IN WHICH THE EXOTIC DANCER TEACHES THE PURITANS TO JIGGLE

I have been given a Chinese name. My Chinese name is Mo Li Hua. (“Moe. Lee. Hwah!”) In Chinese, my first name would be Hua, which means my first name is “Flower.” The characters “Mo li hua” as much as the specific flower in Chinese is beautiful and adored for its purity as much as its strength. In fact, the flower is so important to the Chinese that it has become synonymous with the word “cure” because it is believed that the flower is so powerfully wonderful that it can fix any and every thing. The Chinese adore the molihua so much that at the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Greece, they had their greatest living singer perform the song “Molihua.” The Hua Moli is the flower jasmine. Long before I came to China, I was in love with the molihua; I drank molihuacha (its tea) every chance I got and I love Marc Jacobs’ “Blush” perfume because its top note is molihua. To name a woman after that bloom is the most romantic and beautiful sentiment I think I have ever heard and I find it staggering that anyone would bestow that upon me, much less long after they have gotten to know me.

However, I am American, and a New Yorker at that; a culmination of the best and worst my country has to offer. And, in New York, a woman with the name “Jasmine” who comes with a reputation of being able to “cure what ails you” is not quite the same as in China.

This idea was not lost on me yesterday (10/25) as I taught my third grade babies about the letter “J.” Keep in mind, my class was an “Open Class,” because what the Middle School gets from me, the Primary School wants too. So, despite my predecessor’s declaration that I would never have to face said firing squad, (or be held accountable in any way, shape or form) I invariably did. Consequently, there were about ten officials and all the other English teachers lined in the back of the room. Unfortunately, that much attention makes my students nervous as hell and terrified of making a mistake. Going in I knew we were going to have a very quiet class.

In the third grade, we’re going through the alphabet, letter by letter and I teach the class 3 words a week. (Each class has one class with me a week; consequently, in a 45 minute class, they learn three words.) For “J” I taught them “Jaw,” “Jiggle” and “Jasmine” (because I felt it a moral imperative to teach them my Chinese name in English; despite the mobius strip train of thought about translating the Chinese name into English for the English teacher who’s already got an English name). They know they are learning new words when you write, “[Letter] is for [new word].” So I wrote, “J is for Jaw” on the board. I read the sentence aloud once, they copy me and then we repeat until their pronunciation is either perfect or close enough to be discernable.

The students have already learned parts of the face and so they have a visual and verbal lexicon to deal with recognizing facial parts. They stroke the body part slowly and say “This is my [body part].” So, to key them in to the fact that we would be starting with a part of the face, I slowly circled my face and said, “This is my face.” Which they already know. And then I slid one finger over my eyelid while saying, “These are my eyes.” Which they know and so they nodded. I circled my mouth and said, “This is my mouth.” Which they know and repeated, getting the hint.
I then grabbed my ears and said, “These are my ears.” They know that and repeated, clearly feeling comfortable in the space we were working. Then I dropped my fingers down from my ears and slid my pointer fingers along my jawbone saying slowly, “This is my jaw.” They watched me, just blinking behind the mask as they processed the information. I repeated myself a few times as I stroked my jaw line and then I divided them into four teams; the Blue Team, the Yellow Team, the Red Team and the Green Team as those are the colors of the chalk I had available.

Once they were divided into groups of four (with the four rows of ten dividing up nicely), I reviewed “This is my Jaw” one more time. I then asked them, “Blue Team, where is your jaw?” It took them a moment but slowly hands started to raise. The first of my babies stood up, slowly stroked her jaw line and said, “This is my jaw.” Once it all clicked, my babies became incredibly eager to show me where their jaw was. I repeated for each team and gave each team a point for each team member able to answer correctly the question, “Where is your jaw?”

We then moved on to “jiggle.” I brought in a very popular snack the kids are always eating; little cups of gelatin with fruit in the bottom. Usually they have single gelatin shots but you can find fruit-cup-snack sized cups of gelatin and so I got one. I opened it up, turned it over and shook the gelatin and said, “J is for jiggle.” I shook the gelatin and said, “Jiggle”. I then shook myself and said, “Jiggle.” I felt utterly ridiculous, being watched by the adults like that but I knew that such absurdity is precisely what my babies need to loosen up and feel free. So, I sucked it up and did it.

I looked up at the class and said, “Can you jiggle?”

I have never seen hands shoot up so fast in my life. How did I know “jiggle” was going to be a hit?

I told the class to “Stand up, please.” (The students don’t really understand “Stand up” or “Sit down” without “please” tacked onto the end because their teachers never don’t say “please.” You can say “sit down” and they stare at you from behind the mask, rationally figuring out “sit” and then “down” or you can say “Sit down, please” and their butts hit the seat double time. It’s weird to say “please” when I tell students who are misbehaving to park it but nonetheless, it’s just more effective.) Immediately, the class hopped to their feet.
“Okay.” (They have learned, “Okay” as “Teacher’s” word for getting their attention in class.) “Jiggle!” And the students started giggling and jiggling like crazy. I said, “jiggle” over and over as they jiggled, as repetition is the key to retention.
“Okay!” And the students stopped. “Sit down please.”

They all sat down and I went through each team asking, “Can you jiggle?”

Not surprisingly, every single student on every single team raised their hand to show their capacity for jiggling.

We then moved on to “J is for jasmine.” I had brought in little cups of my jasmine tea petals and I passed around the dry petals for everyone to smell. “Molihua” I said once as the students were sniffing. Their eyes lit up with recognition and a murmur went through the class. “Jasmine” I would repeat often enough that the students finally attempted to say it with me.

Then I asked each team, “Do you like jasmine?” All of the girls said they did and most of the boys did as well. However, there was the occasional male dissenter and of course I felt a pressing need to applaud for those opinionated fellows just a little bit more.

And then I noticed it. One of the teachers who had been observing and I had only peripherally noticed moving about the class (my logic is that if I forget the teachers are back there, the kids will too) had a camera. She had been moving about class photographing me teach. I can only imagine when she started and what she’s got on that roll. The caveat to putting aside your hang-ups and simply being in the moment with children is that you run the risk of making a fool of yourself without noticing. The idea of photographic evidence of tomfoolery is utterly mortifying. I am their Western trinket and all their posters have stern images of my predecessor’s predecessor (I am the 3rd Western teacher this school has had since they’ve only been open a few years.) teaching class. There was nothing “stern” about my class. I’m pretty sure those images will be going up on the advertising materials and internal billboards about the benefits of my school.

Crap.