Bruce Coville

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

WHAT HAPPENED IN FOURTH GRADE

I grew up in a rural area of upstate New York, and it was a good place to be.

Mostly.

Assuming you had the good fortune to fit in.

The elementary school I attended had originally been built as the high school for our small community. When the village built a new, very modern high school, the old school, with its high ceilings, enormous windows, and beautiful library, was converted into the elementary school.

Though I professed to hate school (it’s a childhood obligation), I loved that old building. And just as well that I did, since I was there for six years, from first through sixth grade. The early grades were housed on the first floor, older grades ever higher, until in fifth and sixth grade we inhabited the top floor.

At that time it was common for schools to group kids by ability, rather than mixing things up, and I was lucky enough to be in the “top group.” A few people moved in and out of the class as families came and went, but most of us were together, grade after grade, for six years.

We were a bright, funny, friendly group.

Mostly.

However, we were not as good as we thought we were, as I learned one afternoon in fourth grade.

That day our teacher, let’s call her Mrs. Pike, sent one of our classmates, let’s call him Andrew, on an errand to the office. Once he was safely out of the room, Mrs. Pike turned to us and said, “I didn’t really need to have Andrew run that errand. The reason I sent him to the office is that I needed to talk to you.” Pause. Meaningful and displeased look from our teacher, whom we loved. “Andrew’s mother called me last night. She called to tell me that every afternoon when he comes home from school, he goes into his room and cries himself to sleep.” Pause. “Because of the way you treat him.”

An uneasy silence settled over the room.

How could this be? We were good kids, kind, not cruel.

Mostly.

Yet somehow our kindness had not extended to Andrew. He had been excluded from our friendship. Not bullied, not teased, not mocked. Just . . . cut out.

Why? Was it because of his bad teeth, some of them dark and craggy? Was it because we somehow sensed that, middle class as most of us were, his family was not quite at the same level as ours? Or was it simply because—and this was beyond our understanding at the time—someone always has to be the outsider, and one way groups bond is by shutting someone out?

More than fifty years later all I can tell you is that the memory of that afternoon burned itself into both my consciousness and my conscience.

I do not remember if I took immediate action. I think not likely. And though I don’t remember exactly how it changed, I can tell you that by the time we were in high school, Andrew was my best friend.

Yet close as we became in those years, we never spoke of fourth grade and how he had been shut out.

Perhaps that was kindness on my part.

Or maybe it was kindness on his part, not reminding me of how things had been.

I know I never had the courage to bring it up.

But our teacher had the courage. She broke the silence and called us out on our behavior, on our cruelty.

And that’s all it takes, I think, to snap the cycle of bullying. Even if—maybe especially if—the bullying is quiet and unintentional.

Truly, we didn’t know how beastly we were being, we “good” kids. But our teacher had the strength, and the honesty, to tell us how our behavior was affecting one of our fellow students. To tell us what we were doing, and to try to stop it.

Which is exactly what a great teacher should do. Help you see what you are, and help you to be better.

So thank you, Mrs. Pike.

And, belatedly, my apologies to Andrew.

I never meant to hurt you.