Catboy - Eric Walters [10]
I knew he was a teacher and trying to be a good role model for us. But I could also tell Mr. Spence simply loved to read. Then again, who didn’t?
My eyes strayed up to the big posters on the bulletin board behind his desk that displayed the words for Hello in fifteen different languages, the same fifteen languages spoken by the kids in our class. Some were easy for me to make out, but others were written with letters or symbols that were like little pictures or strange marks. I knew one was Korean and another Chinese— no, not Chinese—Mandarin or Cantonese. There was also Cambodian, Arabic and Russian.
I tried to imagine how hard it would have been for those kids to come to this country and not speak or read English. It would have been so hard. Amazingly, they all seemed to pick it up fast. There was a kid in our class who had been in the country for less than a year, and he read almost as well as I did.
I took French, so I understood a little bit about learning a different language. But there were words that were the same in French as in English. Not just the letters of the alphabet, but words that we had borrowed from each other like croissant, auto, café and pizza. No, pizza was Italian.
Looking up at the words on the posters—those squiggles and symbols and little drawings—I had no idea whatsoever what some meant. It really would have been hard for kids who came from places that didn’t share the same alphabet as we used.
“Taylor,” Mr. Spence said.
I’d been so lost in thought, I hadn’t noticed him coming over to my desk.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s time for silent reading, not silent staring into space.”
“I was reading,” I said. “I was reading the posters on the wall. I was trying to figure out which languages are which.”
He looked up at the posters. “That’s right. We didn’t say what languages they are. It should be written below. We need to fix that.” He walked to the front of the class. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Taylor has pointed out something we need to correct.” He gestured to the posters. “We have proudly displayed the languages of our class, but we have failed to proudly write which languages they are. Let’s take them down, one by one, and correct that.”
The first poster he pulled down was a word I was pretty sure I knew. It was in Spanish. We had kids from two different countries in South America, Bolivia and Chile. I remembered that almost all of South America spoke Spanish, not Bolivian or Chilean. Brazil was one of the exceptions, where they spoke Portuguese.
“That one is mine and Agnes’s,” Salvador said. “That is Spanish.”
I put up my hand.
“Yes, Taylor.”
“Could people also say the word again so we can hear it?”
“Again, a good suggestion. You are full of good ideas today,” Mr. Spence said.
Hearing him say that made me feel happy and kind of proud.
“Go ahead, Salvador and Agnes,” Mr. Spence said.
“Hola,” the two of them said together.
“Very good. Can you both say it once more, and then I’d like everybody to repeat it back to them,” Mr. Spence said.
When we all repeated the word back to them together, they smiled. It was as if we’d given them something, a gift, and maybe we had.
“I’m going to write Spanish underneath,” Mr. Spence said, “but I’m also going to write your two countries as well.”
We went poster by poster, language by language, with kids saying their native hello and the rest of us repeating it. Some were harder for me to say than others. The words or letters just wouldn’t form easily in my mouth. If that’s how it was for me, was it the same for someone learning to speak English?
Each time the class answered back, it seemed to make the person happy. Even kids who were shy smiled.
“And whose is this one?” Mr. Spence asked.
“That’s ours,” both Jaime and Dylan said.
I looked over at Simon, and he mouthed Mandarin to me.
“And that is Mandarin,” Mr. Spence said. “It is one of the two major languages