I sit too hot to be comfortable on a dark blue plastic school chair with cut tennis balls on the bottom of each leg. Three other students sit in similar places behind laminate wood desks turned around so students can’t vandalize inside. Nineteen desks sat empty scattered between the four of us. It was a small class. Senora Goldstein, she took on her husband’s name, dressed casually in jeans, made an appearance at the front of the classroom. Up until now, on the other side of the hotter than usual classroom David, with his curly brown head of hair and Ben dressed to the nines worked diligently on the assigned class work. Judy, one of four asian students in attendance atour high school, sat close but not beside me, struggling on her work.
“ Atencion por favor. Ahora vamous a trabajar en una gropa de ‘skits’ con palabras de esta semana.”
We all let out a slight grown, personally not wanting to move in this heat, not knowing why the others wouldn’t want to work in groups.
“ Aright, so we have: el cine, la escuela, la iglesia, y el supermercado. Want to write a skit about someone’s daily activities?”
“Dave, I don’t care, it’s too hot in here to work.”
“Ohh, you guys feel that too. I’m dying.” Apparently we had some common ground between us, the heat.
Judy says nothing.
“ Senora, por favor turn down the heat. It’s so hot in here I’m shvitzing, Dave’s shvitzing, Nicole’s shvitzing...”
“ No Ben, Nicole can’t shvitz, she’s not a Jew.”
“ Lo siento Ben, no puedo bajar el termómetro, I can’t turn down the thermometer, it’s broken.” Senora explained.
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I appreciated the beginning of the piece and your detailed description of the “dark blue plastic school chair with cut tennis balls on the bottom of each leg.” It is so specific, but a description that many people can relate to while being in the classroom. I liked how you created a connection between you and your classmates with the heat as the connecting thread. It shows that while you are different from each other, the heat is what connects you together in reality as well as metaphorically because you cannot “turn down the thermometer” because “it’s broken.”
ReplyDeleteI also liked the description you used at the beginning with the desks. I think you were able to incorporate Spanish dialogue well. Although I can read Spanish, anyone could understand the just of the dialogue without actually knowing Spanish. The post was the "slice of life" that we talked about in class.
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