Faye S. Wolfe

On the mid-June morning that I visit her second-grade classroom, Mary Cowhey ’01G has been at work for over an hour, since well before the start of school. Joining her soon are a student’s aide, a student teacher from UMass Amherst, and a volunteer, the mother of one of her students. Later in the morning, a poet, who also happens to be Cowhey’s sister, is expected for the haiku festival. As the day begins, a father totes in a crate with 17 chicks, hatched and tended by the class, that the family babysat over the weekend. The chicks take their place next to Painted Lady caterpillars emerging from cocoons. On the wall nearby is a big paper with questions Cowhey’s students have come up with: How was the first animal born? What do taxes get spent on? How can the moon and the sun be up at the same time?

I try to remember, was second grade this much fun when I was a child? Probably not; certainly it was different. We sat at our desks in rows, not in groups of three and four at tables. We sat: hands folded and eyes on the teacher, who spent a lot of time with her back to us writing on the blackboard. There was no quote from Gandhi on the wall, no reading corner. We didn’t end the school year with an animal research conference, as Cowhey’s class will, the last of a series of such projects, including a penguin research party and a continents party.

“We all think we know what school is about because we all went to school,” says Cowhey, who teaches at Jackson Street School, one of four public elementary schools in Northampton. “What you can’t know is the decision-making that goes on in a teacher’s head—it’s a lot of thinking on your feet.” Between careful planning and quick thinking, Cowhey manages to do a lot more than meet the requirements of set curricula for science, reading, math, and writing; she makes sure everyone, herself included, has fun doing it. So a student’s question, “How can the moon and the sun be up at the same time?” might lead the class to read books about the solar system, e-mail an astronomer, make a chart of the phases of the moon, observe the sky. “I don’t just want to create little test-takers,” Cowhey says. “I want my classroom to be a place where a kid can try different glasses on, become a critical reader, a scientist, or a poet. I want to help them figure out where there’s a fit with what they like and what they can do.”

For every child in her class, Cowhey can tell you what she’s done, often working closely with the child’s parents or guardians, to encourage both academic and emotional growth. “I believe in nurturing the whole child,” says Cowhey. In her class, as in most second grades, students are at various points on a wide spectrum of intellectual and emotional maturity. There’s the bright child who complains about being bored whom Cowhey encourages to take initiative and set goals. (“I’m not impressed by boredom,” Cowhey says dryly.) The mathematically inclined child with loads of energy finds focus in the precision of haiku writing.

She recounts how a child told her, “Look—I don’t read,” when the school year began. By the end, he was reading chapter books—and writing his own 50-book series. “Sometimes teaching is like pushing a boulder up a mountain, or herding cats, all those terrible metaphors,” she says, “but sometimes you have magical transformations.”

As the school day gets under way, Cowhey is both cat-herding and encouraging magic. She explains carefully what the children can expect as the day unfolds. First, they’ll learn about timelines. Cowhey describes her Sunday as an example: up at 8 a.m., breakfast, shower, weeding her community garden plot, making yogurt and rhubarb cobbler, dinner. Her unusual openness about her personal life reflects her attitude that teachers and students learn from each other. The parent volunteer joins in the discussion. “It’s good when the grown-ups are raising their hands too,” says Cowhey. “The children see that these aren’t just kiddie questions, and that parents can be part of the conversation.”

The students head out to the school’s wooden gazebo for the haiku festival, which will start with a Japanese tea ceremony, of sorts—Sobe fruit tea and cookies stand in for powdered green matcha.

The students stay attentive as all the haiku are read. The emphasis has been less on the form—the 17-syllable approach—and more on the essence, which Cowhey explains as being “to capture a moment, not tell the whole story.” One of the children reads, “Middle of nowhere/wind blowing/across my face.” Another captures a key school experience: “Fighting over/a toilet/That’s really sad.”

Back in the classroom, it’s time for lunch. Afterward Cowhey reads a book, Planting the Trees of Kenya, and she and the class talk about environmental activism and the Nobel Peace Prize. From there, it’s back outside. Cowhey carries the crate of chicks to the shade of a tree.

The chick project is one of dozens that Cowhey has introduced over the years to stimulate learning. “I wake up in the middle of the night and make lists of things I want to try.” she says. “Jackson Street is very fertile ground. If I have a crazy idea, I can usually find someone to help with it.” In this case, a fellow teacher gave her the eggs and will take the chicks back to her farm when the school year ends.