Chap Stick and magnets
In 2nd grade, a glue stick doubles as Chap Stick. One of my naughtier students in Class B, Lily, was sitting right in front of me last week and during the reading of the lyrics to “We Can Play the Big Bass Drum” she turned to Harry, who sits behind her, and smeared glue from her industrial sized glue stick all over her lips. I wanted to see where she was going with this caper so I continued watching and waited. Harry was mesmerized. Lily smacked her lips together a few times and then took a purple piece of mouth-shaped paper from her desk and stuck it squarely on her closed lips. She had made the purple mouth for just such an occasion. Although I was highly amused, I had to act like the teacher I am and I walked up to her (she wasn’t more than two paces from me). Either she really didn’t know I was looking or she feigned ignorance – but she acted surprised when I took the glue stick from her hand and stared at her purple mouth with a look of disappointment on my face. (How good an actress I must be becoming!)
At this point, Julia noticed the purple mouth and asked Lily to remove it. Thinking she had just licked her lips and stuck the paper to her mouth, Julia expected this to be an easy command. As soon as Lily tried to take the mouth off, bits of purple gooey paper stuck to her lips and she started peeling them frantically. The children sitting around her were thoroughly engrossed in the paper bits removal so Julia asked her to retire to the back of the room to clean her lips.
These kinds of things seem to happen all of the time everyday. I’m trying very hard to remember 1st and 2nd grade but am sad to admit that I don’t remember antics like these from when I was little. I’m sure they occurred, I just didn’t hide them in my memory bank for safe keeping and would that I had. Every time one of my students acts like this, I want to hug them, but instead, I have to sternly tisk-tisk their behavior while on the inside I’m shouting, “You’re so darn CUTE!”
Today in Class 2A, I was alone because Julia is preparing for a very important show lesson. She’s giving it tomorrow to some very official woman from Wuchang who will return to her office with her notes and help her department rate the school’s English program among all of the school’s in the Wuchang district. Julia told me today that when she was asked to perform for the woman, she didn’t think much of it, but then the principal and vice-principal worked everyone into a nervous froth on Friday so now Julia’s trying to take it seriously.
Generally speaking, Class 2A is much more behaved than Class 2B, but recently they’ve been a little out of control. My lesson was mostly a review today so I wasn’t worried about being alone. We started the class off by singing “We Can Play the Big Bass Drum” and then I drilled the students on all of the words they’ve learned in Unit 3. I wrote countable and uncountable on the board and asked the students to define the two words. (I asked Julia what they were in Chinese so that when the students defined them, I’d know if they were correct or not). Then we divided the new food words up between countable and uncountable nouns. I had brought several magnets so that I could stick the uncountable nouns up on the board. During the October holiday, I bought five very large circular blue magnets. I’d say the diameter of each is about 2 inches.
Before I go any further, I should tell you that magnets hold a special magic for 1st and 2nd graders – in China at least. They’re obsessed with them. Magnets and stickers. I’m not sure what’s behind this obsession and don’t know if I’ll ever get to the bottom of it…I’m thinking Freud would have had a field day interpreting this one. Each classroom usually has five or seven or eight colorful circular magnets already on the board when I arrive. If I’m going to be posting a lot of teaching aides, I bring my own to supplement this collection. I should mention that my large blue magnets are also made of transparent plastic whereas the ones usually in the classroom are of opaque plastic and have a diameter of about ¾ of an inch. Personally, I prefer them to my own.
So after the students told me that sugar is an uncountable noun, I used one of my big blue magnets to stick the word on the board. As soon as I’d used the big magnet, a hushed excitement filled the room. I heard the children saying, “It’s a big one!” in Chinese. Every time I added a big magnet to the board (with an uncountable noun card) the children would get more and more excited. After I’d used up the five big magnets and used a little one next, a disappointed, “Awwww….” accompanied its placement on the board. I was completely enamored with my children at that moment. I still have no idea why they reacted as they did, but believe me; I’m bringing those magnets to class from here on out. Or maybe I should save them for game days.
I feel like I’ve been given a unique opportunity. I’ve been given the chance to remember what it’s like to be a kid again. I’ve got a front row seat to the thoughts, movements, processes and actions of little people. It is marvelous and I plan to record as much of it as I can. I figure this is what being a parent feels like only times ten thousand.
