Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Wrestling with Spanish

The French have a wide reputation for being rude to people who do not speak their language perfectly. If you did not have the forethought to be born French, you probably speak the language imperfectly, perhaps to a stunning degree.

The Spanish, on the other hand, have the reputation of being cordial to anyone who even tries to use their language. But cordiality is not guaranteed. The Spanish have their “French” moments.

I had driven to Madrid in the summer of 1975 to take our daughter, Patricia, to the airport to catch a flight to the States. Besides Pat and me, we had our son, Eric, and his friend, Mino deBretteville, along for ballast. Pat’s plane left Madrid early, so we arrived the day before and set up in a hotel. When we sat down to dinner, and Eric ordered for us in Spanish.

Eric had a wide circle of acquaintances from all over Europe, and their only common language was Spanish. He and his friends had been jabbering Spanish at each other since the fall of the year before. However, Eric’s Spanish was that which he had heard on the streets, Andalucian, the Spanish version of Terminal Hillbilly. So that’s basically what it was, jabber, at least to everyone else in Spain. They called it “andalú” and it was spoken by leaving off the beginnings and endings of all the words and shouting the middles.

The waiter listed to him order for us and answered, “Cómo?” Eric tried again, this time trying the time-honored strategy of speaking louder. “Cómo?” the waiter repeated, looking at me and shrugging.

The dirty rat. He understood Eric. He was just tugging on my son’s chain. I then ordered for all of us in my slow, measured Spanish and he smiled and said, “Claró,” a Spanish word for “But of course, how could it be otherwise.” He understood me perfectly because I was the guy leaving the tip.

On another occasion we were in a village, somewhere, somehow, and needed to use a telephone. Joanne asked a local traffic cop where there might be a telephone. She spoke in English and the cop pretended not to understand the word “telephone.” She tried a Spanish pronunciation. Several of them in fact. “Teléfono, telefóno, telefonó.” He wasn’t even a very good actor. He just wasn’t to tell her. I asked him and, since I was a man instead of a woman, I could have asked in Swahili and gotten results. He told us where the phone was and we went on our way. I was sorry I didn’t have any nails that needed bending, because Joanne was angry enough to bend them with her teeth.

I’ll tell about one final occasion, I promise it’s the last. I was in downtown Málaga doing some shopping and I needed some iodine. I whipped out my trusty English-Spanish dictionary and identified the word “yodo.” Into the apothecary’s shop I went and asked for yodo. The druggist made me repeat my request and then came back with some sanitary napkins.

“No, no, no, no, no,” said I. I whipped out my dictionary and pointed to the word. “Oh, yodo. Of course we have yodo. All apothecary shops have yodo.” Well, he had his fun, but the only tip I gave him was to floss daily.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Polyglots

I had a small sixth grade at Sunnyview with a couple of daily incursions from a very small seventh grade. One day, on a whim, I polled the classes as to how many languages they spoke amongst them. The results astonished me.

Most of the students spoke English and Spanish as a matter of course. Some also spoke French. But there was also an albino girl from Peru who spoke Quechuan, she and a few million Incas. Then there was the girl who grew up in Hong Kong but whose family was moving their assets to Europe. She claimed to speak a passable Mandarin. I believed her. Another spoke Swahili, the lengua franca of Africa.

Seventh-grader Dorica de la Fuente was raised in the Philippines and spoke Tagalog. She and her brother, Tony, were chauffeured to school every day in a bullet proof Cadillac. The Cadillac shed bullets like Wonder Woman’s bracelet, but it leaked water through the windshield whenever it rained. I guess bullets are bigger than rain drops.

The star linguist in the sixth grade, hands down and thumbs up, was Thanos Sioris, a Greek and Finnish boy. He spoke English and Spanish, of course, as well as Greek (his father was Minister of Education for Greece) and Finnish (his mother was with the Finnish diplomatic corps). Later, when his mother was sent to the Philippines, he added Tagalog to his arsenal of languages, and German when they were stationed in Vienna.

All told we came up with almost a dozen languages spoken in that select group of sixth- and seventh-graders. And I came up with that amount without even counting English, American and Canadian as separate languages.

Copyright Ken Harris 2009

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Softball, Sunnyview Style

It Aint Cricket

I was no longer teaching at Sunnyview School in the spring of 1976, the time of the Great Faculty-Student Softball Game. There were only three adult males connected with the staff who had any expertise in the game, and the rest of the positions had to be filled by sincere people who meant well. One such well meaning person was a visiting Brit who had never played baseball. But he had played cricket. That’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?

Well, no, as a matter of fact, it isn’t.

We explained to him that in softball the pitcher does not come running up from somewhere in the next county and bounce the ball towards him. Instead, he stands on a mound of earth whirling his pitching arm around like he was wringing a chicken’s neck and then he tries to fog the ball past the batter as fast as he can. And, this was the critical part, when he hits the ball, if he hits the ball, he is not to charge the pitcher’s mound with bat in hand, but run to first base instead. Putting the bat down. Putting the bat down was critical, although I’ve often thought it would be a far more interesting game if base runners could carry their bats with them.

Then we had some practice and I batted fungoes for 45 minutes. Fungo, that’s a fly ball, and according to the dictionary the word is an “Americanism, origin obscure.” I’m desperately right handed and so batted fungo after fungo that way, swinging my bat from low right to high left and torquing my back each time.

The next morning I couldn’t move. I had a really bad sciatic pain and could only alter my orientation in the bed 90 degrees and try to get up without bending my back. Bedtime was a similar move in reverse. Fall over backward like a tree and change my orientation in bed 90 degrees.

But the Brit did learn to catch fly balls, and he did quite well, even if he forgot and charge the pitcher’s mound after his first hit. Waving his bat. Scared the bejazus out of the pitcher. But that's good. Adults should terrify teenagers every now and then. Makes them polite.

Copyright Ken Harris 2009

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Around the World in 80 Days

Huguette Pettis owned Sunnyview School. Even though Sunnyview was advertised as an “American School.” Honey (she despaired of any non-French person ever pronouncing “Huguette” correctly) imparted a distinctly European atmosphere. She was French, raised in Algeria, and educated in the European style, the only style suitable for educating young people in her opinion.

I possessed none of those advantages. Although the school year started out well enough, it soon became apparent that she did not think much of my American ways or style of teaching. We had saved money during our profitable years on Guam and had planned originally to not work for the two years we spent in Spain. Given this financial situation, I made plans to work as a self-employed full-time free-lance writer for a year. Honey quite liked Joanne since her style of teaching was more “French,” and so our economic plan involved her continued employment. I recommend this situation to any young married man. This is a great plan for a free-lance writer.

It was in the spring of 1975 and I wanted to go out with a last hurrah, so I volunteered to supervise the end-of-the-year program for the kindergarten through eighth-grade. I was interested in total student involvement and in having interested and talented children working with each other no matter what their grade or who their teacher. Very unFrench. Kindergarten and first grade were the exceptions. Their teachers felt that their kids weren’t quite ready for a free-wheeling activity like this and would rather participate as a group. I wasn’t sure I was quite ready for this activity either. But I was obligated, and so away we went
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First we had a brainstorming session. There were lots of interesting students and I mixed and matched them so that at least three grade levels were involved in every group, more often four grade levels. The groups were charged with generating ideas no matter how silly, impossible or expensive. The only thing worse than a bad idea, I told them, is no idea at all.

Ideas emerged from movies to monsters to kung fu. One girl didn’t care what we did so long as she got to do a ballet number. The one idea that struck most everyone’s fancy was the story line from Around the World in Eighty Days.

So now we needed to adapt Jules Verne’s novel to our needs and we formed a writing group. I really didn’t want a script with blocking and memorized lines because I thought they would interfere with these kids’ strongest points, imagination, spontaneity, creativity, enthusiasm. In other words, I didn’t want to do a lot of directing.

The group roughed out a story and we selected the countries we would visit for a variety of reasons. We chose Russia so our ballerina could dance. We chose the United States so the kindergarteners and first graders could stage an Indian raid. We chose Spain because we had a Spanish dancing class, England because that’s where Verne started and ended his story, and Africa for no reason at all.

Because we had no theater, we built our sets in different classrooms. That way they could be put up permanently and the audience could go from set to set under the direction of student “tour guides.” About twenty students threw themselves into set building projects. They built Africa and Russia on the second floor, the USA, Spain and England on the first floor, and a portable Indian teepee for the playground outside. They acquired their own materials and designed and built their own sets. Good thing. I’m terrible at designing and building sets. It turned out they weren’t very good either and sometimes the sets wouldn’t nail together or tumbled down as fast as they put them up. But they kept at it and found solutions. Where they found them, I don’t know, because they didn’t ask me.

The acting group had to first get used to improvising. We did some of the beginning drills, pretending we were flowers opening, apples falling from trees, bacon frying in a pan. I gave a few hints on movement and voice projection, but not all that much. Then we started on our play, the story for which had by now been written.

We began daily rehearsals. Everyone involved acted several different parts each day for two weeks before I cast anyone. There was so much interest in the show among the parents that we decided on four different performances. I cast the show in four different ways so everyone got to do four different parts. In one show Passapartout, the valet, was played by three small second graders who had worked out a comedy routine. In another the valet was played by a French boy who had enrolled the previous October speaking only French and Spanish. By June his English was acceptable but heavily accented. He said all of his lines in French. I think I was the only one who didn’t understand what he was saying.

The kindergarteners and first graders were making their costumes and weapons and practicing a dance. They were going to tie their captive to a pole and dance around him. The only difficulty we had with them was persuading them to release their captive so he could be in the next scene.

An eighth grade boy assumed the role of stage manager and took it upon himself to be sure that the set was ready and the actors in place on time. Some of our props had to be hand made and weren’t always successful. We had a hand lens for the detective, but it always bent in the middle so we never used it.

The students interested in music had dwindled to a precious few. Our orchestra consisted of a clarinetist, a guitarist and a bongo player who massaged Moroccan drums, tin cans and other bangables. They furnished most of the music to start the scenes, although the dance music was provided by record player or tape recorder.

As opening neared, the remaining students were pressed into service as furniture movers, tour guides and “expediters” whose job it was to get the parents away from the punch bowl and into the correct room so they could see the play.

Here is as much script as we ever had.

Scene One—London, a pub. Orchestra: Around the World in Eighty Days. A newspaper reader recounts a story of the robbery of the Bank of England to other patrons. This leads into a story about whether it is possible to circumnavigate the world in 80 days. There is a heated argument. Phileas Phogg bets 20,000 pounds he can do it. He and Passapartout, his valet, leave with a bag of money, their traveling expenses.

Scene Two—Spain, a café. Guitarist: Pasodoble. Phogg and Passapartout are on stage admiring the dances from the Spanish dancing class and eating oranges, the peels of which they put into a bag which is an exact duplicate of their money bag. Enter detective, Hemlock Bones, who explains that Phogg and Passapartout were seen leaving England with a bag of money which he thinks is the loot from the Bank of England robbery. Bones steals the wrong bag and exits vowing to dump the contents on the bank manager’s desk.

Scene 3:--Africa, outdoor bazaar. Drummer: solo. Bones enters muttering something about soreheaded bank managers and is about to make his arrest when he is fed a native delicacy and collapses. A witchdoctor performs an emergency laporotomy in his clinic and removes all manner of items from the detective’s abdominal cavity including cans, bottles, lengths of hose. The doctor’s clinic was made of branches and leaves in the center of the room. The front of the clinic was covered with a sheer and a light set up at the rear of the room so we could project this high drama in silhouette form.

Scene 4:--Russia, indoors. Bones enters clutching his abdomen and is about to arrest Phogg and Passapartout when a smuggler asks him to hold a mysterious package. Police then drag the protesting detective off to jail. Afterwards the ballet was performed as well as a Russian folk dance created by four girls in the Spanish dancing class. One of the girls had a hissy fit and dropped out, so the dance for four was done by three. One of the remaining three girls could actually do kazotskies, which amazed us all. That helped make up for the missing dancer. Sometimes one of the dancers also acted in the same scene. Then they would improvise a way to change from policeman, or smuggler to dancer.

Scene 5:--USA, outdoors. Clarinet: Do You Know the Way to San Jose. Actors enter on a train. Just as Bones is about to make his arrest, the first graders and kindergarteners, who have been hiding in rooms all around the set, stage a raid and kidnap him. To attack they had to work their way through the legs of the parents who were standing between them and the USA set. The train collapsed before it’s final performance, so the actors formed a conga line and shook cans of gravel for sound effect.

Scene 6:--London, pub. Orchestra: Around the World in Eighty Days. Phogg wins the bet by arriving just as the clock strikes 12. (Sometimes we had someone off-stage strike the chimes. Once we had someone dressed in a clock suit hit himself in the head with a mallet. It was up to the clock in each performance.) Bones enters and is about to finally make his triumphant arrest when the newspaper reader announces that the thief was caught. It was the bank manager. Bones faints and all of the Indians and other participants enter over his (or her) recumbent form. All bow and exit.

I had forgotten all about this play until I reviewed my Spain notes from over thirty years ago. I really liked this show. For one thing, I didn’t have to do much work. Whenever some kid asked me if something was good, I’d reply, “Let’s try it and see.” Also, I never knew what was going to happen. Each performance was brand new.

As I think about it, this was a good unit. I’m sure the kids learned something. I had no lesson plan with goals, objectives, evaluative criteria, none of that. But I’m sure they learned something. I just don’t know what.

The parents loved the show. Some of them saw all four performances. There were lots of compliments on how creative the children were. Honey Pettis was pleased. How French.

Copyright Ken Harris 2009

Monday, March 2, 2009

A Very Short Story

Susan Lemke told us once about trying to lead her first grade student Julius to the conclusion that 1 + 2 = 3. Somehow drawings, fingers, hash marks and arrangements of painted sticks weren't quite enough.
“Now, Julius, 1 + 1 is 2, right?”
“Yes.”
“So 1 + 2 is 3, right?”
“Doesn't have to be.”
If he had just said “no” that would have been one thing. But to suppose that 1 + 2 is sometimes 3 and sometimes not 3, what is a teacher going to do with that?
Sometimes when the weather permitted, some staff and students would play volley ball. When Julius played, he was fierce about defending his territory. If a ball came his way, he would handle it thank you and would the adults please butt out.
Julius commanded a lot of respect around the school yard because he willed it to be that way. An object lesson for us all.

Copyright Ken Harris 2009