Deja Vous Part Deux

So a bit of the difficulty of this teaching scenario is that there are a handful of elementary students that know me as Jenn… like my friends Darci and Paul’s son, Max, who is 5 and won’t do anything unless you give him good reason to believe this it really is the best idea ever. And there kind of has to be a little something in it for him too… like, perhaps, being in on a secret that NO ONE else has the privilege of knowing… which is the route I took when prepping him for his music class experience the next day… the one I would be subbing. I said, “Max, tomorrow I will be in your music class, but no one knows my name is Jenn, so my name tomorrow has to be ‘Miss Swift’ “ Because Max would be the kid that, because he knows my name is Jenn, would call me Jenn and not call me Miss Swift like the other kids should just because… and we'd have to have a discussion about it. So it was best to do the prep work necessary. Max also speaks “adult” very well and feels it is important to be on par with you, because, well, truth be told, kids his age are really beneath him. So Max played along the next day. He did very well, although every time he called me “Miss Swift” it was like an inside joke to him… Except, that’s all out the window this week because he got home from last Tuesday’s class and this was the conversation he had with his mom…

“Here’s the thing…” Max says. “I asked everyone and they all know her name is Jenn. They all knopw. We don’t have to keep it a secret!”

So, we’ll see how Kindergarten goes this week.