Say what?

A tip: if you aim to be a teacher, or at least talk like one, don't call a few quickly sketched lines a chart or a table-that's not jargon-y enough--but a graphic organizer, and always remember that their mastery is our students' magic key to standardized test success, at least this week. Now while there is nothing more predictable or tiresome than the pendulum swings of education fads, I won't refuse to use something just because it's the pedagogical flavor of the month. Sometimes even the trendy has utility, and that's why all my students know that those overlapping circles are a Venn diagram, a less language-intensive way to explain how two things are alike and how they are different. (Though, out of context, it sure looks like some poorly constructed undergarment.)

We use them all the time, so it's not surprise that's the image that came to mind when found myself pondering what my new Brazillian student's new provincial home could possibly have in common with the coastal city of eleven million he just left.

Um.

Well, both places were named after men canonized by some pope or another. São, Saint--even I with no Portuguese can figure out that. And while it's tempting to say that's all I got, that that's all there is, it isn't really true. Both places are full of people either trying to do right by their kids or making decisions in spite of them. What has happened here remains to be seen. And while, on the one hand, as a teacher it is absolutely none of my business, it will quickly become apparent-- at least as it is interpreted by the son--and will affect, at least for a while, every thing he does and much of what I try to do. I can't help but try to anticipate what will happen and how he'll react, both as a strategery (will he really come to school? what is going to work? how much time should I put in?) and because I'm dead curious. I'm only human, and this is a most human-interest story.

On the one hand, two adults who, quite literally, can barely communicate and the teenager who is at their mercy only describes the bulk of the high school population's households. In those terms, he'll fit right in. On the other hand, safe to say that those kids are not alone in a new hemisphere with those adults of questionable motives and, at the very least, they speak the language. On the other other hand, who knows? Maybe it will work out fine for everyone. American "step dad" guy seems to think going from non-English speaker to high school graduate college student in three years is perfectly plausible, and when did a used car salesman ever stretch the truth?