The kids were particularly inattentive today- the skinhead was even loonier than ever, and though I've considered that he has Turrett's or something, I believe deep-down that he is just a serious attention-seeker because once he is taken away from the other kids, he transforms into a normal human being with a rather serious face. But then again, I think it is a fine line between normal and loony. Oh, my loony loony skinhead child! I don't know what I would do without kids like Ali.
Ali is one of the few kids who don't hang all over me and demand constant attention and gestures of affection like hugs and exaggerated smiles. He just does his work with care and watches me attentively when I'm teaching, takes his sticker when it is given to him, but never whines for one when a sticker doesn't come his way. For a while, I could not even tell if he enjoyed school because he has such a serious, introverted demeanor, but one day his father came to pick him up, and told me how he and his cousin talk incessantly about school at home.
Now I notice the subtlest gestures from little Ali that let me know in his own un-showy way that he's not wholly indifferent- the nearly imperceptible smile whenever he accepts a prize from me, the care with which he writes his letters and numbers, the willingness to take my hand when offered, the interest he shows when I showed him a coloring book page that I'd found lying on the ground. He has a way of sulking that frightened me the first time I witnessed it- his whole face turns as dark as a thundercloud, and black pupils glare up from under his thick eyebrows like he's about to unleash a hurricane and murder someone. But overall, he's the student any teacher would dream of having- requiring as little attention as possible, and yet getting a lot in return.
Mina's another one that has grown on me quite a bit since the beginning. She's the one with the coquettish head of blonde locks that she would sometimes top with a lurid hot-pink animal-shaped cap, which clashes horribly with the baby-sized fuck-me boots she wears every day to school. She was a latecomer and so had a horrible time adjusting, until one day I nearly blew her curly locks away with the force of my scolding after she hit or pinched a classmate for the millionth time. Sure, I made a little kid cry that day, but from that day forth, she turned over a new leaf- behavior-wise anyway. She was still a shit reader and consistently scored zeroes on her exams.
Or so I thought! Today, though, Mina shocked me when I gave her yet another reading assessment. As she took her seat on the kiddie chair next to me, I studied her doll-like appearance- her huge almond-shaped eyes shaded by long blonde lashes, her pouty little mouth, and the mass of curly hair which had recently been cropped short so that they hung and sprung wildly about her ears and neck. Suddenly, I was charmed by this little girl who, with her new hairdo, resembled an adorable little hobbit-child, and who had blossomed into such a pleasant human being in the last few months.
When she started sounding out the words, I was even more charmed by the way she tilted her head her head up at me and sprang forward each time she sounded out a letter, her mouth opening and closing on the sound. She reminded me of a baby bird grabbing for a worm from its mother's beak. But the surprise came when I realized that once she painstakingly discerned the individual letters, she could actually string them together and read the entire word. Wow, no more zeros for my little Hobbit-Child!
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