A Function of Murder by Ada Madison

Author:Ada Madison [Madison, Ada]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101618738
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Published: 2012-12-30T13:00:00+00:00

Early in my college teaching career I committed myself to volunteer in a school every year, in a K through 12 class. Well, maybe not K. I usually worked with high schools, leading advanced math classes for college prep students, but now and then I ventured out into the world of younger children. This was my first experience at a charter school.

“You just want to infiltrate those pliable young minds and brainwash them into being math majors later,” Bruce had accused me.

Ariana had put it differently, something about young souls and old souls, but she’d meant the same thing. They were both right. You couldn’t start too early to instill a love of math.

Zeeman Academy was located about fifty yards back from a busy country road on the western edge of Henley. The housing developments around the property were thought to be tough neighborhoods, but inside the fence, it always seemed safe and secure to me.

The long path to the school building was fronted by a short stubby brick wall with a bright blue and white sign announcing the entrance. A massive front lawn doubled as a playing field, which today hosted a field hockey game involving highly energetic and noisy children I recognized as fourth to sixth graders. The building itself was a modern two-story brick structure with a row of glass doors and a slanted roof.

As soon as I opened one of the front doors, more bedlam met my ears. Bad timing. But at Zeeman, a K through 8 school, it was hard to figure out the schedule. At the non-charter schools I was familiar with, classes changed at ten minutes to the hour, every hour. You could count on it. Here, students worked in groups on projects, at their own pace, and had only a few times during the week when they met in regular classroom settings, and even those comprised multigrade groups. Individual differences were paramount at Zeeman and not every child thrived with his school day divided into fifty-minute periods.

It had taken me a while to get used to the difference in overall noise level at Zeeman, not only compared to our college buildings, but also compared to other schools I’d volunteered in. One Zeeman teacher had explained to me that forcing children to be silent while moving about the hallways, for example, was a bad, stifling idea. A better approach was to replicate the home or work environment as much as possible, with an expected noise level.

“The corridors of an office building or a lab, where the students will work someday, aren’t silent. They have normal noise and chatter,” she’d pointed out, without specifying how many decibels she considered normal.

I would have preferred a level somewhere between a cloister and the kiddie park at the edge of town, where we’d take Bruce’s niece, Melanie. There was no question in my mind, however, that I would adjust to any environment if it meant I could keep working with pupils. My forte was teaching math skills;

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