Skip to main content

Stardom Week - Part 1

This is Part One of a Nine Part Series

When I checked J's homework folder last Friday, I had no idea I would be setting in motion a chain of events that would by the weekend among other things make me physically ill. There was the weekly report stating the usual "J had a great week" with all parameters for a successful kindergarten week marked "Met or exceeded expectations". There was also a flyer letting me know that it would be J's turn to be the "Kindergarten Star Of The Week" the following week.

A list of activities was outlined from Monday to Thursday. The goal was to give each child in class a chance to shine and be the cynosure of attention for a whole week. I thought it was a wonderful idea and set to work on our assignment for Monday enthusiastically. I was tasked with helping her to make a poster about herself to bring and share with the class. Interestingly enough, J had never mentioned anyone's poster until then.

I had heard about the favorite book and favorite snack scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday of the "Star Week". Probing a little about the poster, I found out that the kids typically had pictures of themselves, family members, pets and toys among other things. Mrs. H had them walk up the front of the class and present it.

After that, she and the class might ask some questions. I thought it was a perfect opportunity to teach J how to make a photo collage and coach her on some basic presentation skills. It may be argued that I acted like an over zealous parent in spending all Sunday afternoon helping her put this poster together. This would be the kind of "non-academic enrichment" that Mrs H and the guidance counselor had said J would benefit from.

We pored through her old albums and found a picture of her with my grandmother who died a couple of months ago. This became the centerpiece of our collage. Around it were other pictures of her early childhood when I had gone back to India, including a couple from her Annaprashan. We talked about the many places we've lived and traveled in the past five years of my nomadic life.

J's memory has faded in parts but she was excited to glue the images of the couple of dozen cities on her poster amazed that she had actually been to all those places in the past five years of her life. The labors of my imagination and J's hard work resulted in something rather nice. She was pleased with it and told me proudly "No one else in my class had so many things on their poster". That evening, we did a little role play trading Mrs H and J roles so she knew how to present it to the class. We both went to sleep tired but happy looking forward to Monday morning.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Prerona said…
sigh ...

you make me miss my mommie :(

lol
2:12 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more