A day in the life…you can’t manage rabbits

I arrive at the school freezing my butt off as usual as there is no heat in 9 out of 10 classrooms. But it’s normal here. Everyone wears their coats all day. “only one more month it will be warmer! They chirp. I’ll never get used to it.

So Monday is fun day. It’s the day I’m with 1^st and 2^nd graders. The babies. I never get enough coffee on board before they arrive.

I follow the main teacher who is like Mother goose. She stands outside waiting as the hoards of kids come through the gate running around like rabbits. Music blasts over the loudspeakers as they arrive to welcome them. Did I say blast? yes. My hearing aids are on order. Just kidding, for now. Sometimes the song is in English like “We are the champions,” or it’s some Spanish song I don’t recognize.

The kids eventually line up behind the teacher and they follow Mother Goose into the building to the class.

Then it begins. They spill into the classroom to their desks, pulling their huge backpacks/ roller bags behind them banging into everything as there is so little room between desks. Then they have to take their chairs off each desk. Half of them drop the chairs creating a deafening noise on top of chattering, screaming, and pulling their coats, hats, and gloves off all at the same time. Its mayhem.

I want to just take the chairs off the desks for them before they arrive just to speed things up and lower the volume. But Im not allowed to. “It’s their job”, I’m told. I want earplugs I say.

Somedays I’m Alice in Wonderland; I’m surrounded by rabbits and want to go down the hole. So I wait and watch as they drop the chairs, they scream, they come in happy, sad or crying, and run around talking to their little friends.  So I must wait. And I do.

So Ive learned patience. A lot of it.

Watching, waiting, and wincing at the noise,  I’m often glad I never had kids. I equate it to traveling. You fly off to another country all psyched to start a vacation, but by the end of the trip you think; “it’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Nothing more true was ever said.

So… I wait and once they are primarily in their chairs I walk around. Say Good morning, how are you? Some stare at me wide-eyed, others eager to talk will say good morning back, others holding up their little hands for a high five, others jumping up to hug me, others quick to show me they lost a tooth or tell me it’s their birthday, others oblivious and picking their noses.

The routine is to be at the front and once they are all sitting and the teacher has yelled for silence I can begin.

What day is it today? I ask as they should know the day of the week in English. Often two or three, the same kids, always know, others are already trying to yell out the answers to the next questions I haven’t asked yet. “Cold! January! Cloudy!

I say “raise your hand please” to answer. They don’t. Except those few that know what I’m saying without me miming everything. 

So, while I’ve spent a lot of time watching and waiting for things to be ready for English I watch them. I listen to them. I see what they do, who they talk to, how they dress, and how they interact.

It’s interesting, to say the least. At least until I’m in the older kid’s classes, but that’s another animal.

Nature or nurture.  What makes them what they are and act like they do?

I see them every day and what I see is they are consistent… mostly. The behaviors repeat, the expressions often the same, their clothes, their snacks, the same. The ones that make me glad to help them, the ones that need so much more, are always there.   The ones that are fast learners, and the others that are not. The ones that test the teacher’s patience over and over again.

Every child is different despite some similarities. Considering they are 1st and 2nd graders every day is a new day of course. The only thing that’s the same is their ages, and they’re all in the same room together. It’s always noisy as hell,  and I’m there with them. Watching and waiting.

So I take note. Some kids just stick out. Some almost never do. Ive never learned 90% of their names as a week of seeing 450 kids over 22 classes my brain can’t manage it. Instead, I remember their faces, their behaviors and what they eat and wear. That’s enough.

So I try to put them in categories. Although none are 100% in any one category it’s true. But these are just my limited observations of some of them, the good the bad the ugly, the funny the sad, the ones I think about long after the day is over.

The crier: Unfortunately, there more than one especially the younger ones, but they exist all the way to 6th grade. Like the boy that never likes what he is given and wants something else. Ive seen him cry for a whole class over a sticker until another child traded with him. Compassion? Or frustration?

The screamer: must be louder than them all. Sitting six inches from my face he or she will still yell everything. Between the screams and the fireworks here Im closer to needing a hearing aid than ever.

The perfectionist: the little girl with long brown hair and matching pink socks, shoes and jacket, and a wrinkled brow that can’t finish coloring because the right color isn’t in her pencil case. She will have way too many wrinkles early In life.

The artist: who rolls out an entire palette of colored pencils, crayons and markers to begin coloring. No pencil case for her, she has it all neatly rolled out and she won’t let anyone borrow them either.

The helper: The thin pale-faced boy with glasses,  who runs around helping others do their work instead of his own. Then sits next to me reading my list of names and runs to get each child for me.

The fluent: the tall slender blond girl who acts older than her 8 years. She self-taught herself English watching U-Tube and Netflix. She has no parents and lives with her grandparents.

The angry: The child with the camo shirt that gets mad if he doesn’t go first at every game and storms off or refuses to play.

The hyper: the child that crawls under the teacher’s desk or squirms onto the floor every time the teacher puts him in his chair then peels the laminate off the desk leg. Do we stop him? No, he’s doing something for 10 minutes.

The unkempt: the little boy with black hair that’s too long and falls over his face, his nails black with dirt. I make note to speak to the teacher out of fear he’s not bathing at all at home. I worry about him.

The nose picker: That’s all of them, carry hand sanitizer.

The shy: The smallest child in the room, with thick curly black hair and large black eyes who speaks in a whisper. I strain my back leaning over to hear him.  His answers are always right. I carry Tylenol with me for my back.

The class clown: He runs to the others putting a pencil in his ears, or bouncing an eraser off the wall to get a laugh. He refuses to answer questions correctly choosing to say “it’s a dog” when it’s an apple just to make others laugh.

The smart know-it-all: goes to an outside English academy after school. He tries to correct my “American words” over the Oxford English they are taught here. It doesn’t work.

The smart ass: Refuses to answer questions, then says “I don’t need to learn English you need to learn Spanish.” Good thing I’m not your momma, I think.

The interrupter: the boy with a red checkered shirt who constantly gets up, walks to the teacher and pulls at her shirt to get her attention while she is in the middle of explaining anything.

The toothless: all of them; they run up and hand their bloody tooth to the teacher then the world stops so we can wrap it for them to take home for the tooth fairy. I can’t carry enough hand gel.

The arguer: who thinks what he learned on Netflix and U- Tube is proper English.

The swearer: The wavy brown-haired slender boy who lets “WTF” roll off his tongue like candy at any encounter. The teacher rips em a new asshole in Spanish for swearing while I wait. Ten minutes of class gone.

The healthy and not-so-healthy eater: at snack time I watch the hyper one who always has chocolate cake or candy for a snack. The healthy ones are usually eating fresh fruit and yogurt or a sandwich. Is there a correlation?

The inconsolable: The one who sobs loudly the entire class over everything no matter how minor something is. The teacher stops and tries to console, cajole and send them to the bathroom to wash their face. 15 minutes of class gone.

The fighter: who is poking the other kids, grabs things, and when he can’t be in the front of the line starts pushing everyone out of his way or hits others.

The manipulator: who tries to ask how to answer a test question and then touches my hair saying how beautiful it is then asking again….hoping I’ll give her the answer. I can’t say “quit sucking up” in Spanish or English.

The cheater: constantly looking at others’ papers and gets up to go to the bathroom during tests looking at others’ answers as he walks by. I stand between him and the other kids so he can’t see others.

The silent: no matter the topic often won’t say anything. So I try and engage him one-on-one during his break to get him to speak. Sometimes it works.

The compassionate/caregiver: The chubby boy with soft brown eyes and curly hair is always immediately at another’s side, helping/ sharing his snack or crayons or putting his arm on the other trying to help with whatever has happened.

The controller: The tall-for-her-age slender girl with a long ponytail who won’t sit and wait. She will grab my flashcards and try to be the teacher.

The happy:  the slender petite girl with large eyes and curly locks who always smiles and chuckles over everything. She repeats every English word and when the teacher explains instructions she gleefully spits out “ok!” with a huge grin like she won the lottery.

The talkative: all of them, but some won’t stop no matter what and always miss the teacher’s instructions.

The repeater: the one that tries to repeat everything the teacher says like the formal announcer to the class in case no one heard her or me the first time. I let him.

The monitor: the boy with olive skin, short brown hair with the “do it” Nike t-shirt, often yells “silence please!” to get the class to be quiet. Sometimes he is more successful than the teacher.

The questioner: wants more information about everything and interrupts before during and after.

The loner: this one is not as common as the culture is so social here, but there are a few. I watch them closely to see if they need something.

The organized: everything in its place. Always colors inside the lines and gets upset if something is not right or in its place.

Every day I watch them and every day I wonder.

Nature or nurture?

Rabbits.

You can’t herd them, you can only watch them.

Bring hand sanitizer.

Somewhere in Spain.