It's time to say goodbye

Amid all the talk about schools and registration and scary mothers who know all there is to know about these sorts of things, one thing seems to be left out. I don't recall hearing any of them talking about teachers. I mean, they talked about teacher-student ratios, they talked about teacher qualifications which are all well and good. Being a teacher myself, I know that there is a difference between a good teacher and a highly qualified teacher.

The school the twins go to has good teachers. They may not speak the most impeccable of English. In fact, it took me a while to accept that my kids' teachers spoke in present tense all the time. "Jordan cries after you left", "Evan eats his lunch today". But I couldn't ask for better teachers as the first pseudo-academic influences in the twins' lives. They cared for the twins, loved them and were extremely supportive of me when I was near tears every morning dropping the bawling kids off.

So it saddened me greatly to hear that both the twins' favourite teachers were being transferred to another branch. Their playgroup teacher as well as their beloved lao shi who was there every morning waiting for them, who greeted them with such glee that transcended language barriers (the twins, not mine) and would help me get them strapped into the car at the end of the school day. Part of me is worried that they will miss their teachers and react badly to the new replacements. The other part of me knows they will adapt as they have to other changes in their lives. This part of me, rather cynically, also knows that when they go to school proper, they will have to get used to the comings and goings of the teachers what with the constant stream of substitute teachers that sail through the classroom doors.

















Anyway, I felt this could not pass without the twins doing something for their teachers. Packrat and I are very big on teaching them humility and manners, with "please" and "thank you" being the hallmarks of such lessons. So, we set out making presents and cards for them. I'd bought some plywood cut outs from Spotlight for the twins to muck about with and decided that we could use them as gifts if we managed to paint them properly.

Painting them properly with 22-month-olds required a great amount of masking tape, to tape up the bits that we didn't want to be a particular colour. It also took a lot of effort since we had in our possession only paint of the three primary colours and brown is hard to mix with red, yellow and blue paint. Thankfully, I managed to come up with something relatively close to the brown I envisioned the plywood flower's stalk would be.

The end product was impressive, as was the card. All worthy for the teachers who were leaving. Of course, the touch ups were all me but I was quite impressed at Baby J's ability to hold the paint brush and paint the entire stalk brown.

Important tool for those who want to create something that doesn't fall victim to the wild, uncontrollable strokes of a toddler child? Masking Tape.

What saddened me was when I asked the twins whether they liked Teacher Chris and Lao Shi and both nodded their heads fervently. And the sad thing is that they will probably, by virtue of their age not remember these first teachers they had who loved them and whom they loved.

I guess it'll be up to me to remind them.

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