Mr. Denning's New Poster

Peter Danning walked into the mailroom, part of his regular morning routine. He'd arrived at 7:30, almost an hour before students should be in their seats for homeroom. He'd said hello to Mrs. Bamberg, the front office secretary, popped into the breakroom to grab coffee, and then checked his cubby in the mail room. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw a cardboard tube sticking out. His new poster must have arrived!

Sure enough, the tube was clearly marked with the Agora.biz logo. Danning grabbed the package, along with a form that he needed to pass out to his homeroom students about the upcoming winter formal dance, a copy of the district newsletter, and a printout of next week's staff meeting schedule. He rolled his eyes a little at that - it was 2025, and every teacher had their own classroom EC and ePost address. Why couldn't they just read their messages instead of wasting the office's time and paper supply? Danning mentally sighed and carried the items from his box and his bag of graded papers out of the mailroom and to his classroom down the hall.

Once in his room and at his desk, Danning flipped the switch on his Vallient brand EC, used the clicker to turn on his overhead projector, and went over to the wall to make sure the thermostat hadn't been reset by the janitor the night before. That done, he eagerly opened the poster tube. Out came the updated poster of U.S. presidents. He'd ordered it from Agora as soon as it became available in December, hoping that it would get here in time for inauguration day - and low and behold, it had arrived four days before the big event. As the U.S. History and Current Events teacher, he'd been eager to get the updated poster as soon as possible. In part, he'd been excited about who won back in November, but also partly because teenagers had a knack for making annoyingly obvious comments when they saw a detail like an out-of-date poster.

The count of presidents now went up to 44, arranged in five neat rows of eight, along with the bottom row of six: 38 men, six women, 35 whites, and nine people of color. As often happened when he looked at posters like this, he noticed the odd number counts of the first five presidents, from Washington to Crawford, who'd been elected before the 14th amendment to the old 1787 Constitution had limited the presidency to the single six-year term it still had today. The school's namesake also popped out at number 14 (and the special "A" in the list for the years Brandt had spent as Acting President during the War Between the States). The "first" on the list also vied for his attention: Landon, at number 22, the first Black man to occupy the office; Woodlark, at number 26, the first Native American; Freeman, at number 31, the first Black man elected to the presidency; Lincoln, at number 34, the first woman to hold the office. At number 39, Regina Holman was the first president Danning remembered as a child, and only barely. Her successor was the first election he actually lived through. He winced slightly at 42 - it had been the first time he was old enough to vote, and he'd voted for her top opponent, following his parent's example. He'd changed parties by the time the 2012 election had rolled around.

And at the end was Sophia Nakamura, of Oregon, set to take office next week as the first Asian-American female president. She'd been one of the state's Senators in Franklin for over a decade, and there had been a lot of excitement here for "one of our own" to get to move into Washington House. He and his other history department colleagues planned to watch the ceremony with his students.

All of a sudden, his EC chimed, signaling it was ready for him to enter his passcode, effectively ending his woolgathering. Danning laid the poster on his desk and put the heavy teacher's edition of the textbook on top of it to help flatten it out a bit. He'd hang it up during his planning period later in the day. For now, he needed to get the classroom ready for the students that would soon be coming into the building, ready (or not) to start another day.