Back in the day, I was hired to teach pre-algebra at a small private school in Vermont, where the original teacher had decamped about three weeks into the year. I was working part-time in the office of a theater/writers colony, and welcomed the extra income. Set in a pasture on a hill, the school hosted a flock of turkeys and used a woodstove for supplemental heat. The staff was engaging if eccentric, the location close by, and I had a small class of bright, advanced students.  How tough could it be?  Harder than you might think, dealing with young teens consumed with hormones and relationships, some of them not truly ready to learn the facts of algebra. In retrospect, the situation could have been a disaster; at 24, with no prior teaching experience, I was dismally unprepared.  Fortunately, I had at my disposal one of the most effective tools of education I have ever encountered: the woodpile. 

At our first meeting, the headmaster said to me, “If you’re having trouble with any of the kids, just send them to the woodpile.”

“Really?”   

“It gets them out in the fresh air,” he explained. “The older kids stack logs for the woodstove. The younger kids put kindling in bags. What we don’t use, we sell to raise money for school trips. I keep an eye on them from my office.”

“Ok,” I said, but I didn’t think for a minute I would resort to such a thing.

It took time to make me a believer.  For the first few weeks, we were all on good behavior.  Then the testing began. Out of my small troupe of 8 or 9 students, not one was as interested in higher level math as in pushing buttons, to see what would make me or the other students react.  I thought it was my duty to stay calm and talk through some of these behaviors.  More and more time was on addressing these little problems, and less and less on algebra. Kids who had been doing well in arithmetic were not doing so well on equations, and not because I couldn’t explain the concepts. Chad was all about the girls; Ripley was out in artist’s doodle land; Gwen was teased about her new training bra, and so on. Finally, I had it with Michael, he of the wisecracks.  Whatever he said sent Gwen to the bathroom in tears.

“Go on,” I said to Mike. “Out to the woodpile and do whatever you’re supposed to do.”

After that, it was easy   “Alright, so-and-so,” I’d say, “Woodpile.” Simple as that.  And, swear to God, some days they were glad to go, and me glad to get rid of them for fifteen minutes. And when they returned, a different kid.  Slowly, but surely, just about everyone went out the door for their allotted time.  Everyone, it seemed, except Cindy, the hold-out.  Long-blonde hair and cute short skirts; a girly-girl, smart and proud.

She was chatting one day, non-stop. I warned her once; it continued.

“Cindy,” I said, sharply, “Woodpile.”

The look of horror on her face.  “I can’t,” she said, looking downwards,“my shoes.”  They were little, silver flats, as I recall. Not made for Vermont winters.

All eyes were on me.  I pictured her outside in the muddy, slushy snow in those dainty shoes. It was really a question of now in the moment, or postponing to the next day, when the moment was past.

“You can wear my boots,” I said.

She went like a prisoner to the docks, but she came back all right for the wear.  The woodpile was good for her; and good for me, too.  Manipulating logs, it turns out, is an effective way of teaching math.