“Okay, everybody, let’s put away our math,” Mr. Spence said. “I want you to get out your reading book. It’s time for silent reading.”
Everybody instantly did what he said. He hardly ever needed to repeat himself. At first I thought it was because everybody was scared of him. I know I was scared of him at first. He was huge, and when he gave us the I-mean-business look, I don’t think anybody, kid or adult, ever messed with him.
Simon had told me Mr. Spence used to be a professional football player. I could see that, because he looked like he used to play football. But I quickly discovered that kids listened to him just because. He could have been scary, but he wasn’t. He was really nice. Kids did what he asked because he asked them to. Maybe it was the way he treated us. He was an adult and we were just kids, but he treated us with respect.
“Okay, before we begin,” he said, “I want everybody to repeat after me.”
I knew what was coming next. Everybody knew. He always did the same thing before silent reading.
“The more you read,” he called out.
“The more you read!” we all said back.
“The more you know,” he said.
“The more you know,” we repeated.
“The more you know,” he said. His voice got louder with each phrase.
“The more you know!” we yelled back.
“The further you go!”
“The further you go!” we yelled out.
“So read, read, read!”
“So read, read, read!” we screamed.
“That’s what I love!” he said. “Now get reading!”
I’d never known a teacher who was so excited about reading or who got students so excited about it. It was as if we were preparing for the reading Olympics. Mr. Spence had a running total of the books we’d read. The list ran around the walls of our classroom.
He wanted us to love reading because he loved reading too. While we read, he read as well. He would sit up front, his feet up on his desk, and read. Sometimes it was a newspaper, or Sports Illustrated, which he said was about the best thing in the world. He also read novels— some were adult books but others were kids’ novels. Sometimes he read books that students recommended to him. He also read poetry and short stories and technical sorts of journals, comic books and graphic novels. He said reading was reading; all we had to do was find something we liked.
I knew he was a teacher and trying to be a good role model for us. But I could also tell Mr. Spence simply loved to read. Then again, who didn’t?
My eyes strayed up to the big posters on the bulletin board behind his desk that displayed the words for Hello in fifteen different languages, the same fifteen languages spoken by the kids in our class. Some were easy for me to make out, but others were written with letters or symbols that were like little pictures or strange marks. I knew one was Korean and another Chinese— no, not Chinese—Mandarin or Cantonese. There was also Cambodian, Arabic and Russian.
I tried to imagine how hard it would have been for those kids to come to this country and not speak or read English. It would have been so hard. Amazingly, they all seemed to pick it up fast. There was a kid in our class who had been in the country for less than a year, and he read almost as well as I did.
I took French, so I understood a little bit about learning a different language. But there were words that were the same in French as in English. Not just the letters of the alphabet, but words that we had borrowed from each other like croissant, auto, café and pizza. No, pizza was Italian.
Looking up at the words on the posters—those squiggles and symbols and little drawings—I had no idea whatsoever what some meant. It really would have been hard for kids who came from places that didn’t share the same alphabet as we used.
“Taylor,” Mr. Spence said.
I’d been so lost in thought, I hadn’t noticed him coming over to my desk.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s time for silent reading, not silent staring into space.”
“I was reading,” I said. “I was reading the posters on the wall. I was trying to figure out which languages are which.”
He looked up at the posters. “That’s right. We didn’t say what languages they are. It should be written below. We need to fix that.” He walked to the front of the class. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Taylor has pointed out something we need to correct.” He gestured to the posters. “We have proudly displayed the languages of our class, but we have failed to proudly write which languages they are. Let’s take them down, one by one, and correct that.”
The first poster he pulled down was a word I was pretty sure I knew. It was in Spanish. We had kids from two different countries in South America, Bolivia and Chile. I remembered that almost all of South America spoke Spanish, not Bolivian or Chilean. Brazil was one of the exceptions, where they spoke Portuguese.
“That one is mine and Agnes’s,” Salvador said. “That is Spanish.”
I put up my hand.
“Yes, Taylor.”
“Could people also say the word again so we can hear it?”
“Again, a good suggestion. You are full of good ideas today,” Mr. Spence said.
Hearing him say that made me feel happy and kind of proud.
“Go ahead, Salvador and Agnes,” Mr. Spence said.
“Hola,” the two of them said together.
“Very good. Can you both say it once more, and then I’d like everybody to repeat it back to them,” Mr. Spence said.
When we all repeated the word back to them together, they smiled. It was as if we’d given them something, a gift, and maybe we had.
“I’m going to write Spanish underneath,” Mr. Spence said, “but I’m also going to write your two countries as well.”
We went poster by poster, language by language, with kids saying their native hello and the rest of us repeating it. Some were harder for me to say than others. The words or letters just wouldn’t form easily in my mouth. If that’s how it was for me, was it the same for someone learning to speak English?
Each time the class answered back, it seemed to make the person happy. Even kids who were shy smiled.
“And whose is this one?” Mr. Spence asked.
“That’s ours,” both Jaime and Dylan said.
I looked over at Simon, and he mouthed Mandarin to me.
“And that is Mandarin,” Mr. Spence said. “It is one of the two major languages spoken in China. The other is, of course…who has an answer?”
Hands shot up around the room, including that of Doris, who spoke Cantonese. This was fun, and it had been my idea!