Thirty-Nine First-Graders Turned Up at Their Teacher’s Wedding

In the 1980s, in a primary school in the former Yugoslavia, a class of thirty-nine first-graders lost its teacher to sick leave early in the autumn. The substitute was a young man who had finished his training that summer. They were his first class.

He had been lent to the class for a fortnight, and the class had not been told it was a loan.

What he did was not remarkable on paper. He taught the letters. He read aloud. He learned all thirty-nine names quickly and used them. When the original teacher was due back, the class did something first-graders rarely manage: it took a position.

Then the parents got involved. A petition went round. He stayed, first with the class and then in a permanent post.

Here is the rest of the story, in numbers.

Thirty-nine: the class.

One ring, spotted in third grade. Children notice rings before they notice anything else about an adult’s life. Cornered, he admitted he was getting married, and told them the date.

Thirty-nine: the number of children standing on the steps of the registry office on the day, in their best clothes, in two rows. Attendance was perfect.

One call-up for military service, in fourth grade. The class could petition a headteacher. It could not petition the army.

Five letters a week, one child a day, in turn, so that a letter went to the barracks every day. The former pupil who later told the story still has his reply.

I have been part of a parents’ petition once. It was in Brussels, it was about the school lunch menu, and it had eleven signatures, four of them mine, in different pens, for different family members. The lunches did not change. The headteacher sent a reply thanking “the four parents of Year 4” for their engagement.

I understand from this that a petition works best when it is about a person, not a lunch, and when the person is worth it.

The children who signed in that Yugoslav school knew exactly what they wanted. They wanted a grown-up who knew their names and was glad to see them, and they were prepared to go to a registry office to prove it.

I tested the principle at home and asked the youngest whether she would come to her teacher’s wedding.

She said yes, and asked whether there would be cake. She asked whether she would need to bring a present. Then she asked, as an afterthought, whether her teacher was getting married.

She is not. It does not seem to have dented the plan.