Teacher Moment

My student, Emily, made my day!

One of the things we do first thing in the morning is I ask each student how they are and they tell me why they feel that way.

Me: Emily, how are you today?
Emily: I'm happy today.
Me: Why?
Emily: Because yesterday I ate a grape.

I almost jumped up and squealed with joy. Not only did she say "a grape," and not just "grape," but she said "ate." ATE!!! Usually they say, "Yesterday I eat a grape" and I have been teaching them to say "ate" instead. I've been trying to get them to use the past tense for months, and today she did it ON HER OWN with no prompting whatsoever!!

They were pretty confused when I first explained the concept of the past tense to them. I said, "In English, when we talk about yesterday, we say 'ate' not 'eat'." Louie said, "Why?"

"So you know I mean yesterday, not today. So we change eat to ate."

"But why?" Sorry kid, I don't know why we conjugate verbs. I wasn't there when it started. I may be old, but I'm not that old. If I could choose, I'd never change them either.

Another thing I couldn't explain: I'm teaching the kids the words to "Mama Mia." Teacher May has a CD of British children singing pop songs, and we've been listening to it lately and the kids are obsessed with Mama Mia and YMCA. So I figured I should teach them the words. Maybe we'll do some dance moves too. But anyway, there's a line that goes, "There's a fire in my soul." The kids know fire, of course, so naturally, they want to understand where the fire is. So Enoch asks me what a 'soul' is.

I barely know how to explain soul to another adult, native English-speaker, let alone a five-year-old Taiwanese kid. I gave it my best shot but finally asked Teacher May for a translation. She said that was hard to explain in Chinese too, but she did, and eventually the kids seemed to understand. Woo! That was a tough one.

Anyway, I did get really excited when Emily said "ate" (maybe I did a tiny scream), and I gave her a high-five and told her how good it was that she said, "ate." So hopefully she'll continue and other kids will pick up on it too.

Hooray!!!