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Mrs. Paula Barr's first-graders lined up at her classroom door waiting for the buzzer to signal an end to their seven-hour workday. Every single child had a backpack. From the back of the line, they looked like little people ready to parachute their way home.

Mrs. Barr was in the doorway, dispensing enthusiasm after dishing it out all day.

"Now, what are we not going to say we did when we get home?"

"We're not going to say we did nothing," rang the uneven response.

"That's right," confirmed Mrs. Barr. "We did math. We wrote in our journals. Nick, we talked about your soccer medal. We looked for bugs in the butterfly garden. We added to our book on shapes. And we had a guest.

"And," she said with a sly smile, "we ate ants on a log."

"Oooos" and "Oh-yeahs" filled the room.

The buzzer fires through the intercom and school day is over.

It was 3:45 p.m., and I was exhausted.

I was the guest.

Pre-enrollment

A week or so before school started I asked Bob Arevalo, Hillcrest School's principal, if he would mind having a 61-year-old newspaper guy spend a day in one of his first-grade classrooms.

We were standing in the hallway at Hillcrest.

"Great, let's do it," the enthusiastic Arevalo said.

"Here comes Paula Barr. I'll introduce you, and you can tell her what you want to do."

She suggested I wait until the second week of school.

"The first few days we're working very hard learning how to open the tops of our glue containers."

Roll call

At 8:30 a.m. on Monday I was seated with my crayons in place at my desk in a cluster that formed Row Two.

Nothing in the room held still for very long.

When the first-graders arrived, they sat at their desks and unloaded their backpacks.

Mrs. Barr walked over to a youngster and asked how she was feeling.

"We are sorry you were sick on Friday and we really, really missed you, and we're so happy you're back today. Your friends really missed you too."

We all smiled in agreement.

The shape of things to come

We started working on our books of shapes. Our assignment was to cut out a triangle and an oval with the goal of gluing them in our book.

Morgan Green, seated in my row, stopped gluing and was looking at the palm of her hand.

I inquired.

She held it out to reveal a "boo-boo."

"My mother told me to keep it soft today," she said with a serious face.

"Oh, oh," said another Row-Two voice in concerned tones.

Cali Brasseur was trying to separate three pages in her book that had somehow glued together. We separated them and held them apart until the glue dried.

Mrs. Barr asked us to name a shape she had drawn on the blackboard and the correct answer came from several corners of the room.

She beamed and said, "Did you guys have your smart cookies for breakfast today?"

Shapes were combined to make any object imaginable.

"Oh, Raymond, your tent is just wonderful," said Mrs. Barr.

"My triangle disappeared," said another voice.

Mrs. Barr asked us to walk around the room and show our books to classmates. Shape book time came to a close.

"Would you all clean your desks so it looks like Anthony's, please," said Mrs. Barr.

'It's Journal Day'

Mrs. Barr clapped her hands six times in rhythm, the signal to sit up straight and listen. I was the only one who didn't answer with an identical clap.

"I'm so excited, I'm almost ready to pop," said Mrs. Barr holding up a notebook. "It's Journal Day!"

We left our desks, gathered at the front of the room and sat on the floor in front of her chair.

We heard tips on writing. She suggested we write about our weekend, what we saw on the way to school, or even what we had for dinner last night. Anything.

The chatter in my row was:

"I know what I want to write but I can't spell it."

"I saw a turtle on the way to school today."

"I saw a snapping turtle on TV."

Mrs. Barr said, "I wish I had a prize for hard work because you'd sure get it today." Her message to us was to write even though we are not good spellers yet. We were told to circle words we didn't think were spelled correctly. The spelling would happen later.

Liesel Reussner wrote: I storl up in tell teh oklloc. (I stayed up until 10 o'clock).

Morgan Green wrote: I soll a trtl in my givwa wen I wus. (I saw a turtle in my driveway when I was")

Ready for recess

We were again summoned to sit on the floor in front, this time to act out Minnie the Mermaid " twice. It's part of the animated literacy program at Lawrence schools and a kindergarten carry-over so I just move my lips.

We were asked to think of words that start with the first letter of Minnie's name. We heard: "money," "moose," "McDonald's," "married" and "minister."

"Look at Stefan, he's sitting with his hands in his lap," said Mrs. Barr. %%

The class straightened up.

"Who gave you smart doughnuts for breakfast?"

A small voice after my own heart said, "No doughnuts, just bread and cheese."

Recess arrived, not a minute too soon.

A group from my class tried to knock bug skins off a tree.

A bug's life

After recess, I see I'm not the only one who's tired.

We were called up front again to learn the dates for today, yesterday and tomorrow. Next week the lessons include money, telling time and temperature.

I remembered I have to go to the bank.

Next Mrs. Barr read "Ant Cities."

Some smart kid from Row Four knows what hibernate means.

We were told the female ants ("a female is a girl") are the warriors, do all the work and then they die.

"Well girls," said our teacher, "that's different isn't it?"

The fidgets show in all of us. Eyes scanned wall art. Sitting positions changed.

Mrs. Barr noticed how well Ian was sitting to show he's listening. I didn't used to like guys who did that.

Ian got to put a marble in the jar for his good behavior. When the marble jar is full, the class will get to do something fun like request a certain book be read. Doesn't look like it'll happen today.

Trying to get our attention, Mrs. Barr said, "This is really crazy, wait 'til you hear this. There are 10,000 different kinds of ants."

To which Jerry Ratcliff replied, "One time I saw a candy bar in the dirt and it was covered with ants. I'll bet there were 10,000 of them."

School food

At last it was time for lunch.

Since this was my first visit to the cafeteria, Raymond Lee volunteers to be my escort. We assembled in a line at the door.

Mrs. Barr reminded us, "You are the best class in Hillcrest because you never talk when you're in line, especially when we're walking down the hall."

I leaned down to whisper a question to Raymond. In a flash he wheeled around, index finger to his lips.

"Ssshhhhhhhh!"

I didn't speak again until we sat down to eat.

Math and more

At 12:10 p.m. the class was back in the room. We had a restroom and drink break before hitting the books.

We gathered up front again and Mrs. Barr read "Two Bad Ants."

We talked about larvae and pupa. I think the first time I heard those words I was a fifth-grader in Dorothy McGregor's class at New York School.

A laminated drawing of ant tunnels was passed out to each of the students. Mrs. Barr held up a container of raisins -- "ants" for our tunnels.

We each received six raisins deposited via spoon on our drawing.

"Yuck," said Cameron Bohnen.

"Tell your parents Mrs. Barr made you eat ants today," she said.

Mrs. Barr gave the rhythmic clap. We all responded and sat up straighter.

For our addition exercise, we placed three ants in two different tunnels.

"Hold onto your head, this is a brain buster," said Mrs. Barr.

We all grabbed our heads.

"3 ants + 3 ants = 6 ants."

During raisin counting, Neil Bullard (a co-teacher) was busy cutting celery into small pieces.

Paper plates, some with celery and some with a large dollop of peanut butter were placed in the middle of each group of desks.

By spreading peanut butter onto the celery and then sticking the raisins on the peanut butter we created "ants on a log."

We each got our own spoon, and it was easy to see why. As much peanut butter went into mouths as on celery.

"While you're building your log what words can you think of to describe the way your log looks?" Mrs. Barr asked.

"Weird" was the first word. It was followed by "green," "smooth," "bumpy" and "brown."

Words flew around the room. Mrs. Barr clapped and we responded.

We then got permission to eat our ants on a log. Most just went for the peanut butter and quietly deposited the celery in the trash.

The room got noisier, which called for something more drastic than the clap that had worked so well.

Mrs. Barr rang a bell.

That did the trick.

Each of us was given a small brown paper bag, rounded at the top. With our crayons we drew ant tunnels, colored in the dirt and added ants.

I checked out the work of Beong Kyu Joo, now seated next to me.

I wondered why his ants looked better than mine. His crayon points were blunt, unlike my brand-new ones.

He looked at my bag and said, "That looks good."

I like this guy.

Next we cut out six ants from a sheet of colored paper, wrote an addition problem on each ant and deposited it in our ant-covered paper bag.

"Now be sure to show your first addition problem of the year to everyone at home tonight," a beaming Mrs. Barr said.

My row was pretty quiet during the project and Mrs. Barr asked each of us to put a marble in the jar.

I was a little slow getting up and a kid in Row Three said, "Go on Bill, put a marble in the jar."

The great outdoors

The class headed out to the butterfly garden to look for bugs.

"When we get outside " excuse you for interrupting Anthony " please don't yell when you see a bug. There are classes nearby," said Mrs. Barr.

We turned over a lot of rocks and found lots of bugs.

Then it was time for recess again.

Hannah Brewer and I walked to the playground. Out of the blue she said, "So many mothers choose my name for their children."

I sympathized with her and said I had the same problem.

She said she doesn't know anybody named Bill.

Loosing steam

At 2:30 p.m. all of us students were running out of gas, but there was still enough energy for music. We sing and clap to a beat.

Afterward we head back to Mrs. Barr's room for sharing time.

Teresa Lane showed the class a Barbie doll she got at McDonald's after her doctor's appointment that morning.

Someone asked which McDonald's.

"It's the one by the doctor's office," Teresa replied.

Nick showed us his soccer medal.

The class was running on fumes, but there was still time for 10 minutes of button, button, who's got the button. Mrs. Barr said this game helps students learn to call one another by name.

Finally, it was almost time to go home.

One row at a time we retrieved our back packs, put our chairs on our desks and lined up at the door and school ended.

It dawned on me that except for the two times Mrs. Barr read to us, she had not sat down during class. She was darting around the room, talking all day while I was sitting. I was the one who was worn out.

Passing the test

The class was barely out the door when a smiling Bob Arevalo came in the room.

"Well, how did it go?" he asked.

I'm sure my body language said it all.

"Aren't they something?" he said. "Did you see the way they write? If you come back here next spring you won't believe the change in these kids.

"I showed before and after examples of their writing at a meeting of educators and told them these kids are your future valedictorians and salutatorians."

He continued talking as I headed for my car with my bag of paper ants.

"We're developing work habits and routines that will work for these kids throughout their education."

"Teachers like Paula Barr nurture feelings that get them excited about learning. She's really a strong asset to our school."

He didn't get an argument from me.

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