As Oakdale teacher Christine Barlow took a certain special visitor around her school, students made various guesses about the older man’s identity. Was he the governor? President? Her husband?

In the first short play contained within “Three Farces and a Funeral,” a hypochondriac goes to propose to his neighbor, gets in a terrific property dispute with his belle-to-be and her father, and declares that he is not merely feeling badly, but dying.

Riverdale Parent Teacher Organization will hold its first cook-off at the Brickhouse Café, at 107 Bridge St., on Tuesday, Nov. 10. The celebrity chefs will be Principal Doris Claypool and School Committee member Kevin Coughlin vs. Vinny Marino and staff. There are two seating times scheduled: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and 8 to 10 p.m. Meals include a salad, entrée and a glass of wine. Tickets are $35 a person. Make checks payable to Riverdale PTO.   

Dedham resident Elizabeth Conway, a member of the College of the Holy Cross class of 2010, has been selected by the College’s Center for Interdisciplinary and Special Studies as the 2009 spring semester’s Maurizio Vannicelli Washington Semester Away program award. She will present her thesis, “American Policy Options and the Iranian Nuclear Crisis,” on Thursday, Nov.5 at 4 p.m. in the Rehm Library.

How many pockets are you wearing on your clothes? The question is basic, but it leads to a versatile math lesson in Kerri Bryant’s second-grade Greenlodge School classroom last Tuesday morning.

Seen up close, the physical defects of the 88-year-old Avery School are hard to miss. Showing visitors a basement classroom in her school, Principal Clare Sullivan puts her hand on a dark green wall – and a bit of brick and mortar falls off.

Sarah Martin is just beginning to read the children’s book “Tess’s Tree,” to a half-dozen first-graders, sitting on the classroom’s light brown rug, when Victor Dorsinville notices something about the title on the cover.

On a recent morning, the students in Ruth Dorsey’s fifth-grade homeroom class at the Oakdale Elementary School are performing indirect observations – a series of tests on a given box, and then, based on their observations, hypothesizing what is inside. They are not always correct, but it’s the gathering of evidence that really matters, Dorsey says.

Planet Fitness is teaming up with the Dedham public schools to offer a “wellness scholarship” that will be open to four Dedham High students, one from each grade.

Dedham Middle School’s new principal Debra Gately talks with the Dedham Transcript about the job and her vision for the school.