39 pages • 1 hour read
Kirkpatrick HillThe Year of Miss Agnes
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2000A 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 15-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Miss Agnes works with the children on their speech. The students believe they don't speak English correctly because other teachers have told them this, but Miss Agnes disagrees, telling them it's all a matter of context. She teaches them more formal speech, which Fred finds tricky and slightly unnatural. Jimmy Sam loves learning the correct rules. The children turn this into a game, putting checkmarks by others' names on the board if they make mistakes. The person with the fewest checkmarks wins, and Fred wins a lot.
The children are all back in school for a while after Christmas, and Miss Agnes chooses new books to read. When they return from beaver trapping in February, she reads them the story of a priest who traveled by dogsled around Alaska, and who built the Allakaket school. The children like hearing about people they know; even Fred's grandfather is in the book. Miss Agnes's favorite part is about a native boy who travels with the priest, who initially speaks no English, but who is intelligent and plans to be the first native doctor. However, he drowns after a ship he is on hits an iceberg. The students are interested to hear that native people can be doctors. Fred relishes the idea that she could earn a living, since she doesn't want to depend on a man or have children.
Chapter 16 Summary
The children have learned a lot by the spring. They particularly love the map, especially Plasker. Seeing it makes Fred want to go see other parts of the world. Other subjects have also improved. They have all gotten good at sign language, with Bokko outpacing even Miss Agnes. The children even use sign language among each other, and adults in the village start to learn it, too, even Mamma. Sometimes, talking to Fred, Mamma forgets who she is talking to and signs to her.
When it starts to get warmer, it is time for spring camp. Different families go to different areas, while five children—including Bokko and Fred—stay in school until fish camp. Fred remembers the time she, her mother, her sister, and her grandparents went to spring camp with their uncle and his family. They pitched tents by the lake and sealed them with snow. The men and boys went onto the lake in canoes to catch muskrats, which they prepared during the evenings while Grandpa told them stories. In earlier days, they'd use moose hides to make tents and had some very hard years.
Even though they love spring camp, the children who are going are upset because Miss Agnes will already have left by the time they come back. Their new teacher might not allow Bokko in school. Miss Agnes tries to prepare them, telling them that Bokko will go to a school for deaf children. However, this makes Fred sadder, since both her sister and her teacher will be gone. Fred worries that it was their fish smell, after all, that is sending Miss Agnes away. She hopes Miss Agnes will stay another year, but doesn't think she will, since England is so appealing.
As the weather warms up, the children prepare for fish camp as Miss Agnes packs up her belongings. She leaves the records and phonograph for the children. When they get upset about her taking the map and pictures, she leaves those as well. Fred stays after school to help, and Miss Agnes offers her the teapot they drank tea from the first time they met as a memento. Fred tells her that she doesn't need anything to help her remember, and Miss Agnes agrees that teachers always stay in our memories. Fred asks what Miss Agnes will do back in England, and Miss Agnes explains her plans, with mixed emotions. This makes Fred sad, and she goes home.
Chapter 17 Summary
At fish camp, everyone works hard. The men and older boys use a fish wheel in the river, which they empty every morning. Then, the women cut up the salmon and salt it. Bokko and Fred carry the fish to dry. The family does well, getting many fish, and Bokko and Fred record and add up how many they get at the end of each week. This makes Mamma proud, helping her realize that school was worthwhile. Bokko and Fred can't stop thinking about Miss Agnes, which makes Fred upset.
The villagers have spent the summer at fish camp and return in September. Without Miss Agnes waiting for them at school, Fred wishes they could have stayed at camp longer. There, she spent time with her cousins and extended family, and Bokko taught them sign language. Mamma is in a good mood because of the praise she gets for Bokko's new knowledge.
When Fred's family returns from fish camp, the village lights are out. They dock the boat, and Fred and Bokko start carrying supplies home. As they start to walk, they see that the school is lit up. They unhappily stop to see who the new teacher is. They approach the window and see a cat licking its paws. A woman comes up to the cat: Miss Agnes, who has returned. She is playing the King's Choir music, and Bokko starts crying. The girls stare at Miss Agnes, then go home, ready to start school in the morning. Fred decides that she'll ask Miss Agnes why she came back.
Chapters 15-17 Analysis
As Miss Agnes’s time with the children draws to an end, Hill builds to the climax (Miss Agnes leaving) by showing the extent to which she has succeeded in instilling certain values in her students, emphasizing the book’s themes: a love of learning, a desire for life-long education, the ability to apply classroom lessons to everyday life.
As shown by their ability to go between different types of speech, the students have learned to navigate the “outer” world without losing their own identities. They have a sense of pride in their work, and this comes through in Fred’s voice. These types of experiences culminate in Fred’s hope for the future when Miss Agnes reads about the traveling priest in Alaska. Her ambitions have gone beyond just getting the most out of this year with Miss Agnes. Now, she understands there are opportunities available to her beyond marriage and children.
The setting changes in this section from the village to spring camp, then fish camp, showing a natural progression dictated by the changing seasons. Fred’s acceptance of Miss Agnes’s impending departure parallels these seasonal changes: while the fact upsets her, she never tries to convince Miss Agnes to stay, understanding that she wants to go home. Nevertheless, Fred sees the lasting value in what she has learned. At the climax, when Miss Agnes tries to give Fred the teapot before leaving, Fred makes it clear that she will always remember Miss Agnes anyway, and she doesn’t need a material object to help her do so. This continues to develop the theme of the enduring value of good teachers, as does Fred and Bokko’s use of arithmetic to help with the fishing process at fish camp. The benefits of Miss Agnes’s teaching have had far-reaching effects, well outside of the classroom walls.
Likewise, Miss Agnes’s return shows that it is possible to live both within the village and to see oneself as part of the larger world. She has brought a cat and opera recordings from England. Fred’s curiosity about her return, as well as her excitement at returning to school, show just how well Miss Agnes has succeeded in developing her students' natural gifts and talents.
