Fade in on a first-year teacher in Los Angeles. Today she was supposed to clean up the classroom, leave by 3:30, and write pleasantly in a coffee shop until dinner. She was also supposed to work out, take in her computer to get fixed, and pick up a couple things at the store. Instead, she did none of this. Instead, she spent the day searching for mulberry leaves on behalf of her very malnourished class pets: silkworms.
A little background. When she was a student teacher, her third grade teacher mentor had a shoebox of about 25 silkworms. They lived in his classroom full time intricately spinning their silk full time, while his class of enthusiastic third graders would take turns paying them visits. She never saw her mentor teacher feed them, take them home, or purchase additional supplies. Whatever educational institution he’d gotten the worms from had provided him with more than enough sustenance to last the worms for weeks, or at least until they were all cocooned.
Almost exactly a year later, this student teacher finds herself as a third grade teacher in her own right standing in front of a silkworm vendor at the Natural History Museum’s Bug Fair. With all her first-year-teacher earnest passion to do right by her students, she impulsively buys 16 of them. It only costs her $6 and the vendor throws in enough mulberry leaves to last her the weekend.
“There are mulberry trees literally all over L.A.,” the vendor tells her, smiling. “Where do you live?”
The new teacher tells her and the vendor pauses, then responds simply with, “Oh….well, they’re literally all over.”
“Right!” the new teacher agrees, on a Bug Fair high. “I’m sure I’ll find them.”
Fade out on the young teacher waltzing around a museum in kicky tennis shoes and a Tree Grows in Brooklyn t-shirt, utterly convinced that she is a teacher who really cares about learning. After all, she thinks, she is bringing LIVE learning to her classroom! That’s what truly dedicated teachers do, so I guess that makes me one of them!
Fade in on the same teacher one week later, dressed in her new teacher best, staring at the six dead silkworms lying shriveled up in her classroom. After regularly feeding her silkworms the dried mulberry leaves she’d ordered on Amazon, as well as the various species of leaves she picked from at least five different trees in her neighborhood that certainly look like mulberry trees, she feels at a loss. How could this have happened? she wonders, beginning to panic. According to her helpful fiancé, who is the pragmatic researcher to her passionate creator, silkworms need fresh mulberries because they like the smell. It’s not only that other species of leaves won’t work, but other non-fresh mulberry leaves won’t work either.
Thus, with the fear now of becoming a heartless teacher who unintentionally has opened up a discussion on life and death with her 8-year-olds, she embarks on a two-hour journey across Los Angeles in search of free (or cheap, anyway) sustenance for her diminishing worm-children. She cradles her shoebox in the front seat of her ’95 Corolla and bump-bumps away, slowing down over and over next to random trees as she searches high and low for a mulberry tree she can steal from.
After calling four nurseries, most of which have no mulberry trees (one of which has one for the ripe price of $100), scouring several neighborhoods, and listening to 12 YouTube videos on the different kinds of mulberry trees, mulberries, leaf shapes, and climates silkworms prefer, she is ready to give up. When SUDDENLY, a few blocks from her home, she spots a Morus Alba, aka white mulberry tree, in a newly landscaped front yard. She makes an illegal U-Turn, parks horribly, and jumps out. That’s it! That’s it! she practically screams out loud! I can see the mulberries and everything! She trumps across the garden and snatches as many as she can, runs them back to the car, and thrusts them into the box. After watching her silk babies eat ravenously for a few minutes, and giving friendly grins to the inquisitive passersby, she jumps out again and takes as many leaves as she can in 15 seconds, runs back to the car, and zooms away, like the leaves were stolen gems and her silkworms were her crime accomplices.
She ends the night in a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, awaiting the arrival of a mulberry leaf “hookup” found on craigslist (thank you again, fiancé), who will supply her with enough mulberry leaves to last her silkworms through their cocoon stage, as well as replace her six, deceased silkworms with a fresh ten (not that they could ever really be replaced…). Her guilt about being a bad silkworm caretaker a little assuaged, and her brain a little more stretched with this new silkworm and mulberry tree knowledge, she breathes a sigh of relief and takes another bite of her chocolate muffin. Another day in the life of a first-year teacher.
The Ms. Elena Diaries 