49 pages • 1 hour read
AviThe Secret School
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
In the spring of 1925, Ida Bidson is 14. Less than five feet tall, she drives her family’s Model T car by kneeling on the seat while her seven-year-old brother, Felix, on hands and knees, operates the clutch and brake pedals. They careen along a dirt road through Elk Valley, a narrow plain sandwiched between mountain ranges in Colorado, and arrive at an old, square schoolhouse adorned with a bell tower and peeling walls. Their car screeches to a halt next to another vehicle.
Ida’s best friend, Tom Kohl, arrives on muleback with his sister, Mary. Other students sit on the front steps. Their teacher, Miss Fletcher, a small woman with dark hair, opens the door and tells the students to hurry in: “There’s grave news to share” (6).
The kids file into the one-room building. It’s filled with old wooden desks and benches, an iron stove, and a small library of 15 books and some magazines. The eight students, ranging in grade level from first to eighth, put away their lunch pails and coats, sit at their desks, and wait.
Miss Fletcher introduces them to Mr. Jordan, the portly proprietor of a feed-and-grocery store and owner of the car parked next to Ida’s. He’s also the school board chairman. Miss Fletcher announces that she must leave at once to take care of her ailing mother in Iowa. Mr. Jordan says the rest of the spring term is canceled.
Tom raises a hand and asks whether this means he and Ida won’t be taking their exit exams. Ida adds that, without those tests, neither of them will be able to attend high school in Steamboat Springs. Mr. Jordan says that sometimes life teaches hard lessons. Besides, he believes girls don’t need an education.
Mr. Jordan departs. Fighting back tears, Ida asks Miss Fletcher what can be done. Getting into high school is Ida’s only chance to continue her quest to become a teacher. Miss Fletcher says she tried to keep their school open, but there’s nothing else she can do. Stunned and silent, all Ida can feel is “an enormous pain in her chest” (12).
Chapter 2 Summary
During recess, Ida and Tom sit and talk about their prospects. Ida dreams of teaching in a big city, but she fears that, even if she passes the exit exam, her family can’t afford to send her to high school. Still, she’s already begun studying for the test. Tom thinks he can take a correspondence course to help him learn more about electrics and radios. He suggests Ida relax and take a school break. Angry with his attitude, she marches away.
Miss Fletcher calls Ida indoors. She expresses sorrow for Ida’s setback but explains that her mother had a stroke, and she can’t return anytime soon to help Ida with her studies. She counsels patience; Ida replies that this fall may be the only year she can attend high school: “I just don’t want to be a sheep farmer my whole life” (16-17).
After school, Tom suggests to Ida that she can stay on course by becoming the school’s teacher. After all, she’s a “know-it-all” (18), and if she figured out how to get to school by having Felix control the car’s pedals, she can figure out how to fill in as their teacher.
Ida thinks Tom is trying to order her around, and she rejects his idea. As she and Felix drive home, though, she wonders if Tom’s idea might work.
Chapter 3 Summary
Back home, Ida gets Felix to promise not to tell their folks what happened at school. Inside the family’s log cabin, she helps her mother with the baby, Shelby, then does barnyard chores with her father.
Late in the evening, Ida tells her mother about the school closing and how that might prevent her from attending high school. She asks if she can be the teacher so she can finish up the year. Surprised, Mrs. Bidson says Ida is definitely smart enough, but she’d have to manage the class, grade papers, do her homework, and continue her household chores. Also, she’d have to notify Mr. Jordan.
As Ida leaves for bed, her mother offers to give her hairpins: “If you put up your hair, you’ll look older” (28).
Chapter 4 Summary
At morning recess, Ida tells Tom she wasn’t really mad at him the day before. Tom says his folks, German immigrants, are angry about the school closing because they want their son “to be something different than they are” (29-30). Ida admits she’s been thinking about Tom’s idea, and her mother says she must notify Mr. Jordan. They agree that he’d never approve. It must remain a secret.
At lunch, they talk to the other kids. Tom says the entire year’s schooling will count for nothing if it isn’t completed. He asks who the smartest student is. Natasha, 13, says she’s best at spelling, and Tom is the best at math, but overall, Ida is the smartest. Tom suggests that Ida become the teacher. Felix expresses shock that his sister might become his teacher. The others laugh.
Tom points out that the school board probably won’t allow it, so the kids must promise to keep their plan a secret. Some protest that they’ve already informed their parents; Tom suggests they say school has been extended, and they don’t yet know who’s teaching. He asks for a vote; every child puts a hand in the air.
The others go out to play, but Ida and Tom hang back. She admits to being scared; Tom says it’s scarier for her to miss high school. Later, Ida walks to the pond behind the schoolhouse, stares at her reflection, and decides she doesn’t look like a schoolteacher. She pulls her pigtails back and looks again: With her hair up, she looks older.
Chapter 5 Summary
At the end of school on Wednesday, Miss Fletcher says goodbye to the children, hopes they do well in the fall, and expresses how much she loves them. Ida steps forward and, on behalf of the class, says they’ll never forget her. Tom’s sister Mary presents Miss Fletcher with a wicker basket filled by the kids with jam, cake, apples, cookies, and two pencils: “We made everything […]. Except the pencils” (38).
Fighting back tears, Miss Fletcher thanks the children. Outside, a horn beeps. Quickly, she hugs each student, then has them move her belongings to the waiting car. She locks the door and takes the key.
After the car leaves, the kids turn to Ida: They want to know how they’ll get back into the schoolhouse. Ida takes them to a side window, where she gets a boost up, climbs through the window, and, after a short delay, unlocks the door from the inside. She has her hair up. In her best teacher voice, she says, “Children, […] school is closed for the day. It will open regular at eight-thirty sharp tomorrow morning” (41). They laugh, but she shoos them away and closes the door. The kids drift off for home.
Felix sits on the front steps. Ida opens the door, peers around, and then walks with Felix to their car. He says he prefers her hair down; she replies, “You better get used to it […]. It’s going to stay up” (42).
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The opening chapters introduce most of the characters, including the protagonist, Ida; her opponent, antagonist Mr. Jordan; Miss Fletcher—whose departure sets the plot in motion—and the seven children who become Ida’s students.
The story is written in third-person limited perspective: It narrates events from Ida’s point of view as if told by someone else. This is a useful approach in a book that traces a protagonist’s growth as a person. It’s clear from the early chapters that Ida’s task is to fill in for an adult teacher, a challenge that will test her abilities and character to the utmost.
Miss Fletcher, who’s middle-aged, expects to spend months or years caring for her mother. She’s what people once called a “spinster,” a woman who never marries. Spinning wool, the ancient means of creating yarn, was long a duty of unmarried women; those who never married thus were thought of as endlessly spinning yarn, hence, “spinsters.”
Because marriage was, until the mid-1900s, widely considered the ultimate goal for women in the US and many other countries, the term “spinster” came to symbolize women who somehow had failed socially, perhaps by being rejected by men: “If someone is a spinster, by implication she is not eligible (to marry); she has had her chance, and been passed by.” (Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. Language and Women’s Place. Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 61).
At the time, most women weren’t expected to replace motherhood with a career, but, as a teacher in the 1920s, Miss Fletcher’s status would be somewhat elevated in the eyes of her neighbors. It’s one of the few career choices that the era’s farming communities might easily accept for a woman. In part, this was because, though she has no children of her own, Miss Fletcher’s love for her students and her diligent work on their behalf serves the families of the community. In that respect, her work would have been considered both “feminine” and useful.
If, in the story, Miss Fletcher was married and had kids of her own, it would be harder for her to leave town to take care of her ailing mother. Her unmarried status thus permits her a great deal of freedom. Ida watches a woman she loves and respects exercise the power to move away that’s granted by her position. It’s for a good cause, and it’s an emergency, but Miss Fletcher’s ability to make her own decisions has an allure all its own for a young girl who wants to escape a life of tedium.
Ida learns by accident that Miss Fletcher is paid $40 a month to teach at the school. In 2020 dollars, that’s roughly $800, well below the current poverty level, but in 1925, it would have seemed a princely sum to young people growing up in a small farming community. This isn’t why Ida wants to teach, but it helps justify her decision: She’d make much more from teaching than farming.
In Chapter 3, Mrs. Bidson supports her daughter’s plan to become the teacher. So far, she’s the only adult on Ida’s side; Ida must hide her plan from the school board and, if possible, from her father. Her quest will be, in many respects, a lonely one. Trying to teach her way out of a jam will demand every resource she has and more: It will also require the stamina and strength of character of the grown-up she wants to become.
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