Read Online Turn Left at the Trojan Horse by Brad Herzog - Free Book Online Page B

population—kindergarten through eighth grade—of the Troy School.
    One room is Troy’s library, brimming with books. The garbage truck drivers, my breakfast companions had informed me, volunteer to transport boxes of books to the canyon on their regularly scheduled pickup days. Posted throughout are the fruits of the students’ scientific labors—poster board summaries of experiments about exploding vinegar and a hypothesis that noncarbonated drinks freeze faster than carbonated drinks. Several dozen books sit on a cart, ready to be reshelved. I can’t help but notice that one of them is a volume about mythology.
    Through a doorway is the single classroom, anachronistically adorned with eleven computers—more than one per child. There are drawings on the walls to accompany haikus created by the students. A poster of the solar system implores them to “Reach for the stars!” Through the window, I can see a playground and a couple of basketball hoops, each set at a different height, and a couple of grazing cows.
    â€œThe good thing about this being a one-room schoolhouse,” says the teacher when she arrives, “is everything is a science project. Everything is history. Everything is an event. If I cook something, I’ll make everybody try it. I’m making sushi at home right now. Or we have killdeer eggs hatching out on the playground, so we’re turning it into a hypothesis of the eggs—when they were laid, how many do they think will hatch, how many will survive…”
    Like the computers in the classroom, Stephanie Haggard upends expectations, and not only because she is making sushi in rural Oregon. Only a few years older than I, broad shouldered, with her blond hair drawn tightly back from her face, she cuts an imposing figure. She is no matronly schoolmarm. Indeed, she tells me that she didn’t set out to be a schoolteacher at all; back in Texas, she wanted a job with Border Patrol. But the children of Troy can thank whoever left some Betadine surgical scrub bottles on the steps of a medical clinic at Yellowstone National Park.
    â€œI was working at Mammoth Clinic in Yellowstone, and I went downstairs to get some insurance papers. I stepped on a bottle, hyperextended, and fell down on concrete. I was in tremendous pain. I went to the Texas Back Institute in Plano, Texas,” she says. “I had some surgery. I’m titanium from the bellybutton down.”
    Which, of course, makes her even more imposing—the bionic teacher, the Terminator educator.
    â€œI got hired by Border Patrol, and I was hoping my back would be well enough for me to take the position. But the doctor said, ‘You can either go in for the operation or take the position with Border Patrol. Not both. It’s just going to get worse with Border Patrol.’ And I wanted to go into the FBI. I had all these high hopes for a life of grand adventure.” She lets out a barely audible sigh and shrugs. “So I figured I’d go to school in the meantime. I got my gifted and talented certification—differentiating the curriculum and customizing it to specific students. So actually, this fit in perfectly for what I was trained to do.”
    Stephanie’s husband remains in Texas, where he coaches high school football. Her five-year-old daughter is finishing the school year with him there, while her eleven-year-old daughter is the “Sophia” I saw on one of the lockers. She and her husband aren’t separated, Stephanie explains. “After being a coach’s wife for thirteen years, I don’t see him anyhow during the school year. So this is no big deal.”
    â€œSo…is this an adventure?”
    She grins. “Absolutely. The best. And it’s good clean living. Sometimes it’s surreal. I have to pinch myself. I don’t hear ambulances. I don’t hear cars going by. I open my window at night, and I hear the Wenaha River. I