Because I teach beginners, I have the same class for both periods. In between, I almost always give them a break. They're only human, after all. I'm not John King, so I don't sit around plotting how to make their young lives more rigorous. During the break, they ran out as one. They were fascinated by the snow, playing with it, making snowballs, and getting incredibly wet.
It's amazing to see my teenage students turn into children, running around as childlike as my 3-year-old niece. Sometimes my kids flock to those who speak their own language, but on this day there were no barriers. There was no language. There was just the sheer happiness and exhilaration of something new, something they hadn't seen for a long time, something they had maybe never seen.
Some of them grabbed their prohibited phones and iPads from their hiding places and had me photograph them. I went out without my coat and came in as wet as the kids. Common sense had taken a 5-minute vacation. Several of them wandered in a little late. I couldn't really say anything about it, because there were no words.
There was just snow, and a bunch of people from different countries, from different backgrounds, from different religions and language groups all knew what it meant without speaking a word.
It was glorious.
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