nervous laughter.
“And the team leaders?” asked Prescott. “What are we supposed to do?”
“Your job is to run the show. You’re sort of like the conductor. You cue the lights and music, and run the robot.”
“But, Ms. Lollyheart!” Prescott whined. “What if somebody on the team screws up—like they can’t find the instructions on the Internet, or they build the robot wrong? Then that messes it up for the rest of us.”
“Exactly,” Ms. Lollyheart said, giving him a tight smile.
She paused for a really long time to let this sink in. Then she continued. “Now, the actual presentation will take place over in the arts building, at the Willard Theater. The eighth-grade robot show is at four; we need to be out of there by five so the next group can come in. Okay? Is everybody clear on the assignment?”
“The music and the backdrop,” Trey asked, “what are we supposed to use to make them? I mean, will we have access to musical instruments and art materials and stuff like that?”
“Of course. All that information is in your assignment envelopes—where you are to go and when, what materials are available for your use, everything.” She pulled out a fat bunch of envelopes held together with a rubber band. “Now, team members number one need to get on your computers ASAP and try to find those instructions. On Prescott’s team, that will be Jenny Kirkland—here, Jenny.” She held out an envelope, which Jenny came forward to accept, a stricken expression on her face. She was the political activist who had set up the after-school tutoring program. If she had any special computer skills, she certainly hadn’t mentioned them.
“And the computer search for Adriana’s team will be done by Daniel Ellis.” (In case you forgot, he’s the history guy with the Cathars.)
At least he and Jenny would be evenly matched. That’s what I was thinking when she called my name—to build the robot!
“But…!” Prescott sputtered, beside himself with exasperation (and by now everyone was rolling their eyes and exchanging glances every time he opened his mouth). “Don’t I at least get to assign my own team members to their various jobs? I mean, no offense, Franny, but I’m sure we could put you to better use doing something—”
“No, Prescott, I’m afraid not,” Ms. Lollyheart said. “That’s what makes this exercise so interesting: I choose the teams, I make the assignments. Now, for Adriana’s team, the robot builder will be Edward Rodriguez.”
And so it went. Ms. Lollyheart had rigged this contest so everyone would fail. She had chosen the artists and writers to do the technical jobs and the techies to do the creative stuff. Cal, who could have made up a wonderful robot language, was assigned to lighting. Henry Chow, who had a heavy Chinese accent, was to read the translated story into the tape recorder. And nothing could be more hopeless than asking me to build a robot!
It was perfectly clear what they expected us to learn from this exercise—we each have our strengths and our weaknesses, in any society we all depend on one another, yadda, yadda, yadda. I was shocked that they were wasting two whole days spelling out the obvious. And this was an Allbright tradition? Cheez Louise!
“One last thing before you go. You probably think you know what this exercise is about, but please, trust me, you are only partially right. It is about many things. It may be years before you really understand it. We have had former students, out working in the business world or in government, who have written us to say that memories of the robot exercise came back to them at the strangest times—and rather often, too. It gave them a window through which they could view the workings of the world.
“All right, you’ve heard enough from me. You have your assignments. Go forth, my children, and create.”