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Seeing isn’t believing.

No, seeing is reserved for opening night, for curtain calls and roses, and the chance to say, “I told you so.”

Believing, on the other hand, comes before all that. For instance, a dry run on a waning Tuesday afternoon, when it’s raining cats and dogs outside Murphey Traditional Academy near  Four Seasons, where the K-5 students are rehearsing a musical of Jack and the Beanstalk called  “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum,” the school’s first play in many a year.

It’s a surprising departure from the flavorless gruel of yearly progress reports and end-of-grade tests. And backstage, at the moment, it’s also a mob scene.

Director Debbie Hunter, the fourth-grade language arts teacher who pitched this idea back in the salad days of summer vacation, now faces a grim reality.

The show is four nights away. Some students don’t know their lines. A few lead actors didn’t show up for rehearsal. The roof over the stage is about to spring a leak.

A file cabinet that won’t be moved from the wings sticks out like a sore thumb. There are more than enough cast members — 40 or 50 — to stage an uprising.

Hunter, wearing a thin smile, peeks through the curtain and spies a welcome sight. Natalie Marcle, third-grade language arts, former Teacher of the Year, a formidable presence, has entered the cafeteria.

“Marcle, are you staying?” Hunter asks, and her co-worker nods. “Thank the Lord. You got your whistle?”

Marcle blows her whistle. The stage falls silent. The show will go on.

And this is where imagination has gotten us. Empty stomachs and no place to call home.
— Jack Spriggins’ mother, from “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum”

The question they were all asked at Salem College was, “Can any child learn?” It was a trick question. The grad students in education, Debbie Hunter among them, were supposed to answer, no, some children simply cannot learn.

Once the grad students fell for the trap, it would snap shut. Of course every child can learn, was the correct answer. A teacher’s job is to find the means.

At Murphey, Hunter’s first and only full-time classroom assignment, every smug, middle-class label she had heard applied on “Title I schools,” “underachieving schools” was torn away.

Yes, Murphey’s students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, two-thirds qualifying for free and reduced-priced lunches, and the school has a fair-sized “S.K.I.P.” program. That stands for “Save Kids of Incarcerated Parents.”

But month after month, the school ranks number one or two in attendance for county elementary schools.  This past week, the Salvation Army food drive would see the cafeteria lined with boxes of donated food — students bringing an average of five cans each, principal Rich Thomae observes.

And night after night, as the stop-and-start rehearsals run longer, way longer than scheduled, parents and grandparents wait patiently in the Murphey cafeteria at the end of their workday.

“This is the first time they’ve ever done something like this,”  Bridget Beidari, whose fifth-grade daughter Bria plays Jack’s mother, is saying, as she waits to coach her daughter on delivering her lines.

Around Thanksgiving of Hunter’s first year of teaching, she began to notice the effect of reader’s theater in the classroom. Using bits of paper, she had the students act out parts of a feast — a potato, a piece of pie, a pumpkin, and watched the words come alive off the page.

Art teacher Naomi Keltz-Jones, who helped students create sets for  “Murpheytown” and a giant’s castle from corrugated cardboard, agrees:

“It’s sneaky. They’re acting, they’re painting, they’re learning movement and speech. And,” she jokes, “we yell at them a lot. That way they know they’re learning.”

Gradually, as Friday night’s performance draws closer, fellow teachers begin to see it. The Latin teacher is in charge of the lights  and stage-manages the cow. The speech teacher pinch-hits for missing actors. The main office registrar steps in as enforcer.

And when the first-grader “magic beans” cannot calm themselves after a madcap Tom and Jerry-style interlude, it’s up to Marcle, Teacher of the Year and drill sergeant, to restore order.

“First GRADE! On the STAGE! What were you DOING?”

“RUNNING!”

“What were you told not to DO?”

“RUN!”

“Back up the STEPS. To do WHAT?”

“WALK!”

“Ms. Marcle,” Hunter says, “You and I are going to get a steak when this is all through.”

“I’m going to need something stronger than that,” Marcle quips, then remembers the students within earshot. “Grilled onions, maybe.”

“Think of the possibilities. Anyone can have money. But magic beans are something special.”
— Jack Spriggins,from “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum”

There are students that a real teacher walks through fire for, but they’re not the “A” students. At least, they might not start out that way. Where’s the challenge in that?

Forget about the money teachers spend out of pocket to put on a show like “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum.” Forget, even, about the evenings and the Saturdays, the e-mails, phone calls, reminders sent home, Xerox copies, permission forms.

This is a matter of faith. Not the Jesus kind. Faith in the students at Murphey. Then again, one conversation with school president  Dominique Barringer, 11, and it becomes clear this is not blind faith.

Barringer, a fifth-grader, plays the sheriff. Confident, self-possessed, he could really be sheriff, if he were taller. Better yet, attorney general.

“I’m kind of nervous onstage, but I try not to look nervous. It helps to know my lines,” Barringer says. “I’ve liked all the compliments, and enjoyed the chance to be an actor.”

There is camaraderie among the cast — they give each other a silent thumbs up in the halls. As they get down to the dress rehearsal, the production numbers go smoothly at last — the show-stopping “Wiggle-Waggle,” the extravagant “Market Day,” and the calypso strains of “Magic Beans,” when the cryptic character of the Bean Seller appears.

She is played by Ke’Avia Artis, who understands the character completely, practicing in front of the mirror at night. With Jack’s family facing eviction, the Bean Seller persuades Jack to barter the family milk cow for five beans — magic beans that, sure enough, grow into giant beanstalks allowing Jack to slay the giant and save the day.

“I feel like the Bean Seller is really magical because I made the beans,” says Artis, a third-grader who wants to be an actress or a singer. “I used to believe in fairy tales. Now, I feel like I get a second chance to be what I dream.”

Her favorite line comes after Jack’s mother, disgusted at his barter, throws the beans in the dirt, and suddenly a great rumbling occurs and green stepladders turn into giant bean stalks, reaching through corrugated cardboard clouds.

“What did I tell you? Magic Beans?”

Sure enough, just as the Bean Seller foretold, Friday’s performance would be a smash hit, standing room only. The punch lines from Erica Smalley’s  troll would pop like fireworks. The giant’s outlandish kitchen boys would sail over the top. Missy Nicholson,  the music teacher, would conjure pure sorcery from the chorus, each musical number barreling through like a runaway train. And Jack would remember his lines. They would see.

Ah, but all of this was to unfold 24 hours later. For the moment, all we have is Debbie Hunter’s word for it, and she has done all she can do to make us believe. So as the last first-grader is picked up from the cafeteria by the last mother running late, Hunter and the art teacher pack up their scripts, their tote bags and tomorrow’s lesson plans. They head for their cars, into the foggy night to order up a couple of steaks.

With grilled onions, no doubt.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com