Chapter 6

Katherine Cornwall was WNBC's top TV reporter in the biggest TV market in the world. While to her colleagues it didn't have the prestige of a Washington assignment, it offered her far greater scope. She didn't feel like a yo-yo on the end of a string, constantly responding to press conference calls and to hundreds of people each trying to spin every story in their own way. In her mid-thirties, she was a very beautiful woman. Nevertheless, she differed from her colleagues in another important respect: She stayed off-camera as much as possible. In a business in which the name of the game is "face time" — the amount of time one's face is on the screen — she was an anomaly. As a true news person, she had long since come to the conclusion that reporter-as-celebrity got in the way of the story.

The result was that when she interviewed a subject often only the back of her head showed. She stayed off camera as much as she possibly could. The result was a whole series of very superior news stories and three Emmy Awards. Moreover, she could move anywhere in the city with only a minimal chance of being recognized in spite of the fact that almost everyone with a television set knew her name and the sound of her voice.

She differed from her colleagues in another significant way: She was vitally interested in broadcast technology. As a result, she was the darling of the station's technicians who were constantly coming up with new devices to capture sound or pictures. Most of her reporting colleagues were afraid of the new equipment. Kate Cornwall reveled in it; it made her job easier. Not only did she welcome new equipment, alone among her colleagues she spent time with the technicians describing capabilities she wished she had. Responding to her wishes, more often than not the techies came up with gear that could do the job. They simply loved her.

On this Monday evening, Kate was feeling uncomfortable as she prepared for an upcoming two-hour news special to be telecast only a short time later. She had spent part of her day in a fourth-grade classroom at PS-61 in Queens using the very latest in miniaturized video and recording equipment. Her being in the classroom was the end of a long chain of events that helped explain her three Emmies and her five additional finalist positions.

Subsequently, she had interviewed parents, students, and residents of the rather depressed area. Her discomfort was the result of the juxtaposition of the classroom she had seen, the results achieved, and the reactions of students and parents on the one hand contrasted to the attitude of the school bureaucracy. In spite of the incredible performance achieved in a single classroom, the bureaucracy wanted to terminate this teacher.

The New York City public schools were a collective disaster. While ever larger amounts of money were being spent, performance — regardless of how it was measured — kept going down. Kate Cornwall had come across an interesting fact some weeks earlier: the fourth grade at PS-61 was outperforming every other school in the city. Seeing this, Kate decided to find out what had happened.

The results of her investigation had been fascinating. Although the first report she had seen had said that it was the entire fourth grade at the school, initial investigation showed that in fact it was a single fourth-grade class. Furthermore, in a school of 80 fourth-graders, 42 of them were in a single classroom while the remaining 38 students were divided among the remaining three. To make it more amazing still, it was the grades obtained by the 42 students in a single classroom that had elevated the average performance of the grade. The performance of the remaining three classes was comparable to the general — unsatisfactory — performance of fourth grades around the city.

As a result, that morning she had visited the remarkable class. Although class had not yet begun when she arrived, she was amazed at the surroundings and the attitudes of everyone. First, the classroom was beautiful. Everything in it seemed brand new, and from the reaction of both the students and the teacher, it was. The children had still been exclaiming excitedly over their new desks and admiring the new computers, whiteboards, and everything else.

Then there was the teacher, Caitlin Collins. Miss Collins was probably the most beautiful young woman Kate had ever seen. She was a very tall blue-eyed blonde with her hair worn in a charming short urchin cut. Then there was her attire: At a time when the typical classroom teacher was wearing blue jeans, Collins had been wearing a pleated blue linen skirt, and a blue and white striped man-tailored shirt with a navy-blue string tie.

She had begun the class by saying in a very soft voice, "Children, it's time to begin."

Instantly, every child stopped what he or she had been doing, went to stand beside their desks, and stood at attention. A black boy left his place, went to the front of the room, and very carefully removed the American flag from its holder. Later, Kate learned that holding the flag was carefully rotated among the students and was considered to be an honor. The boy stood proudly in front of the class while they all recited the Pledge of Allegiance. They followed this with a capella singing of The Star Spangled Banner — singing the first and fourth verses.

At that point — while Kate's hidden camera rolled — Miss Collins said, "Now let us take a minute for reflection."

At that she dropped to her knees in front of the class, and every student did the same thing. From the clasped hands and lowered heads, it was obvious that they all were praying. But the incredible thing was what followed: While she watched, a golden light appeared around the head of each child, and a bright golden glow surrounded Miss Collins. After a minute, without saying a word, she rose to her feet and the golden glow diminished. Rolling the video tape, Kate was delighted to see that the golden glow had been electronically captured.

Following this, Miss Collins introduced Dr. William Corcoran. When she did, her eyes were glowing with love and pride. She explained that while the new desks had been her gift to the school, Dr. Corcoran and his friends had provided everything else — the new computers, whiteboards, flooring, window blinds, and the redoing of the walls and ceiling of the classroom. At that point one little girl asked if Miss Collins was going to marry Dr. Corcoran.

When she shyly nodded, the children filed up to where she was standing to congratulate her. It was one of the most moving events Kate Cornwall had ever seen. First, Miss Collins extended her hand toward Dr. Corcoran who joined her in front of the class. Then, led by the girls, each child congratulated the couple and stressed to Dr. Corcoran what a wonderful person Miss Collins truly was.

One little boy who had kissed Miss Collins, as all of the children did, just cocked his head and looked up at the doctor pensively. Finally he said, "Are you sure you're good enough for Miss Collins? She's a real angel, you know."

"No, I'm not," Dr. Corcoran had replied. "But I don't think any other man is, either. All I know is that I will devote my life to trying to make her happy. How does that sound?"

The little boy thought for a moment, then nodded and said, "It will probably be good enough." Then he extended his hand to shake which the doctor did. Then the doctor stooped down, took the little boy in his arms and gave him a kiss.

After that the boy added, "You may make it after all. That was a great kiss. Thank you, sir."

"You like Miss Collins?" Corcoran had asked.

The highly sensitive microphone Kate had been using picked up the boy's response clearly: "Are you nuts? Like Miss Collins? Good grief, Dr. Corcoran, don't be stupid. There's not a kid in this class who likes Miss Collins ... We love her! She is the greatest."

"What do you mean?" Corcoran had persisted.

"Well, one day I said a dirty word at recess to one of the girls. The girl started to cry, and Miss Collins was there like a shot — she has eyes in the back of her head, you know — and asked what was wrong. The girl told her. First, she took me into the girls' bathroom and washed out my mouth with soap. Then she asked me what else she should do, so I told her that about thirty spanks should be about right. So right in front of the whole class, I took down my pants and she really spanked me hard. When it was all over I couldn't even see, I was crying so hard.

"Do you know what Miss Collins did? She held me close so I could smell her fragrance — it's so marvelous ... Then she hugged me, kissed me, and apologized for hurting me.

"Do you know what, Dr. Corcoran? I would take a beating from her anytime just to have the opportunity of getting her hugs and kisses. But it wasn't over. She made me apologize individually to every girl in the whole class — and there are 22 of them. But I did. The girls all lined up, and I apologized to them one at a time. I don't know who started it, but after the first few, a girl kissed me. After that, every girl kissed me after I apologized and told me it was all right as long as I didn't do it again."

The little boy was beaming as he added, "Boy! What a great day that was!"

The boy continued, "But that's not all. See that tall woman standing back toward the corner?" Kate's camera trained over in the direction he indicated and picked out a tall, very beautiful young black woman. She appeared to be only in her mid-twenties in spite of the fact that the little boy, Bobby, was ten years old. Her flawless skin was the color of light chocolate milk, and her hair, worn shoulder length, was beautifully wavy.

"That's my mom. And she's Miss Collins's fault, too. Last fall when I started in this class, Mom weighed about 180 and was on welfare. Now she's down to about 120 and has a great job as an exotic dancer. We have a nice apartment now. Mom got us a computer and Miss Collins has her back in school studying computer programming. She's really good at that, too.

"Just ask my mom, Dr. Corcoran. She'll tell you that Miss Collins saved her life and our family. She used to do drugs and watch TV all day. She didn't do anything. But now she's the neatest mom in the whole world." He paused for a moment and then continued, "She really cried when I gave her a card on Mother's Day and fixed breakfast and all. Of course, that was Miss Collins, too."

Bobby continued, "Last fall, I was reading at the first-grade level ... sort of. Now I'm reading at the eighth-grade level. Last marking period I had all A's and made the high honor roll. Mom was just so proud, she couldn't stand it."

Then the boy saw a big black man enter the room, look around, and move diffidently toward his mother. "Well what do you know about that?" he murmured. Again the extremely sensitive microphone picked up his words clearly. "That's my father. I recognize him from his pictures. I don't think I've ever seen him in real life before, though. He's Bobby Smith, the right cornerback with the Giants. I'm Robert Smith, Jr."

Then he slowly shook his head and continued, "I'll bet you that that's Miss Collins' doing, too. I'll bet she sent him a note or something saying that I'm the student of the month."

Kate stopped the tape and shook her head. Because of the capabilities of some of the highly miniaturized equipment she was using, she was seeing and hearing many of these things for the first time. Her audio equipment had picked up conversations that had been inaudible to her. My God, she thought, is there anything this woman doesn't do? She continued to watch as the first order of business was to make the award for student of the month to Robert Smith, Jr.

Next, she reviewed her tapes of the class day. Fortunately, she had been able to take a position which enabled her to see into another fourth-grade class directly across the hall. Because of the distribution of students in the grade, while Miss Collins' class had 42 students, there were two others with thirteen and one with twelve. The room across the hall was the class of twelve. Remarkably, although there were only twelve students, they seemed to be doing half a dozen different things. Moreover, there seemed to be no textbooks in the room.

Miss Collins, on the other hand, to Kate's initial amazement, was using McGuffey's fourth reader. Furthermore, when she looked into the desks before classes began, there was a full assortment of textbooks. While the smaller class seemed to be in anarchy, Miss Collins controlled her classroom and led discussions based on their homework assignment which it appeared all the students had completed.