Herding Pirnahas

In another homage to the Friday we are all facing, I present to you some highlights from my last couple of weeks.

Here I am, helping monitor kids on their way to PE, high fiving them as they walk by.  First kid, great, second kid, cool, third kid, awesome, fourth kid. . . - now I have a dripping wet hand.  A la bidet drinker, I don’t really want to know, I just want to go bathe in hand sanitizer. 

I was feeling that fleeting moment of teacher success as one of my kindest students, and strongest writers, was taking my lesson on adding a surprise ending to pattern books to heart and writing a new last page furiously.  He was switching from multiple pages of (_______) is my friend to finish with a flourish by breaking the pattern. Interestingly, the gem of a last page he came up with after listing multiple friends was I don’t like Carol.  “So buddy,” I ask, “tell me about your ending.”  “Well,” he says, “all of the people on these first pages are my friends, and I don’t like Carol”.   Well, ok, I did ask.

Ah, there’s nothing like finding the lovely little girl, who just might have an enormous lice problem, joyfully sharing her multiple headbands with all the other girls at recess.  

A cool part of our school is that we have K3 and K4 classes, which means my five year olds feel mature, occasionally, in comparison to these 3 and 4 year olds.  It also means I have a snowball’s chance in hell of understanding the littlest of littles who are Brazilian.  Even though my Portuguese is toddler level in vocabulary and grammar, it is not in the same linguistic galaxy as three year olds.  You know how cute and funny kids sound, with their silly lisps, and missing sounds in words, and the goofy way they pronounce things.  Well, that’s cute in your native language, but verbal hieroglyphics to me in Portuguese.  Try as I might, conversations with Brazilian three year olds are always hysterical, and generally unproductive.  Luckily, it goes both ways with our Brazilian staff listening to three year old English.  Yesterday, one of the Brazilian staff was wandering around the K3 classroom with this little three year old boy who is crying unconsolably and looking desperately for his “clock”.  The teacher is pointing at clocks and watches and getting absolutely nowhere.  She asks him to describe his “clock” and he says “small and red”.  Again, absolutely no help, and things are not getting any better, for either of them.  Moments later, in walks another K3 student and the crying immediately stops.  Meet Clark, the normally sized for a three year old, redheaded “clock”.

There is this cute little girl in my class from the middle east who is absolutely fearless in her use of English.  If she can think it, she will say it.  She tells me on a regular basis that even though I have the strength to open her toothbrush case (which is trickier than it sounds), I have no muscles.  Well, not in those exact words, she expresses that entire thought by giggling and saying, “You don’t have any muscles.  I can’t see them.”  And although I lobby every time for some credit for actually having used my non-existent muscles in opening her case, she just laughs harder and repeats, “you don’t have any muscles!”  Today, as a sort of aperitif to our normal lunchtime banter, she followed up an in depth inspection of my head (more common than you think) by informing me that, “you have a beard in your ear.”  I might use the term “stray hair or two” but regardless, it looks like I need to talk with Edward Scissorhands at the barber shop and let him know he missed a few stragglers.  Clearly my grooming is not up to Brazilian standards.

And I finish with my favorite, a conversation I got to watch and enjoy between two five year olds and the Principal.

Principal to Boy 1:  So, did you hit him?

Boy 1: Yes, but I don’t do that anymore.

Principal: Ok, when was the last time you hit him?

Boy 1: Yesterday! (in a tone that clearly said, “didn’t you hear me when I said I don’t do it anymore”)

Principal: (silence)

Point to Boy 1

Principal to Boy 2: So, did you hit him?

Boy 2: Yes, but he should have dodged it.

Principal: (stunned silence)

Point to Boy 2

Principal: Zero 

Five Year Olds: Two

Game, set, match

Thanks for reading and bjs para todos!