The first is a family with two boys, Lucas (9) and Santi (6). I'm teaching Lucas all things related to cooking, because the kid loves to cook elaborate meals like paella and pizza from scratch. At nine years old. He gets visibly excited talking about garlic and different types of lettuce that I didn't even know existed. Santi is really adorable, but really difficult to teach. We look at a calendar and practice the days of the week and he says "Monday, Wednesday, seventeen!" and giggles. I ask him what his favorite food is and he says "koala". (The week before we talked about animals and I mentioned that koala was the same in English and Spanish. Apparently that's the only one he remembered. And no, they do not consume koala meat in Spain). He looks exactly like the Jerry McGuire kid, but with thick red glasses. Basically like this:
I would love to teach him how to say "My next door neighbor has three rabbits" and show his mom after the class, but I have a feeling the humor would be a little lost on her...
The newest kids class I have is with two girls (finally!) named Sara and Laura. Sara's 8 and Laura's 10. They're family friends of Javier and Guillermo, the "original" boys, and are the only two naturally blonde and blue eyed Spanish/Catalan children I've seen. Just like J and G, they have very different personalities. Laura is very reserved and studious. She can spell words like "stomachache" better than most Americans could. Sara is a wind-up toy, and a little sneaky. Yesterday we were playing a memory game where we had to turn over pairs of verbs and their matching pictures. As I was explaining the game with the cards all laid out, she kept conspicuously ducking under the table, and it took me a second to realize what she was doing: looking up under the glass table to see the pictures! She made a big show of having to think and decide about which cards she wanted to choose, and miraculously picked a pair the first time! We set a no dirty cheaters policy very soon after that. During class with Laura, Sara bounces around the room and peeks through the kitchen window, asking when we're going to play Simon Says. Which brings me to the title of the post.
In addition to the words "sit down" and the song "head, shoulders, knees, and toes," every child in an English class seems to know the game Simon Says from day 1. Not only that, they'll do whatever this "Simon" character tells them to do, and will immediately snap into Good Behavior Mode if the threat of a Simon Says-less class is dangled in front of them. It's a great learning tool (except when it's Javier's turn and asks me how to say put your finger in your nose), but it's a little distracting when 5 minutes into class Santi starts with "play Simon Says? play Simon Says?" with a mesmerized look in his eyes. And it's a little disconcerting during a time of crisis to know that my position could just as easily be filled with this guy:
As fun as it is teaching the kids, the adults have their moments, too. At the risk of trying to explain "you-had-to-be-there" situations, here's some recent things that made me laugh from my pre-intermediate business class. This is my only class where the students want to pretty much go straight through the book, but sometimes I try to enhance some exercises and make things more interesting by straying from the page. For example, when we were learning the names of household appliances, I had them explain the basic uses for each one, like "The broom cleans the floor". In the end, we had a list like "The refrigerator keeps my beer cold" and "The vacuum scares my son". I asked them about their least favorite chores and who did what in the house, and one woman, Anna, said with a straight face something like "My ex-husband and I did everything equal, 40/40". I thought for a second and said, "Do you mean 50/50?" a she said "Oh, yeah!". We all started laughing and decided that the other 20% of her house just stayed dirty. Then today I was teaching them how to give directions, and I played the role of the lost English-speaking tourist. After writing up all the relevant words and phrases like "go straight," "change lines," and even teaching them the nifty trick of using the "L" of your thumb and pointer finger to remember which hand is left, they decided that the best thing to do is tell the person to walk to the end of the street and ask someone else how to get there.
That's all for now. My camera stopped working, so I don't have any new pictures to share, but I'm hoping to get a new one soon! Hasta entonces!
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