How Do You Say That?

Today I was at Basic High School. East side of Henderson.  I subbed Spanish, so that was fun. My third period was a class of 8 native Spanish speakers, so I just made them talk to me in Spanish so I could practice. That was really fun. One of the boys in that class is from Cuba and has only lived here for a year and his accent was SO hard for me to understand.  Lots of dropped s's. We talked about their families, if they wanted to marry someone very American or someone more like from the countries they are from.

I have learned from taking attendance, not to have expectations about whether each name is a girl's name or a boy's name.  In fact, I'm trying not to think in terms of "Girl" or "Boy" when I even look at the kids because with some of them it's just too hard to tell.  Today I had a student named Isabell in my class who looked a lot like a boy.  I heard people in the class refer to this student as both him and her, so even calling certain kids something gender-specific can be dangerous. 

Sometimes (especially today) when I look at certain names on the attendance roll, I stop and say, "Wow, that's a mouthful." Usually the kid knows who they are and says their name for you, but it's fun to have a go at the names.

Here are a few of the more interesting names I ran across today:

Ja'myeishia
Keiajha
Ken nyrhia
Demonie
C'Yanna