Sing and Never Tire

I walked into my trusted hairdresser's shop.  "I am filling in!" a man announced, "I am learning to cut hair!".  It was a parent of one of my students.  A troubled student.  A violent student.  I felt awkward about saying 'no' and sat in the chair.  He shaved my hair off, all around the front and the back, leaving a small, yarmulke-shaped ring of hair on my head, surrounded by a quarter inch shave.   I couldn't believe it.  "Why did you do this?" I screamed/asked.

"I was doing my best" he answered, sarcastically. 

I woke up, feeling weird, and went to work. 

The kids were actually working steadily on the thing I gave them.  "¿Quieren música?" I asked them.  They wanted it.  I put on Daddy Yankee and not Norteño, my música of choice. "Is this rap?" Lashandi asked loudly.  "Sí," I answered "de Puerto Rico".  She looked to another African-American girl in her class.  "We do it better" she said.  I was disappointed.  He is a "we".  Are we really going down this road again, so early? Who is black and who is not.  That you can't be black and Hispanic at the same time.   Stupidity. 

I laid down, just for a minute, after school.  I heard my bird, Momo.  She makes a typewriter noise, over and over again, on the side of her feeder.  She does it when her partners die.  Suddenly, I opened my eyes.  More than two hours had passed.  It was seven o'clock.  Typewriters were in my head.

"You received a big shipment" Alec told me.  "What?" I asked.  "Like, a million boxes.  They are in the front". Oh, those boxes.  The one hundred and forty boxes for the kids to make mini-altars for Day of the Dead? I really needed small boxes, and the cheapest ones I could find were empty cigar boxes.   My front room smells nice, cedary, and is filled with beautiful wooden boxes from Honduras and the Dominican Republic. They are golden, lovely, filled with embellishments and clasps.  I spread them out on the floor, and open and close them. 

"¿Como estás?" I asked Emily, just like I always do.  I generally discard the answer.  She says strange things -  things I don't understand.  She started talking, and for some reason, I watched her carefully.  Little coos and sounds that no one would ever consider language flowed from her mouth.  Her eyes and head moved back and forth, just like any other person's would while talking, except that her eyes looked like glass.  I listened intently, for the first time.  She was thinking and communicating whatever was in her head, just in a way that no one could understand.  But she wanted to tell us something.  I watched her until she was finished, and thanked her.  For the first time, the corners of her mouth moved upwards and her normally expressionless face assumed a look of satisfaction.

A few minutes later, she said her first Spanish word of the year.  Azul.  Azul was her first word. 

It has been a big week.  First grade is making a project to send to a school in Mexico.  I have begun full immersion teaching in grades K-3, and they are getting it.  Fourth and fifth grades are researching historical figures and making cigar box altars that represent the person's life. Emily spoke her first words of Spanish.  I was at school until nearly eight o'clock the other night, explaining my curriculum to happy parents, one of whom started crying and hugged me.  "I need to talk to you" one of my bosses said, entering my room near the end of the day.  "I received an email from a parent that said you are giving the kids candy everyday, which she says goes against our discipline policy and our sustainability plan for the school.  And, it does". 

Of all the things going on in my classroom, I was really surprised to only hear about the random piece of Mexican candy I give whichever kid wins our monthly Bingo game.