what we should be talking about is ice cream flavors.

After a couple months of teaching, I kind of have the hang of it. Every day we learn a couple words, a sentence to use them in, and then I pass out a worksheet and the kids label the new vocabulary. Sometimes I design them on my computer, but most of my schools don't have printers, so most of my worksheets are homemade. And after the kids fill in the new words, they always ask the same question. "Can we color this?" And I love it, for four reasons.

1. Let's be honest: coloring kills a lot of time.

2. It's pretty flattering. My drawings of jeans and rain clouds and ball-point pens aren't masterpieces, but the kids think they look awesome, and it's kind of makes my day that they want to color them.

3. If someone has to color, I'm glad it's not me. Things look better colored but I HATE coloring. I joined the Coloring Club in fifth grade, at a particularly low point in my life I guess. Everyone in it was really awesome, and it didn't involve catching a softball or knowing whether or not Doc Martens were cool, so I thought, why not?

But when I showed up at our first meeting (a sleepover party) and we all compared coloring books, the other girls laughed so hard at my inability to stay in the lines that you could barely hear the Spice Girls cd playing.

"Ha-ha-ha!" I tested out my fake laugh. "I tricked you guys and brought a coloring book I did when I was little! As a joke!"
"Oh, thank goodness! We were going to say, if you really color this bad you definitely can't be in Coloring Club."
"No don't worry, I did this when I was three."
"WOW! That's impressive!"
"Did I say three? I meant, like, a normal age when someone would color at this level."
"Oh, ok that makes sense. Brooke you're hilarious! It's so funny to bring a coloring book you did when you were little, before you knew how to color!"

I never told anyone I had bought that coloring book the week before and spent many sleepless nights coloring as carefully as I could. I did tell them that I sprained my wrist in a fried egg accident and wouldn't be able to color for weeks, if not months. And that was the end of my Coloring Club membership.

4. Most of all, when they ask to color something, it reminds me that they're kids. School in France is so disciplined. And the kids are so quiet, so respectful, so not kids. They raise one finger to ask a question, use rulers to carefully underline titles in their notebook, and call their teachers "Master." Instead of having pen pals or decorating their classroom like a rain forest or designing the ideal spaceship, like I did in fifth-grade, they write long dictations in their immaculate notebooks, carefully blotting out badly-written letters with white-out.

For most of class, I feel like I'm not an elementary school teacher but an accountant, presenting an annual report to a group of shareholders. They listen carefully, taking copious notes as I present "bread," "apple," and "cheese." They adjust their ties. They nod politely.

And then, at the end of the lecture I pass out a bar graph of our spending, and they all raise their hands and ask "Excuse me, Brooke? Excuse me? Can we color this?"


Here's our latest worksheet. One kid made the ice cream pistachio and lemon ice cream with hazelnuts, and if that isn't awesome I don't know what is.