Find more local reactions and reflections on the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, here.

Mrs. Feith is in a chair in front of her kids. They sit on the floor in an imperfect circle. They are still. It’s early — just after 8 a.m.

Most of these kids are 10 years old. They are in fourth grade. They look and sound, in this moment and on this day, painfully young.

One boy wears a Marvel Comics shirt. A girl wears a pink sweatshirt with a rainbow and clouds.

One student is so wiggly, he rocks backward to the floor and stays there until his classmate whispers for him to sit up.

The calendar on the wall tells students today is May 26.

By the door is posted a large, colorful sign in the form of a letter to students: “Dear Students, I am excited that you are in my class! You are trusted. I support you. You are respected. I will hold you to high expectations. You are important. I am here to help you. You are capable. I will listen to you. You will succeed. I believe in you. We are in this together.”

A straw door mat sits at the threshold of the room. It reads, “All are welcome here.”

Mrs. Feith takes roll by offering an individual greeting to each child, “Good morning, Heather; good morning, Delilah; good morning, Caleb …”

Almost every day starts with this routine.

Stephanie Feith has been a teacher in Healdsburg for 26 years. She grew up here and she went to these schools.

But the buildings are newer now than when she was a student. And today, there are key locks on both the inside and outside of the only door to her classroom. For safety.

In the wake of what happened two days earlier in a fourth grade classroom in Uvalde, Texas, 1,735 miles away, Mrs. Feith thinks about the locks and the one door and the windows that don’t open.

Lisa Pillinini, a 30-year veteran, works across the breezeway. She, too, teaches fourth graders at the Healdsburg Elementary School Fitch Mountain campus.

When they have lockdown drills, she reminds the students about the time she had to lock her classroom door because a deer was running loose on campus.

Somehow picturing a deer scampering down the breezeway makes what they are doing more palatable. For the kids, for her.

Mrs. Feith teaches humanities and Mrs. Pillinini teaches science and math. They share the same kids. The same wiggly, chatty, laughing, silly, bubbly kids.

Both say fourth grade is “the sweet spot,” where kids are independent but still love knock-knock jokes and to be read to. They are learning penmanship and learning to express themselves.

“And they still really, really love school,” Mrs. Feith said.

So when these two lifelong educators heard the news Tuesday about the latest school shooting — in a fourth grade classroom in Texas on the last week of school — they grieved.

For the slain 19 kids and two teachers, for the victims’ families, for their friends, for that community 85 miles west of San Antonio.

But they grieved personally, too. And they grieved for their own kids.

The day after the shooting, one child asked Mrs. Pillinini about a tragedy at a school, but mistakenly called it a “bombing.” Another child was overheard Thursday saying one of her parents was nervous about letting her attend the upcoming FFA Day parade.

But it hasn’t come up any more than that. It’s as if these rooms and these teachers are a world away from the tragedy.

“You have to compartmentalize,” Mrs. Feith said. “When I heard that it happened, when I heard it was the grade that I teach, it felt hard. But this is what we do. We take care of children.”

“I just wish they that they could be kids for longer,” she said.

Because they are 10-year-olds. They play tag and swing on monkey bars. They can’t sit still. They talk about their pets and their grandmothers and the last book they read all in the same sentence.

“When I looked at Facebook and saw the faces, I lost it,” Mrs. Pillinini said. “I saw my kids.”

Because this is what fourth grade looks like.

Just after 8 a.m., Mrs. Feith reads the lunch menu for the day. Snack is yogurt, graham crackers and raisins.

Lunch is cheese or pepperoni pizza. The announcement gets students buzzing. For fourth graders, pizza day is exciting.

Mrs. Feith takes a count of who is ordering lunch. Hands shoot into the air.

That taken care of, Mrs. Feith asks someone to pick the greeting of the day. Someone says, “Bonjour.”

The class stands in a circle. Each student looks to the classmate on their right, offers a shallow bow or rickety curtsy, murmurs “Bonjour” and turns the other way to address their other classmate.

They sit back down on the brown carpet. For the next part of their morning routine, Mrs. Feith asks them to share, in a word or two, how they are feeling.

Find more local reactions and reflections on the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, here.

Everyone is excited. The Future Farmers of America Parade in downtown Healdsburg is this evening. It’s a big deal.

“I’m excited because I am going to the parade with Delilah this afternoon,” Abby Conkling says.

“I’m excited because I am going on a float at the parade,” Valeria Bautista says.

“I’m excited because I get to go to the parade and Mrs. McGuire said there’s going to be animals,” Oscar Hernandez says.

A parade. A country fair. Animals. Summer is coming. It’s everything.

Today is a bit chaotic in the best kind of way. As the culminating piece of their study of the gold rush, students in both rooms are in the process of transforming their classrooms into Boomtown — a village replete with bank, restaurant, mercantile and jail.

There are “wanted” posters hanging around the room. Jessica Patiño-Perez is wanted for loving math. Alianna Leos is wanted for helping people. Johnathan Collins is wanted for loving math too much. Another student on the lam was last sighted “asleep in bed or making her bed.”

But it’s Thursday morning and Boomtown isn’t ready for Open House next week, so students are still cutting and gluing like crazy. Some are finalizing “menus” for the village restaurant (“corned beef $5, baked trout $4.50”), others are cutting out fake dollar bills.

Stefany Hernandez approaches me to show off the water bucket with a shoulder pole she’s created out of cardboard. She tells me how in the gold rush these helped carry water from the streams.

Gael Hernandez and Oscar Hernandez, no relation, spend a good deal of time affixing fuses made of twine to sticks of dynamite made of colored paper. They will be for sale at the mercantile, along with canned goods, Levi’s jeans and boots.

Delilah Timmsen wants to show off her travel journal. As part of a writing project, students had to choose one of three routes west to California and chronicle their journey.

Students made the covers of the journal look old by blotting them with water-laden tea bags and letting them dry in the sun.

Timmsen finds her journal among the others lined up at the base of the white board at the front of the classroom. She’s aghast. Her name is spelled incorrectly on the cover, just below the black-and-white photo of her looking very serious in period costume.

I, perhaps unhelpfully, say, well, we’ll call you Delia.

Her friend Abby, also probably unhelpfully, jumps in: “That’s my goat’s name.”

But Timmsen has moved on. She’s telling me about her journal.

“I made up a dog and named it after my regular dog but not the same breed,” she says.

This is what fourth grade looks like.

I ask Caleb Rios about his school year. The best parts, the worst parts. What he’s looking forward to this summer, what he thinks about heading into the fifth grade.

When I get to the question about the worst part of fourth grade, he pauses. He can’t think of anything. Until he can.

“The bus. It’s really hot sometimes,” he said.

Then he remembers something else: “Oh, and the food. Sometimes it’s squishy.”

I ask Caleb about his birthday. He is still 9, but his birthday is fast approaching. I tell him I know someone born on the same day. He does, too.

“My aunt’s dog,” he says.

Stefany Hernandez approaches again. She is something like a class ambassador on this day.

She tells me she loves math and reading. She wants to be a marine biologist. She loved visiting the Oakland Museum of California on a field trip with classmates earlier this month.

“There was a cave and a tunnel and a fake bat and we got to go through the tunnel and Oscar was at the end to scare us,” she said.

“Also there was a cool (theater),” she said. “But we didn’t get to go because the seats were wobbly.”

Across the breezeway in Mrs. Pillinini’s class, Moses, or “Mo,” quietly holds center stage.

Moses is a 6-year-old black Labrador in the Canine Companions program. He goes everywhere with Mrs. Pillinini and spends very little time alone. He sits on little feet, leans into legs and he is rubbed constantly.

When the kids sit on gray carpet with a white, wavy pattern, he lies next to them — always near. Some days, Mrs. Pillinini says, her colleagues pop into her room, crouch low to nuzzle and pet Mo, then leave as quickly as they came.

Mrs. Pillinini doesn’t ask questions. She understands.

She sees kids sometimes wordlessly rub Mo’s neck while taking a test. Sometimes Mo seeks kids out.

He seems to know who needs him, she says.

Jessica Patiño-Perez says she looks forward to fifth grade so she can learn more math. Her favorite part of this school year? Learning fractions. The hardest part? Learning fractions.

“My dad helped me, and the ACES program and Mrs. Pillinini helped, too,” she said. “It’s better to struggle than somebody just tell you or you won’t learn anything.”

What does it feel like to finally “get” a math concept? I ask her.

“It’s exciting and happy because the next day I can come to school and say I know fractions,” she answers.

Will White says he did fine with his reading skills during the pandemic when students were learning from home. But math? That was harder for him.

“Zoom. It hurt my eyes. I had eye strain,” he said. “I feel like you have to be in person for math.”

And PE on Zoom? Forget about it.

“We were only doing stretches, but now we can walk around. And I started playing with my friends again,” he said.

What’s he looking forward to this summer?

“I’m seeing my grandpa because he’s not feeling so well and he lives in Ohio. And going to the skate park,” he says.

It’s recess now and the kids line up at the door and are gone — around the corner to the playground.

Oscar Hernandez plays tag with Shaila Camacho, Amalia Chechile and Alianna Leos. When Chechile reaches for Camacho, she gets an empty sleeve. Camacho has been running with her arms folded inside her sweatshirt, her sleeves flapping wildly at her sides.

She clearly believes that was not an official tag. She continues to run.

“I’ve got no hands!” she shrieks.

After recess I ask Xiomara Jimenez about her favorite parts of the year and the hardest parts.

“My teacher being nice to me,” she says. “Like, she gives me an example but if I can’t get it right, they don’t just say, ‘Do it yourself.’”

When I ask about the hardest part, Xiomara tells me about breaking her arm on the playground a couple of months back. Her right arm is still in a black brace.

She starts to cry. She broke her arm on the eve of a trip to see her ailing grandfather in Mexico. The trip had to be canceled. She cries like it was yesterday.

Amid the chaos of building Boomtown, Mrs. Feith is suddenly there, bent down next to Xiomara. It’s as if she intuited the child’s quiet tears.

She reminds Xiomara that her family will see her grandfather this summer. She reminds her that accidents happen. She tells the still crying girl that she will be OK.

They have had this conversation before.

This is what fourth grade looks like.

Oscar Hernandez, the boy who was excited about seeing animals at the FFA fair, said the highlight of his school year was going to the museum in Oakland with all of his classmates.

“Looking at the animals,” he says. “There were no alive ones, just fake ones, like props, but there were fishes.”

He can’t wait for summer.

“I’m looking forward to going to the pool,” he says. “And playing with my friends outside with water balloons.”

Gael Hernandez reminds Oscar about the exhibits in Oakland that showed the “guts” inside animals. They both gross out for a minute, wondering why they looked.

Gael tells me he is going to Disneyland this summer.

“With my whole family,” he says. “I’m excited to go because last time I was too small to go on all the rides.”

Valeria Bautista says this day might be her favorite in all of fourth grade. Making their classroom look like Boomtown, the FFA fair and the parade at night.

She’s over the moon: Bautista gets to ride on a float.

“My friend Jessie, her mom is going to pick me up and we are going to go to the parade,” she says. “We get to throw candy at people.”

I try to clarify. Throw candy at people or throw candy to people?

Bautista laughs. Throw candy to people, she says.

We are laughing as Caleb Rios walks up, holding a brown piece of construction paper with brown dots on it.

“I’m drawing a cookie,” he says.

It will be for sale at the mercantile next week.

This is what fourth grade looks like.

An announcement over the loudspeaker indicates the end of the school day. The shortened schedule means there was no toning of the bell like usual.

Kids in Mrs. Feith and Mrs. Pillinini’s classes dig through their backpacks hanging on a rack in the breezeway, putting things in, taking things out. Bags hit the ground, some are left unzipped.

Summer is almost here. The parade is tonight. Everyone is giddy.

Shaila Camacho and Caleb Rios start a game of patty-cake. As they slap each other’s hands in an intricate rhythm, they sing:

Then everything stops. They are staring at each other, not moving. It’s as still as I have seen either student all day.

Confused, I asked what just happened.

“It’s a staring contest,” Shaila says, barely moving her lips.

Before the last word is out of her mouth, the other kids erupt, “You talked!”

The group breaks up and walks toward the front of the school.

This is what fourth grade looks like.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.

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