The kids are alright

The school children were all disarmingly sweet today, mellowed by the four day Easter weekend perhaps. It’s like being with a toddler, when your world shrinks down to knee height but becomes innately fascinating – they are so easily amused that I felt I was spending most of the day just laughing, in rooms full of laughing children.

One class laughed because the paper people we were sticking in the house that I’d drawn on the board were smaller than the flowers in the garden, small enough to slip under the bathtub and too small to climb onto the chairs. Another class, the class from hell in fact, good-naturedly mimicked my accent and became hysterical when Louis managed to make his pen explode by chewing it and had to run out of the room, spitting out ink. The class for kids with learning disabilities sang the rainbow song ten times with improvised dance moves and told me they loved it, and we all laughed along with Mathieu, who for unknown reasons minced about in a hilariously camp manner. My last class of the day didn’t laugh exactly, but we played animal charades and they behaved beautifully, drew fanciful zoos full of snails and singing birds, and then whined in disappointment when I said I had to go.

Even on exhausting days when they all act up there is usually one moment of brightness, but today I loved teaching, and felt so sad that I only have two weeks left with these kids.