Sam has been sitting in on my classes this week. Isabel has some sort of summer pre-school, but Helen is working and there’s no other solution. I guess next week they’re staying with the grandparents at the cottage, and then Sam has football camp and then it’s back to school time. But this week, which is blessedly over tomorrow, he is mine.
There’s a positive side. He’s an extremely enthusiastic student and very talkative. He certainly livens things up. In fact, I wish all of my students were as open and willing to talk, as willing to play every game with extreme enthusiasm, even cheating to try to win, as eager to show off their knowledge.
But he wears me out. I’m trying to concentrate on teaching English, but I still have to periodically (like every couple of minutes) tell him to get off the table, to sit down, to let someone else have a turn to talk, not to eat ALL the grapes (although, as he pointed out, everybody else was just too slow). Also, on Monday we played a game which I think is sort of a lame English exercise but a pretty good time killer, and a bit of variety. There are cards with the names of famous people. One person will pick a card and then everybody else has to guess who they are. Sam embraced this game with enthusiasm. Once we got home, he made up his own cards. He wants to play it before he goes to bed. And he’s insisted on playing it every day since in class.
I’m real proud that he’s intellectually ambitious and competitive but, damn, I am sick of that game.
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