I’ve got two bits for you today. The first is
a tid-bit on one of my students, and the second a snap-shot of the everyday. I
asked my father for advice on what he thought people wanted to read back home
and these ideas are from those suggestions. I’m going to try to do something
similar once a month; one thing about a student, one thing about the everyday.
***
Word-Warriors.
One of my children has a habit of picking up
things I never meant to teach her, words and phrases I never deliberately endeavoured
to have the students learn. She’ll say them at odd moments, not all the time,
and I find myself constantly surprised by it. “What are you doing?” she’ll say,
a phrase I think I’ve only ever used as a quick jolt for when they’re being
silly or naughty. Their attention will come back to me with a guilty giggle or
smile, and mine turns to her pleasantly shocked yet again. I don’t think I’m
ever doing anything particularly interesting
when she asks, but she still seems to delight in ambushing me with this
unexpected English phrase.
“What is this?” is another one. I use it as a
prompt with flashcards, things in the books we read or what I’ve written on the
board. She seems to use it when she doesn’t understand something; it used to
just be “Teacher! I don’t know!” or a little whine of utter befuddlement, but now
these can find themselves swapped out for this less dramatic call for help. She
does use it for other things as well. If I’m showing them a new picture or a
video, if I have something on me she’s curious about then this question is guaranteed
to pop up.
She’s always so happy about it, so insistent
when she asks me these things. What I find most remarkable about it is that she
has the lowest aptitude for English out of my students; she’s the one who needs
the most help and gets the most wrong. Even considering my new student; he can’t
yet say many of the words we learn
but he’s catching up quickly, learning to associate the sounds I say with
pictures and gestures and sometimes outpacing the others.
Yet she’s the one most likely to fling out
these phrases, determinedly hurling an unlooked-for volley against the bulwark of
this great incomprehensible language.
***
The Usual
for Lunch.
Three girls are sitting eating their chicken
and rice, two from first grade and one not. I sit with them, and ask them the
usual questions; do you like the food, how is your day, what colour are you on,
how are you? The answers don’t usual vary that much (Today they are ‘Altogether
green!’ according to my girl with the talent of word-ambush, something she did
not say when I first knew her and I think she picked up from the kids in third and fourth grade)
and lunch itself is often quite a reliably constant affair. One of my girls
will eat everything that is put on her plate and go back for seconds, while my guerrilla
word-warrior always finds something suspicious to look at and see if she can foist
off onto someone else’s plate. Today the suspect edible is sliced cucumber,
which she shows to me obviously doubtful of its status as a suitable object to accompany
her meal.
The girl not in first grade is in red room
today, our version of detention, for forgetting her homework and my
girl-who-eats-everything seems determined to talk about it. I ask the girl if
she didn’t understand the homework, and find that she certainly doesn’t
understand my question. My first graders try to translate. ‘Bor gwa,’ they
begin (‘She says,’), going back and forth between them with cries of ‘Mai chai!’
(No!) when the other apparently gets it wrong. As another girl comes to sit
with me I give up, make them give up (Worried that all this talk of red room
might upset the third girl) and soon my unfussy-eater has pulled out two ‘My
Little Ponies’. “I have, big.” says the new girl, gesturing the increased size
of her own pony, and I ask my girl what her ponies are called. She looks
considering, and slightly confused, as if someone told her once what they were
but she’s forgotten.
She decides, to my delight, to make some up.
“Butterfly!” she proclaims as she holds the
blue pony up to me. I’m sure those little pictures on their bums are meant to
indicate their names and this one appears to have muffins or some such, but I
decide to let it slide. Explaining would be too confusing, and ‘Butterfly’
sounds much better than ‘Cake’.
The pink one gets a similar moniker, but I
mess things up by suggesting the name ‘Potato’. We learnt that word not long
ago, and I’d hoped to garner amused indignation when she realised I wanted to
name her toy after an ugly brown vegetable. Instead she continues smiling, says
‘Potato’ to herself, and that seems to be that. ‘Butterfly’ and ‘Potato’. Thus
are they named.
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