Kelly's Typical Day

Kelly has been working at her new job for about a month now…and she always seems to come home with amazing stories. She is one of the first grade teachers at a bilingual school in Lago Sul. She is still struggling a little to gain complete control of her class. It’s always a challenge to start a class in the middle of the school year, especially a Brasilian class, where they are not used to sitting down or staying still. They are not accustomed to her rules or her patterns and routines. But little by little…either she is getting used to them, or they are getting used to her…I’m not totally sure which.
Today when I arrived home from school Lance had prepared an amazing meal. The chicken was perfect, and the rice and beans were exceptional. I think he decided to stop trying to be a Brasilian cook and instead is just a really good cook. Over dinner Kelly decided to tell us about her day, and I decided that it was worth sharing with you. She starts her day with calendar time…they are suppose to be sitting quietly and paying attention to the teacher. Instead they are all completely ignoring her, hitting and punching each other…one of the little boy’s Fernando decided to leave. Apparently he was steeling the other children’s snacks and stuffing them into his backpack. While she was trying to somehow gain control of this situation she was also thinking about the fact that she had to give a spelling test after this. Her plan was to divide the students into two groups. One group would quietly work on coloring a picture that was related to the story she was about to read while she helped the other students with the spelling test. She has about 24 5-6 year old students in the class, which makes it very difficult to give all of them the attention that they need. Unfortunately this plan of quietly coloring during the spelling test didn’t work exactly how she had planned. First of all two of the students decided to not participate at all and were playing on the rug, while others were hitting and shouting. Also, for some reason the school’s spelling tests have the answers on the back. Apparently the students are suppose to self check once they have completed the test…but needless to say, this theory doesn’t always work. She somehow got through her morning and the students were having recess. A really well behaved little Asian boy ran up to her, ‘Miss Kelly, Miss Kelly, Luis is throwing mangos at the chickens!!” Up until this point Kelly was not aware that there were chickens at the school…but sure enough there was a little chicken coop, and Luis had somehow climbed up and into the coop and was indeed throwing mangos right at the chickens and hitting them pretty hard in the head. Fortunately the chickens all survived…but I am sure that are suffering some sort of emotional trauma. All day she was dealing with children hitting and punching each other, and hanging on each other’s clothing. In Portuguese the words for “let go” and “jump” are very similar. Fernando hanging on another boy’s towel. The other boy was yelling, “let go! let go!” Kelly got a hold of Fernando, and even though she is suppose to be speaking just in English said to him in her very stern voice and in Portuguese, “Fernando, when he tells you to jump, you jump!” Of course Fernando didn’t take her seriously, “Ok Miss Kelly, I will jump.” This is probably why she should stick to English. In the afternoon she was having a teachers meeting with the other teachers. They were talking about Fernando and how he seems to be having a lot of problems, just then, Fernando runs into the room, runs into a table, then runs straight into the bathroom. He doesn’t turn on the light, and he doesn’t shut the door…but then they all hear the familiar sound of a little boy going to the bathroom. Kelly can’t help but roll her eyes and shake her head. This is her life. She had glitter play dough for all the children as a reward for good behavior. Fernando didn’t earn his today, but he didn’t like that. He created a huge fuss and her assistant ended up talking to him for a while. Apparently the outcome is that if he doesn’t hit anyone all day tomorrow then he can have glitter glue then. At the end of the day he came up to Kelly with green glitter play dough in his hand. “Miss Kelly, someone left there play dough, here.” “Thanks Fernando, and you will get yours tomorrow, right?” He smiled and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. So maybe this day wasn’t so bad after all.

Also, I should mention that all day long Kelly has been suffering with an annoying case of diarrhea…which, by the way, isn’t merciful just because you are alone teaching a class of screaming six year olds. After dinner she asked Lance if he could go to the store to get her some medicine. The good husband that he is, he got on his bike and headed off to the drug store. It wasn’t until he returned, having successful purchased anti-diarrhea medicine that Kelly wondered, “How did you…? What did you….?” “How did I communicate what I wanted?” Lance finished for her. “yeah?” she wondered. “Well, I said, ‘medicina para estomacho?’ and the lady handed me some ant-acid…I said, ‘no, otra medicina?’ she looked at me weird so I added, ‘banho, mutio banho.’” Kelly and I cracked up and this and Lance in his defense said, “What was I suppose to do? Act it out?” “Or draw a picture?” (Which is apparently what he did to get his tools.) “No, babe,” Kelly said through her laughter, “you did perfect.”