Another school year, another chance to speak English to small people who may or may not understand any of what I'm saying. (Just kidding... they understand quite well, for the most part, but sometimes they like to pretend they don't, just like they do in their native language.) I'm working a lot with nursery school students again; in fact, this year I only have two elementary school classes a day. This gives me lots of time to work on learning names (with 375 students in nursery school alone, it's no small task!) and figure out who is playing the typical characters in each class: the English genius kid, the high-energy kid, the zombie kid, the escaped-from-the-zoo kid, the kid with the perpetual runny nose, the saintly, quiet kid, and so on.
Happily, the school has paired me with another language assistant, Beth, which made for a awkward couple of weeks during which the kids screamed, ¨Hola, Laura!!!¨ whenever they saw us together and ignored her completely. Eventually they progressed to trying to say her name ("Bahth! Bet!"), which was pretty entertaining, at least for me… my favorite two guesses were "Vac!" (which also happens to be their translation of vaca, cow) and "Pez!", which means fish. But now they have more or less mastered "Beth", and they're making progress on learning the litany of songs and ridiculous dances we lead them in every day. Some of the three-year-olds have even exchanged their puzzled stares for eye contact, responsive movement and repetition of words. Success!
One of the best things that's happened, though, was a conversation Beth had with a five-year-old girl on the playground during the first week of school. Chatting with the new teacher, the girl stopped and observed in Spanish: "You speak in English all the time!" Beth smiled and agreed, ¨Yes, I speak English.¨ The girl thought a little and came to the most logical conclusion: "I bet Laura taught you how, didn't she?" Like they say in the MasterCard commercials: priceless!