Why you should always return back to work

I returned to work this past week and it was great!  I forgot how much I love my job.  

Here are three highlights of why:

Highlight 1 – We played Simon Says outside with third grade.  “Simon Says touch your knee” (touched their knee), “Simon says touch your socks” (they touch their socks), “Simon Says touch your back” (Literally the entire class drops to all fours and starts mooing…. Unfortunately they confused vaca (cow) for espalda (back).  Hannah, a short-term volunteer and I laughed so hard that we had to pause the class.

Highlight 2 – This past week, we learned parts of clothing… I taught the kids a song to the tune of head, shoulders, knees, and toes but the words were:

Hat, Shirt, and Pants and Shoes (Pants and Shoes)

Hat, Shirt, and Pants and Shoes (Pants and Shoes)

Jacket and Shorts and Socks and Skirt

Hat, Shirt, and Pants and Shoes (Pants and Shoes)

This was great… except the kids have problems with their English letters, so the song became…

Hat, Shit and Pants and Shoes (Pants and Shoes)

Hat, Shit and Pants and Shoes (Pants and Shoes)

Jacket and Shit and Sex and Shit

Hat, Shit and Pants and Shoes (Pants and Shoes)

Yep… singing that 8 times a day…     

Highlight 3 – My co-teachers. 

Evidently, the whole staff thought I was going to die, or something like that.  So they got so excited when I got back that they decided to have a party!  So, Friday night, to celebrate “Dia del/la Maestro/a”  and “Teacher Katy is back!”, we had dinner and then a karaoke party.

I made shirts for me, and our director’s daughter, the high school math teacher, who got her appendix out four days after me (and then, incidentally, the first lady got her’s out two days after that… it kinda hurt her illegalcampaign for president… woops).   They said… “Los Doctores Se Robaron… Mi Apendice! – Pero estoy bien ahora” (The doctors stole my appendix but I am fine now) and then a dot where our appendix used to be that says, “estuvo aqui” (It was here).   We had fun. 

Then, karaoke… I’m speechless.  Evidently, there’s a free program where you can get karaoke songs and words, so we hooked it into the school sound system and made a party out of it.   Malea, Kyra, and I did some “Wannabe” from Spice Girls, every person there (including the director (3 times), his wife, and assistant director) did other songs in Spanish including one that had a strange Mexican laugh that our third grade teacher can do all too well (scary!), and then the four daughters of our director and I ended the night with Cheeno and Nacho’s “Nina Bonita” – one of the 6 songs that seems to be on the radio each and every day.  

It was a good night. 

I hope I can find a community like this to play with in the States when I get back.