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Day: August 15, 2008

Talking

Friday 15 August 2008

The Girl has been talking more and more, though the developments are slow. She is, after all, learning two languages. She mainly favors English, but she does use a few Polish words, and as any child her age, she has some of her own inventions:

Polish Words
  • dać
  • uwaga
  • tam
English Words
  • hug
  • socks
  • shoe
  • milk
  • baby
  • juice
  • hot
  • wet
  • help
  • more
  • dog
  • pizza
  • down
L-isms
  • “Ba-ba” is banana.
  • “Moo-Moo” is her favorite cheese, aptly named as there’s a drawing of a cow on the package.
  • “Meow!” is cat.
  • “Shhhh” is sleep.
  • “Sha-sha” is outside.

The budding bilingualism can lead to amusement.

When K went to pick L up from daycare, L’s now-good friend, J, helped L gather her things. It’s a daily occurrence, usually looking for “Baby.” L, however, has become particularly fond of a little teddy bear (“miÅ›” in Polish) and that’s her daily companion.

K entered the room and immediately J, helpful as always, began running around the room, looking for the teddy bear, saying, “Misio! Misio!” And so our daughter is only 19 months old and already a language teacher.

On the way out, K told L she should say goodbye to the frog on the door mat.

“Powiedz ‘bye’ żabie,” K suggested.

“Bye, frog!” L responded.

Resources

Friday 15 August 2008

We often hear schools’ complaints about the lack of this or that resource. I always assumed that was because of lacking something more fundamental: money.

I found out yesterday how wrong that simplistic thinking could be.

My wife brought me a computer from her office some time ago. “It doesn’t have any memory,” she said, “And there’s no operating system installed, but maybe you can use it.”

Can I use it? Of course I can use it. No teacher complains about having too many computers for his students.

The plan was simple: at the beginning of the year, I would take some of the funding I get from the state for supplies, buy a half-gig of memory, load some form of Linux on it, and I’d have a new computer for my room.

In talking to a fellow teacher, though, I learned that it might not be so simple. I went to our school’s IT guy for clarification.

Short answer: sure, I can use it, but no student can touch it.

It seems we have a contract with a particular computer manufacturer that stipulates two things:

  1. Each computer for student use must be purchased through through Distributor X. That rules out using my computer.
  2. Each computer for student use must be running Windows XP. That rules out the closet full of laptops I discovered we have, sitting unused because they have Windows 2000 on them.

Now, it seems to me that if Computer Manufacturer X was really interested in educating students that they wouldn’t really care whether or not we use other computers or use other operating systems. It seems that teachers wouldn’t be punished for taking some initiative to get more materials for students.

But underlying that would be a mistaken understanding of the nature of the capitolistic drive, wouldn’t it?