How Tía Lola Learned to Teach (4 page)

Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente
The sleeping shrimp is carried away by the current

Juanita’s head is in the clouds. She sits in her third-grade classroom, riding a unicorn from medieval times. She tries to add all the numbers on the board and ends up going down a sixty-foot rabbit hole. She gets up to answer a question and is suddenly airborne on a magic carpet, headed for the sultan’s court. But wait … someone is calling her name.

“Juanita! Earth to Juanita!” Ms. Sweeney is saying. The class laughs. Juanita’s face burns. She knows her very nice teacher would never purposely embarrass her. Neither does she, Juanita, mean to be rude in any way.

A little later, Ms. Sweeney goes from desk to desk, checking on each student’s penmanship exercise. But Juanita has not finished even the first line. She was just now trying to escape from forty thieves and having a very hard time riding on a camel.

At afternoon recess, Ms. Sweeney asks Juanita to stay behind for a few minutes after everyone has gone out. “Is something wrong, Juanita? Everything okay at home?”

Juanita shakes her head that nothing is wrong, then nods that everything is okay at home.

“I thought your aunt was going to start teaching us Spanish.” It has been a week since Tía Lola’s visit.

“She’s practicing,” Juanita explains. “She says she has to learn a lot more if she expects to be a one-eyed queen in the land of the blind.”

Ms. Sweeney smiles uncertainly. “I see,” she says at last. But even if Juanita had only one eye, she’d see that Ms. Sweeney doesn’t understand what Juanita means at all.

How does Juanita convince her teacher that she is not having a problem?

In fact, a super, fantastic, extraordinarily wonderful thing has happened: Juanita has fallen in love with reading! Of course, she has been reading for ages, like since kindergarten, but it was always hard work, sounding out words and stuff. But now reading is her favorite thing in the world! She looks at a page and the words all link
together, and it’s like a string of Christmas lights that come on when you replace the one little bulb that wasn’t working.

The words make up sentences, and the sentences take her deeper and deeper inside a story. Once she gets started, Juanita can’t stop. The story keeps going and pulling her along even after she has closed the book. She sits in the classroom, daydreaming.

“Juanita!” Ms. Sweeney is calling her again.

Slowly, Juanita descends on her hot-air balloon. She has been around the world in eighty days and has so much to tell, but all Ms. Sweeney wants to know are the names of the states bordering Idaho.

Ms. Sweeney sends a note home with Juanita. Mami tears open the envelope and reads, the little line between her eyebrows deepening.

“Am I in trouble?” Juanita wants to know. But her
mami
just looks at her daughter closely before shaking her head slowly.

“Is Ms. Sweeney upset that I forgot to finish my homework?” This has been happening a lot, but Mami doesn’t need to know the exact number of times.

“It’s nothing.” Mami folds the letter and puts it back in the envelope, then gives Juanita a brave smile.

“Is it about not sharing my animals?” Juanita tries again. One day last week, Juanita took her two stuffed
dinosaurs to school, but she wouldn’t let anyone play with them because they were actually keeping her company as she flew in a magic tree house back to prehistoric times.

“No,
amorcito
, love. I told you, it’s nothing.”

“But it’s got to be about something, Mami,” Juanita protests.

Mami hesitates. Then, out of the blue, she asks Juanita, “You’re not worried about … the divorce or anything?”

Juanita shakes her head. Of course, she wishes her parents hadn’t divorced. But Juanita hasn’t been worried about it or anything else until right now, when her
mami
won’t tell her what’s in her teacher’s letter.

“Well, then, let’s not start worrying about a silly note.” Mami laughs a phony laugh that doesn’t convince Juanita at all.

“So is it about arguing with Ofie?” Juanita persists. After Tía Lola’s visit, Juanita and Ofie had a disagreement about who spoke the best Spanish, Mexicans or Dominicans.

Mami shakes her head again. At this rate, Mami is going to find out all of Juanita’s secrets before Juanita ever learns what is in Ms. Sweeney’s letter.

Juanita finds Tía Lola in her attic room, hunched over her Spanish books. Every night after supper, Tía Lola has been excusing herself and going upstairs to study. She
has to learn lots more before she can begin teaching. It used to be that Tía Lola would think up such fun things to do, like putting on Dominican music and teaching Juanita and her
mami
some hip-swirling dance steps. Or she’d tell one of her wonderful stories that were as good as opening up a favorite chapter book and reading about some adventure. Or, if Rudy came over, they’d make piñatas to hang in his restaurant in the shape of every animal imaginable.

Now all Tía Lola wants to do is cram her head full of information so she’ll be smart enough to teach in school.

But the minute Tía Lola spots her niece at the door, she closes her books.
“¿Qué hay, Juanita?”
she asks. No matter how busy she is, Tía Lola always has time to ask how her little niece is doing.

Juanita explains that her teacher sent a letter home. “I think Ms. Sweeney is upset with me. But Mami won’t tell me exactly why. Maybe Mami’ll tell you?” Juanita looks up hopefully.

“She might. But then she might not. Or she might tell me but then make me promise not to tell.” Tía Lola is half talking to Juanita and half talking to herself. She narrows her eyes as if the answer to this problem is so far away, she has to look hard to spot it. Finally, she does. “I think the only solution is for me to start my Spanish classes. That way, if there is a
problema
in your class, I will help
la señorita
Sweeney solve it.”

With her aunt there, Juanita will surely climb back
into Ms. Sweeney’s good graces. Besides, Juanita is going to make an extra-special effort not to be distracted by the stories in her head. It’s the least she can do to show Tía Lola how grateful she is for coming to her aid like a medieval knight in one of Juanita’s favorite books.

Tía Lola is welcomed back with clapping and cheers. Her colorful clothes brighten up the gray winter day. Her smile is contagious. And she has come up with the best lesson plan ever: a Spanish treasure hunt!

First, they’ll spend several weeks learning all the words and phrases that will appear as clues. Then, on the day of the hunt, during their morning recess, Tía Lola and Ms. Sweeney will hide clues all over the room. Whichever team finds the card that says
“tesoro”
will be the winner of a special surprise Tía Lola will bring to class.

Milton’s hand goes up, but Tía Lola has a way of figuring out his questions before he even asks them.
“Tesoro,”
she says, writing the word on the board.

Ofie calls out, “It means ‘treasure.’ ”

“But what is the treasure going to be?” Milton wants to know.

“¡Una sorpresa!”
Tía Lola answers.

“It’s going to be a surprise,” Ofie translates.

A surprise treasure for the winning team. Wow! The whole class breaks out again in spontaneous clapping.

“Why can’t school always be this fun?” Milton asks. He has not raised his hand, but then, this is not really a question.

Ms. Sweeney’s forehead does not wrinkle up at this complaint. She has been so relaxed since Tía Lola started coming to her class. In fact, the two teachers huddle together in the front of the room, planning and plotting. Amazingly, each one seems to understand what the other is saying without a whole lot of translating.

For weeks on end, Tía Lola goes over Spanish vocabulary and sayings, mostly without Juanita’s help. Oh, sometimes Juanita will pitch in when she’s not too busy daydreaming.

Every night after supper, Tía Lola locks herself in her bedroom in order to work on the surprise treasure. It’s okay, because Juanita has a lot of reading to do before Mami makes her turn off the lights.

Finally, the day of the hunt arrives.

“So remember,” Ms. Sweeney reminds the class. “You’ll be divided into two teams. The second-grade team will be led by Ofie, the third-grade team by Juanita.” Much cheering and clapping.

Juanita is pulled back to the classroom. What just happened? She’d better not ask or Ms. Sweeney will know that Juanita has not been paying attention. How could she, when she has been standing in a huge crowd,
watching the emperor parade by without any clothes and wondering if she should speak out?

“Since they both know Spanish, they can help their teams with the clues and rules,” Ms. Sweeney concludes.

Juanita is supposed to be the leader of her team and she isn’t even sure how the game works! She’ll be a blind queen in the land of the one-eyed! When Milton’s hand goes up, Juanita secretly hopes that her classmate has a question about the rules so that Ms. Sweeney will have to go over them one more time.

But Milton has been listening carefully for weeks. In fact, every day he greets Juanita with
“Hola, Juanita. ¿Cómo estás?”
instead of “Hello! How are you?” Yesterday, he actually hollered,
“¡Hola, camarón!”
Juanita didn’t have a clue what a
camarón
was. She had meant to ask Tía Lola when they got home, but she forgot.