Douglas J. Keyes Elementary School

Douglas J. Keyes Elementary School is the Woodlawn public school where Brett Bohlinger takes her first substantial step toward teaching, one of the goals on her life list. The school is introduced as both a place of challenge and a refuge: its principal describes the surrounding neighborhood’s housing projects and street gangs, while insisting that the school can offer young people a safe haven. Brett’s short-lived substitute placement puts that aspiration in contact with the demands of a classroom she is not prepared to manage.

Setting and Institutional Role

Located in Woodlawn, Douglas J. Keyes Elementary serves students in an area Principal Bailey characterizes as difficult to teach because of the presence of housing projects and several street gangs. She frames the school’s role not just in terms of instruction but also as a safe haven for local children. The novel supplies this description through the principal’s account during Brett’s arrival; it does not detail the school’s wider programs or administration, but makes the contrast between neighborhood pressures and the school’s protective purpose central to the setting.

The school enters Brett’s story through the Chicago Public Schools substitute-teacher process. After reviewing her application and immunization records and conducting a background check, the district tells her she is eligible to substitute. The specific opening is for a fifth-grade substitute at Douglas J. Keyes Elementary. Mrs. Porter, the regular teacher, has gone into labor three weeks before her due date, and Principal Bailey raises the possibility that Brett may need to cover a long-term absence of up to six weeks. The vacancy thus begins as an urgent staffing need rather than a planned teaching placement for Brett.

Brett’s Appointment and Objective

Brett arrives dressed in black slacks and a black sweater, with bright orange shoes chosen for the Halloween season. That small, deliberate touch marks her effort to enter the role as a teacher, even as she remains apprehensive about what the work will require. When Bailey explains that Mrs. Porter may be absent for six weeks, Brett focuses on the length of the commitment and the school’s exit sign. She considers leaving, but connects staying to her mother’s list and its twentieth goal: teaching. She accepts the possible long-term assignment because she wants to give the goal a genuine attempt, not because the job is easy or comfortable.

That decision matters in the context of Brett’s earlier uncertainty about work and her future. The substitute position offers a concrete way to test herself against a goal that has existed, until then, as an item on a list. She has passed the district’s preliminary checks and is offered an immediate opportunity, but institutional eligibility cannot prepare her for the unpredictable work of the classroom. The difference between being approved to substitute and being able to sustain the assignment becomes clear almost at once.

Classroom Crisis and Departure

Brett’s first day at the school is marked by a classroom emergency severe enough that she calls for a nurse. The surviving account does not specify the full circumstances of the incident, but its aftermath is tangible: after six hours and forty-three minutes, Brett has the students leave the classroom and is summoned to Principal Bailey’s office. Bailey gives her a stack of incident reports to sign, indicating that the day has generated multiple incidents requiring documentation. The reports turn Brett’s teaching attempt into an administrative record as well as a personal ordeal.

Brett expects that Mrs. Porter’s return will end her assignment, and says she will come back on Monday. Bailey makes clear that she will not allow Brett back into the classroom. Brett’s first response is relief at the prospect of avoiding the children, but that relief gives way to the sting of rejection. She asks for another chance, saying she can do better. The school’s decision closes this particular placement; Brett’s response shows that the goal remains unfinished in her own eyes.

Narrative Significance

Douglas J. Keyes Elementary brings together two different measures of success. For Principal Bailey, the school’s importance lies in providing a safe place for children in a challenging neighborhood. For Brett, it becomes a test of whether she can move beyond the aspiration of teaching and manage the responsibility in practice. Her orange shoes and resolve to stay mark an earnest beginning, while the incident reports and Bailey’s refusal expose the distance between wanting the goal and meeting its demands.

The episode also gives the school a role in Brett’s changing sense of achievement. Completing a goal cannot be reduced to arriving at the building or receiving permission to substitute: her attempt is difficult, lasts only one day, and ends with the principal barring her return. Yet Brett’s request for another chance prevents that ending from functioning as simple closure. The school remains the place where the limits of her first attempt are made unmistakable, and where her commitment to the goal is measured by her reaction to failure.