Kids with a Lot of Class

Fourth- and fifth-graders heroically try to spare me from the dreaded foldini

By Suzanne Schlosberg

LINCOLN, Neb., Jan. 20 -- I will be the first to admit that Mission: Implausible has not required great amounts of bravery on my part.

Sure, it took some chutzpah to attend a music festival with 70,000 very large, very drunk country music fans, more than a few of whom hoisted Confederate flags at their campsites. And yes, it took some guts to face, day after day, night after night, that putrid, fly-infested hole in the ground referred to by Sisi villagers as a "toilet." But in those cases and most others over the last six months, I did what anyone in my situation would do – nothing better, nothing braver.

Until today.

On the very last day of my very last mission, I did something that took bona fide, medal-of-honor courage: I ate a foldini. A foldini is, essentially, a piece of pizza folded in half - sort of like a calzone, only smaller, flakier and, well, stinkier. Foldinis were on today’s lunch menu at Hartley Elementary School, where I have spent the week as a writing instructor/spelling-test giver/show-and-tell item in Becky Tegeler and Jeff Rump's combined fourth- and fifth-grade class.

Becky Tegeler and her students at Hartley Elementary gave me a warm welcome on my first day.

Foldinis are so feared and loathed by Hartley students that earlier in the week, long before anyone knew they'd appear on today's menu, I had been warned about their grossness. Even Mr. Rump had told me that students had reported finding dead flies in their foldinis. He imparted this information in the same tone used by TV anchors when they do special reports on UFO sightings - that sense of "Hey, it's possible; these people might not be imagining things."

It was about 10 a.m. when we heard the announcement that foldinis would be one of two choices on today's lunch menu. The entire class, all 34 students, promptly ordered chicken nuggets. I chose to postpone my decision until lunch period, when I could actually sniff and inspect a foldini.

At lunch, I was lucky enough to be invited to join a table of six girls, including Jasmine Jackson, Sarah Preston and Mary Snodgrass. When our table was summoned to the cafeteria line, the girls grabbed their chicken nuggets.

I stood there torn. I had to admit the foldini had a certain warmed-over stench, but still, I was tempted. When I mentioned to the girls that I was leaning toward the foldini, they became hysterical.

"Oh my gosh, that is SO disgusting!" Mary shrieked, jumping up and down. "Once there was a foldini that had FIVE FLIES in it!"

That did it. Partly out of curiosity and partly for the shock value, I grabbed a foldini. After I returned to the table, all the girls watched in astonishment as I took my first bite.

Now, before I offer my impressions, I should probably mention that I have a history of tolerance for institutional food. While my college friends fled the dorms after sophomore year, I gladly spent NINE semesters on the university's 20-meal plan; even the weakest link in the menu rotation, the rubberized hamburger, served every other Saturday for lunch, was superior to anything my mother ever made while I was growing up.

The moment of truth: I'm about to take my first bite of the Dreaded Foldini.

Still, even a person with a more discerning palate would have to concede that the foldini was not the gastronomic version of Frankenstein’s monster that I had been led to believe. True, it was almost cold and perhaps not as chewy as it could have been, and the filling was a bit sweet. But I encountered no flies, dead or otherwise, and contrary to predictions by the girls, I did not at all feel like I was going to barf. 

Once it was evident that I was not going to succumb to a slow and agonizing Death By Foldini, the girls moved on to a new topic of conversation. They decided to make a confession: They had not exactly been excited about my coming to Hartley.

"I thought you were going to make us write all day, even during recess," Sarah admitted.

"I thought you were going to be an old lady like the type that goes to church all the time," Jasmine owned up. (Jasmine said she’d gotten this impression from the straw hat I was wearing in the People magazine story about M:I.)

"No offense," said Mary, an aspiring gossip columnist, "but I thought you were going to be like Miss Goody Two-Shoes and write, 'My favorite color is pink and I love carnations.'"

No offense was taken; I had learned over the course of the week that "no offense" was Mary's favorite expression. She had already said to me, "No offense, but your gray sweatshirt is boring" and "No offense, but your hair is kind of thin."

I didn't make a reciprocal confession, but the truth was, I'd been apprehensive about my visit, as well. It's one thing to bomb out in front of Chinese students; you can't take it too personally when you have trouble holding the attention of 9-year-olds who don't even speak your language. But it would be pretty darned awful if the grand-prize winners of the "Free Suzanne" contest felt like they'd gotten gypped.

I hadn't mentioned this to Becky, but my history with English-speaking fourth-graders was grim. My first job out of college was as an assistant teacher at a private elementary school in Los Angeles. Every time the teacher went to the bathroom, which was often, since she was pregnant, the students would throw chalk at me and yell "Penis!"

So I was plenty nervous upon arriving in Lincoln.

On my last day, I gave the fourth-graders their spelling test. "Excited," I said. "EX-CI-TED. I was EXCITED to come visit Hartley Elementary."

I met Becky on Monday, when she picked me up at my motel and gave me a tour of the neighborhood where the students live. (School wasn't in session due to Martin Luther King Day.) She told me heartbreaking stories about her students, including a boy who recently brought cigarette lighters to school in an attempt to stop his mom from smoking pot. Many of her students don't look forward to long weekends, she said, because at home they don't have enough to eat or do.

This much was immediately obvious: Becky rates far higher than I do on the George-Costanza-to-Mother-Teresa scale (not that there was ever any question about that). Now in her first year of teaching, she specifically chose kids from the depressed area of the city. "They need so much more attention than the other kids," she said.

After our tour of Lincoln, Becky took me to the state fairgrounds, where Hartley Elementary has been transferred for the year while the school's permanent building gets renovated. The older kids go to class in the giant exposition hall, which, with its shiny silver ceiling, does indeed resemble a giant baked potato. The "classrooms" are divided by flimsy wooden partitions and shower curtains. I could tell this was a tough place for anyone to concentrate.

Becky led me to her space she shares with Jeff Rump. There, already waiting for me, was a big yellow sign strung up over the blackboard: "Welcome to Hartley, Suzanne! Are you ready to be useful?"

Becky put me to work correcting spelling tests.

The next day, I showed up around 9 a.m. As the kids filed into the room, some of them were whispering to one another and pointing at me. Becky sat them all down in the lounge area she and Jeff had created with a gold sofa and an assortment of comfy chairs they'd bought at Goodwill. I introduced myself by showing photos from each of my missions. The students seemed particularly amused by the picture taken seconds after I had vomited on the ferry ride in Papua New Guinea. "How come you have big bags under your eyes?" one student shouted.

The kids were most interested in hearing about the chimp project, and I must say I did a good job feigning enthusiasm over the whole thing. Fifth-grader James Wall demanded to know the names of the five chimps, but by now, I could name only four. First thing the next morning, James came charging up to me. "Did you think of the name of the last chimp? Did you think of it?" (Fortunately, I'd remembered to look it up on this Web site.)

With the exception of James, who has the most adorable cheeks and the charisma of Magic Johnson, most of the boys were standoffish. But by Wednesday, the girls had glommed onto me as if I were a 5-foot-7 piece of Velcro. Sally clung to my right leg wherever I walked, mostly asking questions about animals. (Of course I had to tell her my favorite was the chimpanzee.) Kaitlyn gave me hand massages, while Kascha, one of the taller girls, kept her arm wrapped around my shoulder. Little Jasmine was never too far away.

"Are you married at all?" she asked one day at lunch.

"Nope," I said. "Not even a little bit."

Here I'm helping the kids with their writing. That's Jasmine Jackson smiling.

On Wednesday we got down to business. I began teaching the students the fundamentals of writing an article, and the class interviewed me about the Great American Sack Race, in which I ran 5 miles while carrying a 50-pound sack of chicken feed. (It was Becky's idea to have the students try lifting a 42-pound box of paper, so they could understand just how heavy my sack was.) The class peppered me with questions. "How much money did you win?" "Why did you do the race?" "How do you spell 'Nevada'?"

After the interview, a soft-spoken boy named Mickey walked up to me looking very concerned. "Did anyone get hurt in the race?" he asked. I assured him that no one did, and he seemed relieved.

I was so proud of their stories that I would like to share one of my favorites with you. It was written by Jasmine, who hopes to be a TV weathercaster when she grows up.

Wasn't that just precious? Okay, thank you for indulging me.

When we weren't practicing interviewing and writing, I tried to be useful to Becky in any way I could. I graded spelling tests. I punched holes in notebook paper. I even answered math questions, although I was a bit out of my league with long division. When Mary Snodgrass called me over and asked, "Does this problem have a remainder?" I couldn't exactly admit I'd forgotten what a remainder even was. I knew what would have come next: "No offense, Suzanne, but you're really stupid in math." I told Mary I was not at liberty to give her the answer.

Have I mentioned that Becky is a brilliant teacher? She had to teach a deathly dull lesson on prime factorization and, right there on the spot, she conjured up a fun way of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers. "Prime numbers are loners, they're losers!" she told the class. "They don't have any friends other than themselves and the number one. How boring is that? But composite numbers, the ones that have lots of factors, they're popular!"

With money donated by M:I readers, Becky was able to purchase a tall stack of shoes for students at Hartley.

Thursday after school, Becky and I went on a shopping spree at Wal-Mart and Payless Shoes. With a whopping $1,240 in hand, donated by dozens of generous M:I readers, we piled our cart high with hats, coats, mittens, jeans and even underwear that so many of the kids desperately needed. (Check out the message board for a heart-felt thank-you from Becky to those who contributed.)

Later on, Becky's whole family - parents, grandparents, brother, sister-in-law and niece, took me out for a delicious Italian dinner. The best part was, unlike my own family, the Tegeler clan was able to get through an entire meal without obsessing over my sister's upcoming wedding.

On Friday, my final day, the kids used their new skills to interview one another. Here was an exchange between Natasha and Jasmine, conducted with the melodrama of a Barbara Walters interview.

            Natasha: If you had one day to live, what would you do?

            Jasmine: I would say farewell to my family.

            Natasha: What would you do if you had $5 million?

            Jasmine: I must say that I would buy my parents a new house and donate some money to a children's hospital.

So you can see why, by the end of the week, I felt like I wanted to take Miss Tegeler's class home with me. Of course, that wouldn't really work, since a) Miss Tegeler would miss them and b) they all seem to like animals and there is no way I am EVER sharing a household with any creature that has fur, scales or feathers.

In her "Free Suzanne" contest entry, Becky said that helping teach her class would be the "ultimate challenge." But truth be told, it was just plain fun. (Please note: I am not pretending for ONE SECOND that I could teach this class, or any other, for an entire year.)

As I walked away from Hartley Elementary School, it hit me that Mission: Implausible was finally over.

At the end of my last day, about two hours after the foldini episode, Becky gathered all the kids together, and they presented me with a surprise gift: a Hartley sweatshirt and a beautiful photo book about Nebraska that the whole class had signed.

Then it was time to get my assessment from the kids. How useful had I been on a scale from 1 to 10? At first they all shouted, "Ten!" but I could tell they were just trying to please Miss Tegeler. When I told them that I had gotten much lower rankings on my other missions, the scores started to plummet.

Mary Snodgrass dropped her rating to an 8 1/2. "No offense," she said, "but you were just kind of useful."

Considering where I was when I started M:I, I felt like that was quite an accomplishment.