chinatroll

Writing Assignments and Watch Repair

24 Oct 2011 2 Comments

by chinatroll in Uncategorized

Every week I come up with two overly ambitious writing projects to subject my students to, one for my second graders, and one for my third graders. This week I had my second graders write their own stories, and my third graders write their own journal entries. The concept of writing your own story was relatively easy to communicate, and I had a few students get pretty into it. Vinson wrote about a monkey trying to take the moon out of the sky, only to discover that he was fishing around in a well. And Tommy wrote about a cat and a dog who were not friends. The last illustration of his story showed the cat’s tail protruding from the dog’s mouth, and he ended the story with a zinger of a last sentence: “Dog eat cat.”

The journal entry project was a bit stickier. It took about half an hour to explain it well enough that not all of my students’ eyes were glazed over. We read two examples from the textbook, and I showed them my journal and explained that I write an entry in it every night, telling what happened to me that day. After I saw the lightbulb of understanding go off for a few students, I prowled amongst the rows trying to get them to put pen to paper. Sometime it’s hard to tell whether my students aren’t doing the assignment because they honestly haven’t understood a word coming out of my mouth, or because they are simply resisting doing any more written work. Jessica got rather excited when she glommed onto the meaning of “You can write about anything,” and wrote about two boys who had been fighting in her class that day. I got rather excited when she turned to her classmate to ask what “ma” means in English. “Ma” is the syllable that is used in every Chinese textbook I’ve encountered thus far to demonstrate the importance of the four tones in determining meaning in Chinese, so I knew that it could mean “mother,” “hemp,” “horse,” or “to scold.” Given the context of the girl’s journal entry, I knew it had to mean “to scold.” I was devilishly pleased with myself as I spelled it out for her.

Athena's rockstar hairdo.

While I was trying to extract journal entries from 3rd graders, Athena had another dance performance at school. I hope that I get to see at least one of her performances while we’re here. I picked her up on Friday and found her hair done up in two fluffy, teased out buns. Her eyelids glittered with stage makeup, and her eyes glittered with excitement as a description of the “big yellow thing” that she had worn for the show bubbled out of her.

My watch stopped at the beginning of this week. I left its poor, silent, motionless body in the apartment and relied on my phone for the time. My wrist felt naked, and I found myself glancing down at it frequently to check the time, only to read the engraved message on my bracelet, live in the moment. By Wednesday I couldn’t shake the feeling that my bracelet was mocking me. Yesterday, finally having enough time to embark on getting the watch fixed, Athena and I set out for the little watch repair booth I’d noticed on the way to this labyrinthine market that Athena loves. I think in her mind this market represents the mothership of all thrift stores, and she loves pawing through the large stacks of clothes and whatnot. The whole place feels like it’s fallen off the back of a truck to me.

Athena was fascinated by the watch battery replacement process. The watch repairman sat in a booth behind a window, jeweler’s loupe screwed firmly to his eye. There was one man getting his watch repaired, and a large group of people standing around watching the repairman work. There always seem to be large groups of people gathered around to watch people work, which results in the work becoming a kind of performance. When he was done with the man’s watch, the repairman held his hand out through a slit in the window to take my watch. His movements were full of grace and precision, but he was still able to make each step of the process into a big production: taking the back off of the watch, fishing the battery out, putting a new one in, putting the back on again. It was like a dance. He handed me the bill, I handed him the money, he handed me the watch. I strapped it onto my wrist and immediately felt like a whole person again.