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THIRD-GRADERS PROVE TO BE TOUGH CROWD FOR COLUMNIST

By John Boyle
Columnist
Asheville Citizen-Times

If you think teaching is easy, you really need to step up to the plate in your local classroom.

Back in the fall, we had a presentation here in the office about Junior Achievement of Western North Carolina, a local nonprofit dedicated "to educating and inspiring young people to value free enterprise, business and economics in order to improve the quality of their lives."

Essentially, JA puts adults from various professions and work careers in the classroom.

And if I'm not inspiring and educational, I don't know who is. So I signed up for a slot with a third-grade class at Fletcher Elementary.

You know, it's weird how nervous a reasonably intelligent, somewhat competent adult can become in the face of a couple dozen 8- and 9-year-olds. I introduced myself to the class and then began sweating in places where I don't even have glands.

All this anxiety is really for naught. The JA people provide you with a full curriculum of lessons, complete with all kinds of kid-friendly activities and materials. It even comes in a handy-dandy nylon briefcase, which proved to be remarkably absorbent when I spilled coffee all over it in my car.

And the kids were just as absorbent as the brief case.

I was teaching the kids about "Our city," starting off with a lesson about city planning and zoning. All I could think was thank goodness this wasn't Buncombe County, or I'm sure a youngster would've stood up and hollered, "What don't you understand, Mr. Boyle? No means NO! No zoning!"

But these kids were just too good. They mapped out a city, constructed these nifty cardboard buildings supplied by JA, and designed their own classrooms, some of which featured hot tubs, game rooms and laser tag.

We also did a lesson about newspapers, which, needless to say, was my favorite part, mainly because it's a subject I actually know something about. Not much, mind you, but enough to fool a bunch of third-graders.

At one point we were talking about the different sections of the newspaper, and I asked the students what we call the front section of the newspaper. On this particular day it featured a story about a school bus running over a 5-year-old boy and a robbery of a West Asheville store.

Young Avimael's hand shot up. "The bad news section?" he said.

Hard to argue with that.

On my last lesson last week, I asked the kids to write a sentence explaining why newspapers are important.

"Can we write it sloppy like you do?" Lance asked.

I had made the mistake of showing the class one of my notebooks with my nearly illegible scribbling inside.

Their replies let me know they were really paying attention, though.

"Because they tell you the important things that happened in the day, because bad stuff happened," wrote Malik. "Like a car wrecked into another car."

"Newspapers are important because (they tell) about the weather and what is happening in your neighborhood and what is happening in the world," Christine wrote in cursive considerably neater than mine.

Not to sound too corny, but this really was a great group of kids. I attribute this to their parents and their teacher, Mrs. Gloria Jenkins, who kept them -- and me -- on track.

"This class is just very cooperative, very curious and they love to learn new things," Mrs. Jenkins said of her charges.

I couldn't agree more -- even though they nailed me on my handwriting.

Article reprinted from the Asheville Citizen-Times.

Contact Boyle at 232-5847 or JBoyle@CITIZEN-TIMES.com.