A Thursday in November
In the morning, I turned on the Thanksgiving Day Parade to give the day a moment of celebration. I had planned on making pumpkin pie to share the tradition with the kiddos, but a lack of pumpkins smashed that dream.
Thursday mornings, the whole staff here has TBRI (Trust Based Relational Intervention) trainings. Many kids from trauma backgrounds have special needs. Whether its teaching them there’s enough food and clothing so they don’t have to steal, or showing them that they don’t have to fend for themselves, so anger and aggression should not be the first reaction to “No”, learning to not rashly judge the behavior but to understand the WHY, is a process. These trainings are applicable in our every day situations, and I always look forward to learning new ways to connect with the kids.
When I went downstairs to start planning lessons, I was stopped and asked to practice hand stands. “Just for a little. Just a few minutes.” It’s hard to say no, and I rarely ever do. The girls got to laugh at my fear kicking my feet over my head, and I got to applaud their first attempts to walk on their hands.
Thursday afternoons I tutor the little girls. It’s almost summer vacation here (one more week of school!), so there was not a lot of homework. Instead, one of the girlies and I practiced the multiplication tables.
School work is an incubator for emotional difficulties: the hard work can lead to frustration, and the million rules (sit still, sit up, don’t scribble, no, it’s not time to play with your doll, NO, the scissors are NOT for cutting her hair or MY HAIR or NO! NOT YOUR HAIR!) can create an undesired and unproductive power struggle. So, instead, I try to look for ways to connect: play-based teaching builds a safe atmosphere to make mistakes and an instinctive desire to try again.
Today’s game was a win: first we wrote out multiplication facts on the board counting in a sing-song way to review. Then I wrote the problems on the floor tiles — in expo-marker, don’t worry. The girlie helped me write them. She was thrilled to do something out of the normal rules. Then I turned on music, and we started to play. My initial plan was for her to walk, dance, skip over the tiles until I stopped the music, but when she started doing cartwheels without regard to where the multiplication problems were, I was not going to argue. (I’ve learned from my mistakes.) I expanded the square to cover almost the entire floor. Then we continued to play. The problems on the board created a fail-safe: if she didn’t know the answer, she could trot over to the board and confidently state that 8x3 is 24 with as much enthusiasm as if it was her favorite (7x2). We also created a secret handshake to use when she got the right answer, which I think will continue to be ours for the rest of the year.
Thirty minutes into playing, another girl wanted to join us. I wanted this to be special one-on-one time, and selfishly I didn’t want the emotional problems that inevitably arise when more children join. But, the girl was generous and instead of being frustrated, as I expected her to be, asked if I had an extra mandarin to share (I had only brought two: our reward for a job well done). She quickly explained the game to the newcomer, and I ran to grab another orange. After that, we got precious little tutoring done, but we enjoyed the snack together and talked about generosity. We even had time to practice when two other kids asked to share our oranges.
Later that evening, our friend, Damaris, took Naomi (fellow intern) and I out to dinner. Damaris wanted us to celebrate a little: she knows what it’s like to live far from family. We got a nice lightning show while we ate our meal, and, on our way home, it started downpouring. Forever the optimists, we started skipping and dancing in the rain. If we were going to get drenched, we might as well welcome it.
Naomi and I arrived back home to find the power out. So, after getting cozy and brewing some tea, I read a few chapters of Anne of Green Gables to candlelight while Naomi made birthday cards for the kids.
This thanksgiving had nothing traditional to offer, but it was full of sweet little moments, and I am thankful for each one.
