A to B: Golriz Golkar Is Part of the Whole

It is a mild September day. I am still adjusting to my new school, new profession, new city. My students are kind, but I never feel I am reaching them. My confidence is waning terribly.

"Golriz? This is for you."

I'm gently startled by a voice from the playground. It is Joana, one of my third-graders.

She is a softspoken child whose baby face defies her serious demeanor in class. She hands me a folded piece of paper.

"Just something I made for you," she says. She skips off. It is a drawing of a flower with the message, "I think you are a great English teatcher (sic)." I tear up and look for her, but I can't see where she has gone.

Later that day, I introduce the class to the work of Pablo Picasso. I explain how geometric parts are used in the cubist style.

"What does 'geometric' mean?" one student asks.

I rotate slowly, asking if they can see both my eyes at once when I am standing in profile. Silence. I draw my version of Picasso's Portrait of Dora Maar on the whiteboard. The children begin making silly faces. I have humored them, but I am not convinced I have made my point.

The next morning, Joana approaches me. She hands me another piece of paper and skips off again. She has created my portrait. One eye up to the left. Lips down to the right. Broken, yet whole, as in cubism.

I am speechless.

When I find her at recess, I give her a hug. She looks down at the ground, her rosy cheeks now deeply flushed.

A new school year has begun, and Joana is my student again.

"Golriz, I need a good topic!" she exclaims in my afterschool poetry class.

Two third-graders begin talking loudly. "Young children, do not disturb her royal highness," Joana says, giving them a menacing look, "or you shall be chased away with my royal pen!"

"Royal pen!" I respond. "There's your topic!"

Joana begins writing the first of many "regal" poems. My English classroom transforms into a kingdom, as Joana writes about my stool (the throne) and our textbook (the Holy Book). I laugh each time I hear this and marvel at how much I am starting to believe it.

When June arrives, I congratulate her on another wonderful year.

"You know, you still owe me a prize for being class helper," she says quietly.

I had almost forgotten. I hand her a pen and notebook. She steps forward as if to give me a hug. Instead, she lingers for a moment and waves as she rushes off.

The scent of jasmine from the playground reaches me as I gaze out the window of my classroom. This fragrance will forever be linked in my memory to the beginning of a new school year. This year is particularly new for me, as I am now teaching second grade.

For my poetry unit, I ask Joana to recite her odes to my new students. She looks down at the floor and clears her throat. Before long, a soft voice delights us with verses on cheese and life in France. We thank her with a hearty round of applause. The next morning, my students hang up their coats and wrap me in a tight hug. It is always hard to tell apart the little hands. But this morning, two hands are bigger than the others. Joana lets go and begins to walks away. She pauses and smiles at me in a way I have never seen before. There is a glow in her eyes, and we wave like two old friends who have always been.

— Golriz Golkar, Ed.M.'07, teaches second-grade English at the Lycée Français La Pérouse in San Francisco. She and Joana, now in sixth grade, remain friends who discuss poetry.