This year's languages...

Many of the country's school-districts are still on summer-break--enjoy the pool/lake/beach while you still can, kids!--but here in Tucson, students returned yesterday...

...and so this is the first work-week-Friday of the new school-year...

Relatively smooth start. I'm at a new school this year. To paraphrase Seneca the Roman philosopher: 'change of workplace can impart new vigor to the mind'...

The past few years, I've worked at a very diverse school. In my new classroom, I don't have students from two dozen countries like I did before, but contrary to what some in the local community might think, the school is not elitist-and-therefore-non-diverse--to wit, the list of languages spoken in my students' homes:

English

Spanish

French

Arabic

Armenian

Chinese

Korean

Vietnamese

Swahili

Russian

Bengali

Swedish

Kikuyu

Tagalog

Portuguese

Some of the foreign countries where these students have lived and visited: Kenya, Togo, Uzbekistan, China, Korea...and, fun for me as a French teacher--many have been to Paris. (And no one has asked me "is Mexico City a country" yet...I'm not scheduled to teach Spanish this year...so far, at least...)

As for the 'trendy' names in this cohort--I have several Alexes, Briannas, Maddies, and Andies. (All the Andies are Asian...) The first year I taught (up in the Seattle area), I had one class with FIVE Sarahs; two were "Sarah Elizabeth"...and two of them were blonde.

Here we go.