Lessons up in the air

Jeff Benson

“‘J’ is for Jill, jaguar, jelly and jester,” Brent Bordelon told a

jury of juveniles. “What else does the letter ‘J’ stand for?”

Like any good juggler would, Bordelon tossed around every idea the

kids threw at him -- from juice to James to jump, since “J” was the

letter of the week in his wife’s kindergarten classroom. Then he

tossed around all kinds of different things.

Bordelon, a TeWinkle Middle School physical education teacher,

juggled his own commitments last week by journeying next door to

California Elementary School in Costa Mesa and joining more than 50

students in Natalie Hall’s, Carrie Friedrich’s and Kerri Bordelon’s

kindergarten classes. But the kids were more jazzed with the variety

of colorful objects that flew with ease through his hands.

First, he tossed a red ball from one hand to the other and invited

several kids to do the same.

“That’s pretty impressive, right?” he modestly asked. “What? No?”

He added a green ball to his arsenal, eliciting an elated “Whoa!”

chorus from the cross-legged sitters.

“Easily impressed! My kind of crowd!” he said.

Several students were allowed to try juggling plastic bananas and

orange juice bottles, but their attempts proved unfruitful. Bordelon

picked up the slack, weaving aerial patterns of fuzzy fabrics and

plastic French fries in threes.

“I think it was cool with the ‘three’ thing,” Tommy Okey, 5, said.

“The French fries were funny.”

Before taking the kids outside to try on their own, Bordelon

offered a few tips to make the juggling concept easier to grasp.

“First, you’ve got to be patient with it,” he said. “You can’t

take it too fast. Toss one around a while, then maybe toss it a

little higher. My second tip is don’t look at your hands. If you look

at your hands, you can’t see where the ball is going. With juggling,

you have to keep your eyes on the ball.”

Kerri Bordelon laughed with her students as her husband donned a

goofy cape and antlers.

“He comes over on his lunch hour and does this for us,” she said.

“And sometimes our kindergartners go over to his school and do P.E.

with them. He gets really involved.”