The class structure is very clearly stapled to the bulletin board, laminated in the school colors, orange and blue. “Tune In! Warm Up! Learn and Try! Relaxation!” They know their sun salutation, are getting the poses down. They know what behavior keeps them on their orange spongy mats, what behavior leads them to sit out along the wall. I try to give everyone equal praise and attention. I try not to show I’m upset when I have to sit someone out for talking over me for the third time. I try not to laugh when the girls practice their seated spinal twist like a model posing for some hidden camera, ponytails thrown back, eyelashes fringing for the ceiling.

“Excuse me! Ms H!” a nailpolish-chipped finger is poking my waist. I look down into some pair of big eyes, asking some question that cannot wait until after class. This is First Grade, after all, and no one really wants to stay on a small plastic mat.
“Why is your hair orange?”
“Where does your mother live?”
I had forgotten. Prior to this job, kids were those little people being wheeled around by other people’s mothers on busy Manhattan streets. They were those small people climbing the high end furniture I was trying to sell their parents at the high end SOHO furniture store I worked in. I gave them smiles, I ran the other way.
Now I’m surrounded by them, poking me with questions.
 “How old are you?”
“Why do you always wear that shirt?”
“Who did you vote for?”
And I have questions of my own.  At what age do you realize how the world sees you and start to act accordingly?  These kids already know. They know if they are big or small for their age, or cute, or funny. They know how others react to them, and work their angle.
I wonder, also, how the girl in the 2nd row can be so consistently patient and quiet and peaceful when she’s surrounded by the most notoriously unruly class at school.  I wonder what combination of personality traits, past karmas, culture and upbringing cause some girls to treat new situations with reverence and others with rebellion.  I am wondering what kind of world we live in when a 7 year old says she feels fat, when an 8 year old can’t believe a black man would ever be president.
We reach everyone’s favorite part of class, savasana. The girls lay on their kid sized mats, sprawled like snow angels.  I spot the tough ones, the trouble-making ones, sucking their thumbs. And, I remember. Despite their larger than life antics and the challenges they’ve been posing me, they are just little kids. I come around and give them little foot rubs, and watch their lips smile around their little thumbs, hear them chuckle as I tickle their toes. I ring the bell, and they pop up.  We sing the Namaste song. I watch them run off in their stocking feet, sliding back for help with tying shoes.  Questions rain down on my head as I double-knot.
“Did we do a good job?”  I give the class a star on the yoga chart.  I silently give myself one.
**
P.S.
Sorry I haven’t been posting much.  Despite my new OCD like penchant for washing my hands and constant companion of Purel, I caught the bug going around the elementary school I work in and spent the week complaining about it!