Chettra, Naro, Seila, Thida, Visal, Lasa, and Ly Chard. so silly!

September 16

Friday is a short day, half day, gets out at 11:40am, so when the end of the school day comes around on Thursday, it’s always a relief. The last period of the day is art class, and I borrowed some CD’s from Rithy, wanting something peaceful and calming in the background that my children could color too. One CD he gave me was called “Slow Dance Songs”, kind of cheesy, but better than anything else in my selection, so I popped it in the last period of the day. The results were hilarious and heartfelt, for a couple of minutes, until the always (or at least with my kids) disastrous events kick in only moments later. That’s what I get for trying to work with 6 year olds. They’re energy inspires me, for a couple of minutes, and then the reality hits me that I’m not 6 years old anymore, not an authoritarian or disciplinarian either, and at the end of the day I feel so worn out I’ll think I might collapse and break through a flimsy bamboo wall of my classroom. The main problem with me is that I believe children should be free to let their imaginations run wild, and that they should laugh, and dance, be messy, and curious. Yet in this case, with only me in charge of all 30 of them, discipline is what should be in order instead.

Anyways, back to “Slow Dance Songs”, my children start bobbing their heads, dancing in their seats, Visal and Naro come up front to hand in their worksheets and dance down the isles, while Ly Heng and Panhasith, mid-work, get up from their desks, grab each other, and together march down the isles like a slow tango (and then it turned bad, when Ly Heng had maybe heard this type of music in a romantic movie, and starts grabbing Panhasith’s face and attempting to kiss him on the lips, and I still laugh remembering Panhasith’s panicked face as he tried pulling away). Kids run up to give me their assignment and stay by the CD player, adjusting the volumes, and we all just start to dance. Ly Chard grabs my waist and we start to make a line around the room, until the boys suddenly push each other over, and make a dogpile at the front of the room, laughing hysterically. The ones behind and in front see and hear them, and run over to where they arm, plopping their tiny (and some big) bodies onto one another, screaming and shouting, and that’s when the CD gets shut off, I’m grabbing little boy bodies and pulling them off one another, and yelling, and sighing deeply and staring at the clock. Oh dear. But it’s silly moments like this, that lets me come home and smile and remember, the smiles on their faces, as they danced down the isles for those few minutes.