Crazy Hat Day

Another mishmash in the day in the life of the ESOL teacher. Blink, and you miss a whole lot.

It was Crazy Hat Day at school, and cynic that I am, I approach these "Days" with a fair amount of derision. Yesterday, another teacher told me how her opinion of the "days" has changed as she's seen how they help kids feel like they belong at school and how important that is for kids. My kids all wanted to know why I wasn't wearing a crazy hat--they all were. Seeing as how my kids are the ones who have the hardest time fitting in, their questions proved my colleague's point. I guess I need to start shopping for, or crafting, a crazy hat.

Decked out in their crazy hats, at the morning assembly, a first grade class did an African dance from Ghana, taught by one of the students, who is from Ghana, and her father, a traditional drummer; her little brother played the bell. Her knees moved in a way that mine never will; the other kids did their best to keep up, mostly succeeding. The teachers, propped against the gym walls, bobbed to the beat. I dare say we all would've joined them if we could've. Many kids danced their way out of the gym, most appropriately.

I danced my way into a 5th grade social studies class where the teacher was discussing an article in TFK, Time For Kids, published by the same publisher of the Time magazine we all know and might love, or might not, depending on our political leanings. In his comments he mentioned China, the world's most populous country. My Chinese student, who is a little bit shy and a lot self-conscious, sunk a bit in her seat. "Why does he have to talk about China?" she asked. "It makes me want to sink. Everybody looks at me." I think she overestimates her classmates' attention to their teacher, and maybe their attention to herself--or maybe not. As the class filed down to the library, I started a conversation between student and teacher. She repeated to him what she'd told me. "I don't want you to talk about China," she began. "I'm not sure I can do that," he replied, "China is a very important country." I lost their conversation as they continued down the hall to the library. A conundrum, indeed. She doesn't want to be singled out for where she's from; he can't omit mentioning the world's most populated country, the country that holds most of our foreign debt, the country whose energy needs, if realized, will change the economic and political landscape of our world.

Next, a fourth grade language arts class: similes and metaphors. My student, new to the U.S. this year and as bright as can be, understands "I like puppies" and "puppies are playful." She also knows the word "metaphor" in her native language. So this will be easy, right? "I am like a puppy because I am playful." Maybe because I was coughing like a seal, maybe because it was an hour before vacation: she looked at me like I had two heads as I struggled with flashcards, other students' examples, my own examples. After twenty minutes of attempts, during which she managed some understanding (probably despite me) we moved onto the drawing portion of the assignment, which clarified her understanding as quickly as an instant message. Once again I was reminded that a picture is, always, worth a thousand words. She quickly sketched two images that demonstrated her more than partial understanding of the concept, and I was left, once again, to reflect on my teaching practice.

On to discover via our bilingual home-school liaison that a recently-secured job for one of our refugee parents, at a local compost company, poses a problem for this unforeseen reason: Religiously and/or culturally, it is forbidden for this man to step on food. Food is precious, priceless, holy, not to be stepped on with dirty feet. Compost is food. He needs a job. He needs to follow the strictures of his religion and his culture. Another conundrum.

Will the cynical teacher wear a crazy hat and like it? Will the school be taken with African dancing, leading teachers and students alike to dance through the halls? Will the word "China" be stricken from classroom conversation, or lose its power to increase self-consciousness? Will our parent's dilemma be resolved in a mutually agreeable way? Don't blink--you'll miss it!

just think about it

We had a guest author at school this week, Jan Reynolds. A former National Geographic photographer, she showed an hour's worth of slides of indigenous cultures from every continent. "Anything I have done, you can do," she began her presentation, "anything you want to do, you can do." In the dark, it was hard to gauge the kids' reactions; my own was tears, and I was grateful for the darkness. Lately, I've been feeling like I haven't done so much of what I could've done. I remind myself it's never too late to be what you might have been, as the images changed from the Himalayas to the Sahara to the Amazon basin.

After the slides, she said it again: Anything you want to do, you can. I relay this to my 9-year-old Turkish student. "How?" she wanted to know. What is the path from being a political refugee, living on cash assistance while your professional parents are barely able to get service jobs, to climbing the Himalayas , crossing the Sahara on a camel, visiting the Amazon rainforest? Our American students are raised with the assumption that they can "just do it." Does it require affluence and disposable income? Or just the freedom to dream that comes with knowing where next week's meals are coming from?

"Just think about it," Reynolds urged her young audience. The cultures she photographed for her book series, just 12 years ago, don't exist in that same form now, due to globalization--just think about it. The Ethiopian women ask the men to marry them and the men take their wives' names--just think about it. A half-degree temperature increase changed grasslands into the Sahara--just think about what a few degrees of global warming might do to our planet.

Just think about it--what if this slogan were as ubiquitous as the other? What if instead of doing it--consuming, wasting, producing, exploiting--we just thought about it? Thought about the impact of our cars' need for non-renewable fuels. Thought about what's the same about our various religions, instead of different. Thought about the difference between naming the world's highest mountain "Mother Goddess of the Earth" instead of after the first white man with enough colonial clout to get the European maps changed.

Anything you want to do, you can do. Just think about it.