For a moment, she thought of their father and how difficult it must be to be the chief of police and a single father to two children. Every day, he had to juggle serious responsibilities at work and at home, and hope they didn’t overlap. She gave him high marks for perseverance.
Then she glanced at the time and got in her car and drove away.
She knew where the school was. She’d driven past it a couple of times when she was running errands to remind herself how to get to it, but she still drove there with a knot in her stomach. She was about to walk into a school with the expectation of holding her emotions as carefully as she was expected to hold the position for which she’d been hired.
It scared the shit out of her.
She was so focused on not losing control that she almost missed her turn. When she arrived, she parked in the employee parking lot and got out.
The school looked like most every other school she’d ever seen, but smaller. A long, rectangular building with lots of windows and a sidewalk that led from the curb at the street to a set of steps leading into the entrance.
There was a flagpole out front, with a flag flapping in the breeze. The grounds were green and recently mowed, with huge shade trees lining both sides of the sidewalk—a most picturesque approach to education.
Katie’s stomach was in knots as she entered the building, but then she paused and took a breath. She could have been blind and still recognized it as a school. It smelled just like all school buildings. Old walls. The scents of industrial-strength cleaners and generations of sweaty little bodies having run up and down these halls.
But she also imagined she could feel the energy of educators, persevering regardless of their situations, teaching with what they had, doing without what they needed, still doing a good job, and still helping little people grow.
There were goose bumps on her arms as she approached the office directly in front of her, and then she opened the door and went inside.
The secretary’s desk was empty, but Katie had already been told to bypass it and go straight to the office behind it. The door was open, and she called out.
“Katie McGrath approaching!”
Susan Wayne appeared in the doorway, smiling.
“Welcome! Come in my office,” she said.
Katie eyed the principal as she sat down, thinking Susan was shorter than she had imagined, but her voice was soft, her eyes were kind, and she had an infectious smile. Katie felt welcome and comfortable.
“Welcome to Borden’s Gap Elementary. Have you settled in at your residence?” Susan asked.
“Yes. Thank you for giving me Louise’s contact information. She made finding a house easy,” Katie said.
Susan smiled. “Excellent. Now, before I give you the grand tour, I want you to know that I will go out of my way to make this transition easier for you, because you’re worth it. And I don’t say that lightly. So if there’s something here that is triggering to you, I will remove it. Okay?”
“I don’t expect special treatment,” Katie whispered.
“Doesn’t matter. You deserve it, so there’s that.”
Katie blinked as the first tears welled and rolled down her cheeks. She swallowed, then nodded.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime,” Susan said, then opened her desk drawer, pulled out some keys, and stood. “Let’s go for a walk. It’s just you and me, so if something freaks you out, say so.”
Katie felt like someone had just wrapped her up in a great big hug. It was okay if she got rattled. It was going to be okay if she froze. It was going to be okay because Susan Wayne had her back. She took a deep breath, then exhaled as the emotional target fell off her back.
They walked from one end of the building to the other without issue, even though she kept fighting the urge to look over her shoulder as they went. Halfway down the hall, she realized there was a whole other wing not visible from the street.
Susan pointed to it as they passed. “We serve kindergarten through sixth grade here. There is a gymnasium that also serves as an auditorium when the need arises. The youngest students’ classrooms are closest to the cafeteria. We have staggered dining times, with the earliest beginning at 11:00 a.m., which will include kindergarten and first and second grades.”
“The blessing of smaller schools. No long walks to the cafeteria,” Katie said. “That’s wonderful.”
“Was that an issue?” Susan asked as they continued walking.
Katie looked down a moment before she answered. “We were not in our classroom when the shooting started. We were in the hall on our way to the cafeteria with no immediate place to shelter.”
Susan shuddered. “Every teacher’s nightmare,” and then she pointed. “Your classroom is coming up on the right. And the doors to the cafeteria are right in front of us.” She pulled out her keys and unlocked the door. Her eyes were twinkling as she stepped aside. “I can’t carry you across the threshold, but I want you to go in first, with the intention of claiming the space as your own.”
“Thank you,” Katie said, then opened the door, stepped in, and began turning on lights.
There was a wall of windows in front of her with all the shades drawn. A set of cabinets and a small sink were along the wall to her right, and a large storage closet stood at the end of the room with deep shelves on three sides.
There were cubbies for each student and pegs on the wall for them to hang coats. It didn’t have the same white walls and tile floors as her other classroom and was definitely an older building, but in a weird way, it felt cozier.
“I like this,” Katie said.
Susan beamed. “Good. We try to keep surroundings simple but comfortable for the little ones.” Then she began filling Katie in on all of the technology she would have in her room. “They furnish each first grade with four computers. You will be given a school laptop, along with keys to the building and to your room. You will be free to come work on setting up your room and the bulletin board outside your door any time after the first of August, and we’ll be bringing the tables and chairs for centers back into the room next week.”
Katie was already getting ideas and becoming excited about the prospect of being back in school.
“Do you know how many students I will have?” Katie asked.
“No more than twenty, and likely less,” Susan said. “You’re free to set up your centers however you wish. The first-grade curriculum is the same for both first grades, but you already know that. The other first-grade teacher, Marcy Kincaid, who you met during our Zoom meeting, will be your teammate. You two will coordinate curriculum. I’m assuming you are familiar with this teaching format?”
“Yes. There were four classes of each grade level where I taught before.”