So my lovely eldest-sister,
Marianne, left me here to teach her preschool class. No problemo preschoolers are my domain and teaching is my game… Even teaching
AND controlling the problem children, two in particular, let’s call the naughtiest
Danny and the one with, undiagnosed, autism Henry. (Man, I have a soft spot for
poor Henry. I wish this school would acknowledge his need and assign him an aid)
….Anyway, before Mari left she quietly mentioned and ever so discreetly snuck in that I would have to teach a values and
ethics class to…wait for it…100 preschoolers. Yay! (Seriously,
does no one care that I have a heart condition??...Rude.) Whatever, I pulled up
my big girl panties and I got a lesson together. My lesson was about sharing your
things and loving your neighbor as you would love yourself.
When the day came I told my (problem) class that they
could help out by holding up the pages to our story about sharing and caring. (Oh,
they were so excited and their little smiles melted my heart.) After the school
did their opening (whatever it was…who knows; it was all in Spanish and said VERY quickly) I walked my class up to
the front of the “auditorium” (seriously, you should see this thing. Bah!) and I
lined them up in sequential order. I started my lesson and I walked down the
line and read each child’s page as I got to them… (Brace yourself for the next paragraph.)
I had just gotten
to the part about sharing your things and loving your neighbor as yourself, when Danny, (bless his little
heart) started running around like a lunatic. He ran right over to Henry and grabbed him by the scruff of
his neck. (Let’s just say that he is very lucky I love Jesus…poor Henry did
nothing to provoke him AND he was doing so well in front of everyone) I grabbed
Danny right out of the air and mid-giggle. Then, I ever so slowly dropped down
to his eye level and I said to him (with a fake smile plastered on my face) in
a voice (only he could here) and in Spanish (I don’t whole heartedly know what it meant or even where it came from) something that stopped him in his tracks
and made him look like he had just seen a ghost… Still to this second I am not
100% sure what it was but I do know that it was said through my teeth, very slowly, and with a look my family would call the “Grandma look”.
(A serious look of shame and disappointment)
A gist of the words that came out of my mouth (whatever they were) were something along the lines of this…(excuse the broken and
very VERY misspelled Spanish. Here goes nothing)... Escuchame a hora miso! Tiene mal nota?! No? no? Que lastima. Porque tiene mal
nota y su nariz es in la esquina por el todo dÃa. Entiende?? Y usted completara
su terea en la esquina. No, más. Y Silencio….Roughly
translates into….Listen to me, right now. Do you want a bad note?! No? no? What
a pitty. Because you have a bad note and your nose is in the corner, all day. Do
you understand?! You will complete your school work in the corner. ..No more and Be
quiet.
That awkward moment when you are teaching a class, in front
of 100 students (and some teachers), on love and sharing and your student loses
his little mind (and the sense that God gave him) and he does the opposite and assaults
one of his classmate.
Yeah…so that happened.
