It's that time of year again when the senior kindergarten classes are preparing for their graduation ceremony. That means preparing little demonstrations of their skills and the things they have learned in kindergarten, which will hopefully entice their parents to continue sending their remaining children to the school and keep the business of education turning over.

For me it is a time of stress, getting the classes to learn the lines of a long poem that the three senior classes will present in dramatic version together, convincing some of the other teachers that it not necessary for the children to wear costumes, which I feel will detract from the dramatic impact of the poem, and getting nearly 50 children to perform as a cohesive unit. Each of the classes has its own personality and personalities.

Rabbit Class is the most confident of the three, stemming perhaps from their generally higher English proficiency than the other two classes. The confidence of this class is epitomized by Kevin (standing far left) who always asks "Why?", "What?", and "When?", when he is paying attention, by Loren (standing 8th from left) who is not afraid to speak out whenever and to whomever he wants, by Steven (standing next to Loren) who shares Loren's enthusiasm for self-expression, and by Lulu (sitting 2nd from left) who knows she knows better than everyone else. But confidence also stems from being quietly in control, like Shelly (standing 3rd from left) and Charlie (standing 7th from left), the mother and father of this group. And then there are the simply quietly confident - Happy (standing 6th from left), Jon (standing far right), Mindy (sitting 3rd from left) and Angela (sitting 4th from left). And the confidently bizarre, lost in their own worlds of self-assuredness, like Ken (standing 2nd from right) and Sherry (sitting third from right).

Doraemon Class is without doubt the class most clearly divided by attention span and is every teacher's nightmare. Sam (hiding away standing far left) who knows more than he lets on, Jenny (standing 4th from left) who seemed a lost cause at the beginning of the year, Rita (standing 5th from left) who is the lady of the class, Jack (standing 6th from left) who reads louder than the rest of the class put together, Ben (standing 2nd from right) who always opened the door for me with a huge smile, Amy, Janice and Maggie (sitting 1st, 2nd and 3rd from left) who form the small girls club, redeem this class and speak out loud enough to cover for the rest. While this group offers solace, some of the remaining students are the more interesting characters. Angel (standing 3rd from left) spent much of her time watching and eavesdropping on others so that she could tell me tales about them; Jim (standing far right) who went through the whole year without saying or understanding a word; John (sitting 3rd from right) who smiled when he didn't know an answer; Stanley (sitting 2nd from right) whose refrain whenever I asked if he was finished was "Wo shie tzwor le" (I wrote wrong); and Gus (sitting far right) who, like his brother who I taught last year, has the attention span of an overripe carrot.

QOO Class is the gentlest of the three classes. The children vary in ability from Gary (standing 5th from the left) who loves learning and speaking out, Hank (sitting far right) who quietly corrects Gary when he makes a mistake, and Tracy (sitting 4th from left) who is deadly serious, to John (standing far left) who should be a class on his own, Judy (standing 3rd from right) who doesn't have a clue but believes she does, Annie (sitting far left) who writes every other word from the board and for the whole year I never had the heart to correct, and Jason (sitting 4th from right) who won't shut up even when unconscious.

And then there's me, who put the fear of God in them and occasionally taught them something.

12 August 2003

Dion Marc Delport

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