The Sea of Tranquility

The following is a vignette from Thursday afternoon:

The grade 2s from my class were summoned to an extra music block at the end of the day. That leaves me with 10 grade ones to occupy for 40 minutes. I love music, so the interruption to my class schedule is not irritating. And, fortunately for me, at Kitchener Elementary, there are like 8 blocks of music per week...music is all the time!

With all the crazy requirements for curricular instruction these days, teachers have less and less time for reading stories to kids. It maybe happens once a week if they are lucky. So, what better time to have a story than now, I think to myself.

For the first time in ages, the one student in my class who has behavioural issues is actually present and spending time in the classroom like the other students. I ask him if he would like to choose two stories for me to read.

Yes, he would like that job very much. Ziggy comes back to the carpet with a pop-up book that is a little too young for the class, but I read it anyways.

It is a silly little book about animals that crunch and much at lunch time in the zoo. Or something like that, I am not completely sure.

I read the story with lots of funny voices. The monkeys all had British accents. For some reason that's just how monkeys talk in my mind. The kids loved it. They are rolling on the floor laughing.

I turn to the next page and a big, gay-looking elephant pops up. Thank goodness that a little girl in the front row puts up her hand just as I open the page because I am desperately searching in my mind for a way to do this elephant's voice that isn't a really offensive stereotypical gay impression. Nothing comes to me.

Paula very earnestly and matter of factly states the following "Some people shoot elephants and harvest their tusks for ivory."

Hmmm. For a grade 1, this is quite a comment to make during the reading of a pop up story book at carpet time. No voices for the elephant are coming to me, so I take her comment and go with it.

"Yes, that is right, Paula. Some people do kill elephants for their tusks." I say acknowledgingly.

"Nooooo! No they don't! They tranquilize them and so they just fall asleep and then they take the tusks out!" Ziggy, the behavioural child interjects.

"What does trankalize mean?", another student asks.

Ziggy tells the grade 1s about tranquilizing, and how "the animals get hit with darts, and it doesn't kill the animals, just makes them fall asleep. They fall asleep for a while, then they wake up, shake it off, and get up and go".

Pretty succinct, I don't need to add anything there.

The students are thinking about the new word they learned, when I notice that another student who is fascinated with death (which is troubling for a first grader...don't worry, he's involved with the school counsellor), keeps whispering "I'm going to kill an elephant, kill, kill, kill it."

I give him the disapproving teacher eye as I see another kid put his hand up and without being called upon, he says in his long, slow, whiney kid storytelling voice, "Myyy moom saaays, that when I'mmmm baad, that she wishes...that sheee could giiive me horrrse trankalizers".

I am still holding the big, gay elephant pop up book.

"Oh dear, Matthew, I am sure she is just kidding", I sputter as I am laughing almost uncontrollably. The kids don't quite know why this is so funny, but they laugh along with me anyway. That's the great thing about kids, they are always game for a good laugh.

And then, the elephant voice comes to me. I read the pages like the elephant is a Southern Belle. It works out nicely. "I'll have an ahce tea, and an oatmeal cookie" the elephant drawls to the zoo keeper.

The kids are in stitches, and by the end of this ridiculous pop-up book, so am I.

Bartender, a round of horse tranks, please!