The Class

We have settled in with one another now. Middles are nice. The beginning can be a real adjustment and the end is always layered, but mid-semester has familiarity plus the joyous surprises that always come along in a multi-age class. The youngest students are eight years old. (Just ask them. They'll tell you. They are bright.) The oldest is fifty-five years old. He is bright, too, but not as willing to risk as the younger ones. Understandable. We are a core of fifteen students with fifteen satellite students who drift in and out depending upon their life circumstances. The young ones come early. They are often at the Center by three; the class doesn't start until five. The Uno fanatics, especially, like to get a few card games under their belts before class begins. The older ones have other responsibilities and show up some time during the first hour of class. We have covered and continue to review greetings, every day activities, time (using our paper plate clocks with toothpicks to keep the hands in place), directions, descriptions, days of the week and months of the year, colors, the alphabet, basic words, numbers and body parts. Next week we will move to food and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We will also attempt to have some fun with the foreign concept of Halloween. My favorite memory, so far, is that of the youngest student (the son) in the lap of the oldest student (his father), making J/K/L booklets together. It was so sweet and intimate, I felt looking at them was an intrusion.