Babyhood

One Thursday I spent the morning with Pauline’s class by prior arrangement with her teacher Pierre. He had asked me to come in and bake biscuits with the children for decorating their Christmas tree. I arrived armed with all my baking equipment and the school provided the ingredients. Pauline was very proud to have me in her classroom, but she was rather possessive and wouldn’t let go of my leg for half an hour. She was very cross with the other children when they tried to look into my bags of baking things.

There are 24 three year olds in her class, but luckily I only had to cope with eight or so at a time, while the others got on with a different activity. I managed to let them all have a turn at spooning flour in the bowl, beating eggs with a fork and kneading the dough, but my God it was stressful! I was sadly lacking eyes in the back of my head! While I had my attention on Théo, Gaston was pouring flour on the floor, Zoe was fighting with her neighbour, Julie broke an egg on the table, and all of them invariably put my measuring spoons and cookie cutters in their mouths. When the dough was mixed we had to let it rest in the fridge for 20 minutes, I was able to sit down and watch my daughter participate in the serious business of her education.

The children all lined up and formed a little train to go down the corridor to the toilet. Afterwards they danced and sang in a big hall, it was delightful. Then some of them went outside to play while I took a group to roll out the dough. The part they liked best was stamping out the shapes with the cookie cutters, of course. It was a big success and the nicest part was having the young student teachers to help tidy up! But it took all morning to make 4 dozen cookies and I had a booming headache at the end of it. Those little children are so noisy and run around non-stop. I will never, ever, be a teacher, even in a future reincarnation