Take notes, Jerry....please...

Jerry never takes notes. I have to force him to write anything in his notebook.

new vocab? don’t need.

new sentence structures? don’t need.

needless to say that I practically need to be on top of him to make sure that he even writes something to remember the homework assignment.

I guess the pen he’s got is really heavy.

In anticipation that we will have a special Christmas lesson today, the homework assignment that Jer got last week was “Find out about Santa Claus, and explain how do you think he is able to handle such a miraculous workload of delivering presents to everyone in just one night. I was hoping to get someting about elves and robots. maybe a time-worp thing. Jerry loves superhero stuff.

So the kids are sitting at my office, they have a box of mini sneakers bar each, that I bought them. there is a small christmass tree on he table...

We just finished the reading comprehention bit. Now we get to oral exercise. The fun part.

“So...Jerry..Let’s start with you.. are you ready for your homework? talk about Santa?”

“Yes. no problem , I am ready to talk about her”

“Her?” I ask. it could be a simple mistake. pronouns in English are confusing...

“Yes..she...I..mean..her..her!” he says and smiles.

maybe a post-modernist thing? is Jerry a Feminist?

Fine. I’ll play along.

“Ok. Jerry, Let’s have it.”

“Well...Santa Claus is a beutiful woman. She lives with her stepmom and her three evil stepsisters. ”

hold on buddy...I think that you are either the most imaginative twelve-year old in history, or there is something wrong here.. but I will not interrupt him again. I must make sure that I remember it all so I can give him comments later.

“So?”

“Santa, She lives with the sisters. they make her clean the house, do the laundry, feed the animals, cook. while the mother and her stepsisters just sit around. poor girl...”

“And?”

“And one day, they get an invitation to the ball..”

Oh. that’s it. I had enough.

“So..Jerry. are you sure you know the homework? the one for today?”

“Yes. Talk about Santa Claus. ”

“Talk about Santa Claus...right..”

“And..and..she goes to the ball..with the help of the fairy godmother”

“And..she loses the glass slipper?” I offer

By this time, Tiger, who is Jerry’s study partner, can’t keep it together any longer and informes Jerry about the big mistake in Chinese. Jerry does not give up. he will not admit defeat.

“Yes.... She loses her glass shoe.... but....but since then, she goes every year, along with the the fairy godmother and deliver presents for all the kids.” he says. and smiles in triumph. I can’t get him down. he is a Macgiver of storytelling. Just whip out that metaphoric Swiss army knife and get to work. He will go far with a mind like that..

“And then?” I prod him. At least let’s have some fun. see how long he can go. Tiger is going crazy.

“She goes around from house to house. She checks that they all have their shoes. if they don’t, she gives them shoes.. The bad kids, get bad shoes, the good kds get good shoes. sometimes she goes through the window, sometimes she takes the elevator. ”

“And the fairy godmother?”

“She lives in the north pole! she gives glass shoes to kids that do a good homework”.

After the fun is over and the tale is spun out and stretched out as far as it could go, I check Jerry’s notebook. He only wrote in Chinese, and not even a full sentence. This guy is impressive in a way. But I really need to get him to actually work. check new vocabulary and stuff like that onine... prepare. So, for next week, I ask them to give ideas for recycling plastic bottles , with an eye to what to do after we got a lot of junk from the Christmas party.

But this time, I made sure that he wrote exactly what I wanted, and verified with Tiger that he wrote the homework assignment in Chinese as well. God knows what he would tell me if I didn’t...