Junalicious

Jun is a chubby seven year old marshmallow with a perm on top. He's been the best English speaker in his class because he is a natural showman, always in search of the largest stage. Swaton's used him as a poster-boy in festivals because he has no shame. Jun will happily go in front of all the students and parents and loudly say, "mom, dad, I love you sooooooo much!" He's the biggest kindergarten student but I've never seen him use his size to bully the other children. One time, I saw Dash come up to him and complain that Hanna stole something of his. They didn't know I was watching this drama. Jun went up to Hanna, held out his hand and Hanna willingly gave up Dash's toy. This is the start of Jun's 3rd and final year in Swaton kindergarten and I'm proud to say I'm his teacher. He's already a bit of a phenom but I'm putting unnecessary pressure on myself to clean up his speech and have him on par with a 7 year old native speaker. I made him a badge and named him the official Swaton policeman- a title he's informed all the other children of. He monitors the lunch line and won't tolerate any pushing. All this has been build-up to a story of his phone report. Every month we are required to call all our kindergarten children and many afternoon students and talk for around 1o minutes. I called June this week for my 1st phone report with him. I will try and type, word for word, a story he told me. Imagine loud gasps of air in between his energetic speech:

"Teacher, one time, I see a ghost. Umm, I'm sleeping....and Then, lights off. There is a ghost and...I'm scary.. and then, um, that one, I did a Poo Poo"

I broke out laughing even though I knew it wasn't meant to be funny. Sometimes this job is just too funny. Like that Cosby show, "Kids say the darndest things," except they're saying these things in a second language.