Free The Last Teacher by Chris Dietzel Page A

the rest of the day.  Having only nine kids wouldn’t have been so bad if that was the amount she had her first year as a teacher.  Back then, every desk had been full. Twenty-five kids.  Six classes a day. One hundred and fifty students each season.  On the years when there had been budget cuts, she even needed to find extra desks from other classrooms so additional kids could squeeze in.
    Not anymore, though.
    Having started teaching high school English two years after the first Blocks started appearing, she had enjoyed a decade of full classrooms.  Once her students were the same age as the first Blocks, however, she couldn’t help but notice the consistent decline in attendance each year. When all of the world’s new babies started being born without the ability to move, talk, or do anything at all, the writing was on the wall (on the chalkboard) that the dwindling amount of normal children in the world were the final students she would ever have.  One year, there had been twenty-three kids in her class. The next year, twenty. Then eighteen. Sixteen. Twelve.
    Over the summer, she and the other teachers had wondered aloud how many students they would each have when school started back up this year.
    “Wanna bet on it?” Harry Rousner, the Biology teacher, said.
    Not only didn’t anyone want to turn the declining high school attendance into a game, one of the older teachers, a grey-haired woman who taught Music, actually began  to cry.
    Now, Ray knew the answer. Nine students. With each child looking at her to say something else, she forced herself to refrain from guessing how many kids would be in her class the following year.
    “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath and smiling her most encouraging smile. “Is everyone ready to talk about the greats of classic literature?”
    Eric Tates put an imaginary gun to his temple, pulled the trigger, then let his head smash against his desk with a loud thud. All the other kids giggled, even the ones who wanted her to like them.
    “I’ll take that as a Yes ,” she said. “Which is good, because we have a lot to get through this year!”

Second Choice
     
     
    Ray rubbed her eyes and said, “Why couldn’t someone come by and let us know how many students we were going to have this year? Don’t they know how discouraging it is to have twenty-five desks in your classroom and only nine students? I’d of rather moved the other desks out into the hallway or into an empty room than have my students be reminded that they’re all who’s left.”
    Except for a pair of old men who were sipping their coffee, the others in the teacher’s lounge all nodded.
    “Nine?” the wrinkly Music teacher, said. “Count yourself lucky.  I have one kid. Petey Something-or-other. Poor kid is the only one learning about key signatures and the music scale this year. Pitiful.  I have two pianos, three trombones, and an infinite supply of flutes, all for one boy.”
    A whimper escaped from the woman sitting next to her.
    “You know what the good thing is?” Harry Rousner said to the others sitting on the various colored sofas. “We won’t have much work to grade. I used to sit up all night trying to find ways to give kids partial credit for thinking protozoa and photosynthesis were the same thing. Now, I get done in under an hour.”
    He looked around the room for someone else to agree with him. Poor Ms. Maclin, the German teacher who had already let out a slight moan, began to shake. Before anyone could ask her if she was okay, the woman excused herself, her head down and her eyes covered as she rushed out of the room. Ray watched her leave. Only later did she find out that Ms. Maclin’s class was completely empty. No one was taking German this year. No one would ever take it again at their fine institution.
    Trying not to think about it, she looked back down at the day’s headlines. It wasn’t encouraging. Of course, the news hadn’t been positive even before masses of