Carmine (Car-mee-nay)

The first time I met Carmine, now almost five weeks ago, I was melted. Big dark eyes, sticky-out ears, shy smile. He was one of the few kids at Filippo Smaldone who didn’t talk at the top of his lungs. Actually, he barely speaks which is why I was asked to work with him. Carmine’s parents are deaf, but Carmine is hearing. The family is Romanian. The parents sign at home, Romanian sign language, not LIS. And they are worried about their son, and about his language development because they cannot provide a model for him. I felt a kinship with him immediately, as he is juggling four languages (about that in a bit) as I am, and I understand the desire to just not speak sometimes, to seek a quiet corner to retreat to.

Initially, I had no idea what to do with him. He sat virtually mute in our first session. I just played around with some of the pictures that I had used with my ASL group. They depicted a typical day- waking up, brushing teeth, riding the bus etc. And I sang him a song about colors and rainbows that my first graders used to love. (*) Antonio told me he loves singing. I got him to repeat color words in English. I got a bit of a shock when he pronounced them without a trace of Italian accent. No “jello” for yellow, no “poopoo” for purple, but rather perfect American pronunciation (I can hear my British friends laughing here. Perfect American pronunciation. Oxymoron!).

Still, I was shaking my head a bit. This was unusual. What a great accent. I’m a great teacher. This is going well. Toward the end of the session, he starts to turn over the cards where the phrases matching the pictures are printed. He puts his finger under the words and reads, “good morning, “good afternoon”, “school bus” and so on.

To recap: Carmine is five, deaf parents from Romania, speaks barely a word of Italian, or anything else for that matter, and he appears to be reading in English effortlessly and with a perfect accent. As my father used to say, “I’m better than I think I am!” I have managed through osmosis or something to teach this kid to read in a foreign language! My head is spinning trying to figure out what’s going on.

I return Carmine to class. I tell Suor Piera, “He read all these words. All of them! He reads English!” She doesn’t look all that impressed. She nods. “Si, fa il bravo” (yep, he’s a good kid). Ok, I just don’t get this. At the end of the day, I see Antonio. I tell him about Carmine’s “epiphany”. ”

Antonio: Oh yes. His parents put him in front of English TV”.

Me: huh!

Antonio: He knows many songs. The shark song

Me: I don’t know the shark song. I’ve kind of been out of the business for a while.

Antonio: Yes, he knows more English than Italian.

Me: huh

Well, maybe I’m not so brilliant, but this kid surely is.

*An aside here. The lack of materials, of toys, manipulatives, children’s literature, anything, has been really frustratingly. Normally with a child like Carmine the first time I met him, I would set up some interesting toys and parallel play with him, narrating my play and his, to get us both feeling comfortable. But there is nothing. If I had it to do over I would pay for a second suitcase full of goodies.