Teddy bears!

In one care package I opened in September I found eight pages of teddy bear stickers. Of all animals, bears, the creature I am least able to explain but most often find myself needing to explain. I still remember a ninth grade maths lesson last year where I thought I could quickly give {bears in The Gambia} as an example of {}, but no. The question, "What is a bear?" quickly complicated my example.

Then there are the bears that appear in the American textbooks I share with neighborhood kids, the bears on the Sierra Club calendar, the bears tumbling through forests and snowdrifts in assorted postcards…

I decided to do an experiment. I gave the ninth grade students a pretest (this was not part of the experiment, I would’ve given them a pretest in the absence of stickers). After marking the tests I affixed a teddy bear sticker to each one. I returned the papers and listened for the response:

“Miss Jallow, how is five the answer to number one?”
“Miss Jallow, Fulay is absent. I can take her paper.”
“Miss Jallow, explain number twelve.”

Only when the bell rang did I overhear one student remark, in Pulaar, “Look a baby.”