By Sharon Sheridan
Who knew being a room parent was such a high-stakes job?
I’ve always baked cookies for my son’s holiday parties, photographed field days and volunteered to chaperone class trips. But this year, his last in elementary school, I took the plunge, entered the room-parent lottery – and won.
First order of business? The annual classroom scarecrow.
Each year, handsomely decorated scarecrows sprout from the trees and light posts surrounding Mountain View Elementary School in Flanders, courtesy of the school’s individual classes and, I now know, their room parents. This year brought a new twist: scarecrows inspired by children’s literature. So we weren’t building just any scarecrow; we were constructing Harry Potter.
Fortunately, my companion room parent was experienced in the school-scarecrow department. The school would supply wooden stakes for mounting our faux wizard. We e-mailed the teacher and divvied up Harry’s various components: pillowcase for a head; pants and shirt for stuffing with newspaper; facial features including plastic eyes, pom-pom nose and pipe-cleaner eyebrows; cape, hat, glasses, sneakers and wand for accessorizing; rubber bands, wire, glue and safety pins for assembly. We planned to meet today at 2, following recess and lunch.
But then, the pressure mounted. I drove my son to school so we could store a stack of newspapers and other scarecrow-making paraphernalia in the classroom for the afternoon Potter party. On my way out, I chatted with a teacher who commented he had just learned the scarecrows would be judged this year.
Competition?! I’d seen some of the completed scarecrows already, hanging around the main office. Black Beauty, both horse and rider; an impossibly cute mouse Lilly with her purple plastic purse. Did we have a chance? Would the champion of Hogwarts have a shot against the Tin Man or Clifford the Big Red Dog?
Then came the clincher. On my way out the door, I discovered that 2 p.m. was too late for scarecrow stuffing. Harry needed to be outside casting his magic by 2, when judging was to begin.
I raced home. I knew my partner-in-scarecrowing – who was supplying the pillow case, cape, hat, tie and all-important Harry Potter glasses – worked at the middle school until early afternoon. I called looking for her, explaining that I had a “scarecrow emergency.” She wasn’t due in yet, so I tried her at home. Success! She arranged an early drop-off of supplies; I agreed to arrive two hours early and tackle my first room-parent obligation solo.
Ordinarily, this was reading time in my son’s class. But today, we were bringing literature to life.
I escorted my son and a classmate to retrieve our stakes – two pieces of wood fashioned together cross-like. They carried it back to class; I followed along, feeling like I was participating in some odd Good Friday ritual.
The class voted on key details. Big nose or small? (big) Pink mouth or fuscia? (pink). The teacher enlisted two young artists to create a foam mouth and lightning scar and pulled up a photo of Harry Potter on the classroom computer to use as a model. Some other fifth-graders helped pull pants and a shirt onto the stakes and started stuffing them with newspapers. Another group pushed papers into a plastic bag, then covered it with a pillowcase for his head. Everyone agreed Harry had gained weight – no doubt too much treacle tart and butterbeer.
Students made numerous trips down the hall to the art room to borrow supplies I hadn’t anticipated needing, such as black yarn for hair and a staple gun for attaching the pants to the stake. When recess time arrived, a handful of girls opted to skip the playground to finish the job.
We experienced a momentary panic when the hat disappeared, and everyone thought it had been stuffed inside the scarecrow by accident. We debated important decisions such as scar placement. And we learned a few things, such as that yarn eyebrows glue better than pipe-cleaner ones to a pillowcase and that a hat doesn’t staple well to a head full of nothing but crumpled newspapers. But we persevered, and Harry was waiting for the rest of the class when they returned from lunch. Everyone seemed pleased by his appearance.
At three minutes of 2, four students carried our wizard, sneakers dangling, down the hall and out to a tree in front of the school. He disgorged a few newspaper balls and lost his nose along the way but otherwise remained relatively intact until we started stringing him up, at which point his glasses shifted askew and his eyes and eyebrows popped off. One young lady located his missing nose and borrowed a tape dispenser from the office. I taped down glasses and missing body parts while a classroom aide helped tie him to the tree. We finished just in time – here came the judge, the middle school’s principal, clipboard in hand.
Maybe she’ll be inspired to start a scarecrow competition at her school next year. If so, I’ll be ready.
