Aside from the fact that Oman is seriously lacking on the affordable English-medium school front, and I am doing a little something about that, this post has very little to do with Oman. For those of you who troll the blog in order to live vicariously through me, sorry, this one is a bit of a downer. I promise the next blog will deal with the new housemaid or the return of the Big Car, or something equally expatty.
No, this blog is about The School and the six children I pack into it every day.
That's right, my little school has grown again to six warm bodies, with two tweeny girls in to replace the two boys who left at the end of last year for greener pastures. Our school, which last year was pure insanity punctuated by small stretches of intense concentration, has become a place of surface calm. However, with the introduction of more girls, it is now also a sounding place for anxieties great ("My mom is so down today") and small ("I think my armpits stink. Do you have any deodorant I can borrow?")
Silas, who never enjoyed being part of the masculinity movement last year, has asked twice recently when we are going to get more boys. "Honestly, Silas? You didn't even like having boys here last year. They were too loud for you, remember?" And then he remembers and drifts off to bemoan the fact that he has to spend several hours every day bending to someone else's will, with that someone being me.
Ya' know, I just want to put this on the table right here...girls are a whole different ball of wax from boys. Perhaps my late realization of this fact is one of the reasons that the international schools here have been loathe to give me any consideration at all in their hiring over our two years here.
But boys...boys go for long stretches without noticing anything aside from their impulses--whether that is to jump on the nearest boy or spray water on the cat sauntering by. And then they will buckle down for fifteen to twenty minutes of glorious and intense concentration, pounding through an hour's worth or work in record time. They roll all over the floor, fiddle with tidbits, clap loudly, fart, scream, and generally raise the dead, but they get their stuff done without much more than loud noises.
Then there are girls. Girls want to discuss everything, intensely negotiating several facets of the assignment before anything has even begun. Then they will sometimes commence their work by commenting on their general inability to do what is in front of them. They comment on how stupid they are, or act the cheerleader, telling one another to be confident in their abilities. They hem and haw and chit and chat. Finally, in the end, they get on with it and finish their work very competently, usually with a flourish and an extra spritz of deodorant, just for good measure.
In my ongoing endeavor to console myself that this is all good, I have been cruising other home schoolers' blogs as well as teachers' blogs for the answer to the never-answerable query: Is this girl thing normal? And the thing is, I don't find much commentary on this phenomenon. I do find lots of talk about teaching boys but I don't find much on the girl thing.
Strangely enough, this negotiatory behavior seems normal for my five girls--it's beginning to feel like a compulsion, this rearranging their thinking and developing their communication abilities while they chatter amongst themselves. And their chatter is somewhat exhausting, full of language that suggests they are both doubting their abilities and supporting and encouraging one another--like a manic school day each and every day without the option for medication.
I am intrigued by these girly girls as I am not sure I ever was one. At any rate, by the end of each day I am fairly exhausted by the split-personality mood they set and, thus, I think I just drooled on myself. Don't worry, happens all the time.
No, this blog is about The School and the six children I pack into it every day.
That's right, my little school has grown again to six warm bodies, with two tweeny girls in to replace the two boys who left at the end of last year for greener pastures. Our school, which last year was pure insanity punctuated by small stretches of intense concentration, has become a place of surface calm. However, with the introduction of more girls, it is now also a sounding place for anxieties great ("My mom is so down today") and small ("I think my armpits stink. Do you have any deodorant I can borrow?")
Silas, who never enjoyed being part of the masculinity movement last year, has asked twice recently when we are going to get more boys. "Honestly, Silas? You didn't even like having boys here last year. They were too loud for you, remember?" And then he remembers and drifts off to bemoan the fact that he has to spend several hours every day bending to someone else's will, with that someone being me.
Ya' know, I just want to put this on the table right here...girls are a whole different ball of wax from boys. Perhaps my late realization of this fact is one of the reasons that the international schools here have been loathe to give me any consideration at all in their hiring over our two years here.
But boys...boys go for long stretches without noticing anything aside from their impulses--whether that is to jump on the nearest boy or spray water on the cat sauntering by. And then they will buckle down for fifteen to twenty minutes of glorious and intense concentration, pounding through an hour's worth or work in record time. They roll all over the floor, fiddle with tidbits, clap loudly, fart, scream, and generally raise the dead, but they get their stuff done without much more than loud noises.
Then there are girls. Girls want to discuss everything, intensely negotiating several facets of the assignment before anything has even begun. Then they will sometimes commence their work by commenting on their general inability to do what is in front of them. They comment on how stupid they are, or act the cheerleader, telling one another to be confident in their abilities. They hem and haw and chit and chat. Finally, in the end, they get on with it and finish their work very competently, usually with a flourish and an extra spritz of deodorant, just for good measure.
In my ongoing endeavor to console myself that this is all good, I have been cruising other home schoolers' blogs as well as teachers' blogs for the answer to the never-answerable query: Is this girl thing normal? And the thing is, I don't find much commentary on this phenomenon. I do find lots of talk about teaching boys but I don't find much on the girl thing.
Strangely enough, this negotiatory behavior seems normal for my five girls--it's beginning to feel like a compulsion, this rearranging their thinking and developing their communication abilities while they chatter amongst themselves. And their chatter is somewhat exhausting, full of language that suggests they are both doubting their abilities and supporting and encouraging one another--like a manic school day each and every day without the option for medication.
I am intrigued by these girly girls as I am not sure I ever was one. At any rate, by the end of each day I am fairly exhausted by the split-personality mood they set and, thus, I think I just drooled on myself. Don't worry, happens all the time.
