Cindy Aitken, a former Bayside Middle teacher, returned to her old classroom at the end of the year as Miss Elizabeth of England. In the role of an early English settler, she led Ellen Ruben’s sixth-grade social studies students in songs and told them about life in the original 13 colonies as well as on the ships that brought the settlers. She appeared astonished that the students today did not wash their clothes in the river, didn’t use a washboard or rock to loosen dirt and didn’t make soap from animal fat. Mowing grass that she would have used to weave baskets was also a surprising difference in life today compared to the 1700s.