I list the words then define them on the blackboard, somehow managing to avoid the hole in the floor. The students laugh with pleasure when I fall into it. I review the new vocabulary with a wooden pointer: "sideshow, ring toss, cotton candy, roller coaster, and carnival." There isn't room to describe "Ferris wheel," so I squeeze in the words at the bottom.
I call on the students alphabetically to read the selection. It helps me remember their names. Today I hope to complete A through C. Abdul begins reading, then after a paragraph, I call on Aferworki. The students in 9F sit three to a desk, three to a book in a room with a whooshing overhead fan, three dangling window shutters and a dust-covered painting of His Majesty, Haile Selassie, reigning monarch of Ethiopia.
By the time I reach Berhane, we've hit the Ferris wheel. I stop and draw a circle on the board. I make little dashes for seats and add stick figures with round faces and curly hair. I step back like Picasso and decide my masterpiece looks like a fuzzy alarm clock with whiskers. I tell the class the wheel goes round and round and people ride on it.
"Why do they do that?" Menghistu asks.
"Because it's fun." I point to the highest spot on my hairy circle. "On a clear day, you . . . uh, you can see forever from up there." Thank you, Barbara Streisand.
"Sir?" This from Zerai who sits in the back and likes to heckle me. "Can we read about the camel?"
The Ship of the Desert is the seventh story listed in the table of contents, and I tell Zerai we'll get there soon. Some students shift in their seats, their plastic sandals scratch the tile floor like fingernails on my chalkboard. Others chat with neighbors or sit quietly with expressionless faces.
"Yes, Yamane?"
"In the desert, water is more precious than gold."
"The camel," says Tefari, "can walk miles without water," and I think this is a really good thing but not today. My lesson plan is written. We're almost to the sideshow, about to buy some cotton candy, then take a short quiz. Yet given the noise level in the classroom, I know it's not going to happen. I capitulate. We read about the camel.
The students take turns. Their reading is fluid and pronunciation clear. They ace the vocabulary. Ditto the comprehension questions.
In days to come, we read about supermarket shopping, ceramics in Dresden and trick or treating in Ohio. I ask them questions. They blow the answers. They ask for the camel story. Again.
Thoughts ping-pong in my head.
I hate the camel story.
But the students need to connect with their experience.
They also need to broaden their knowledge of the world.
But they need to experience success.
And so I compromise. Each day we read a new story, then return to the camel.
They love it.
I suffer.
*****
The day of my teaching evaluation arrives. The Principal and Vice Principal occupy benches at the front, displacing six students to the back of the room where they lean against the windowsills and wave outside to their classmates engaged in a soccer match.
I'm wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt and narrow tie. Sweat drizzles from under my arms and down my sides.
"Sir?"
"Yes, Zerai?"
"Can we read about . . .?"
"No, not today. We have a special lesson for Ato Tadesse and Ato Yohannes." I study my notes on the six wives of Henry VIII. Jeez, even the British can't sort them out.
"Today," I begin, "we won't be reading about space travel, foreign cuisine or swinging London." My evaluators nod and smile, perhaps at the mention of our very mod curriculum. I look out over the class, then lower my head like Anne Boleyn before her executioner. I've had it. I know it. My students know it.
I flip quickly through the pages to chapter seven, take a deep breath then let it out. "Okay, we're going to read about the camel."