Ander, My Cleverest Student

I'm only about one week into my first classes with Get English, but I can already tell that Ander, a 9-year-old boy, will be my cleverest student.

For one hour after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Ander and I hang out in his room. We talk about whatever comes to mind, from last night's soccer match to the tragedy of the Wisconsin Badgers losing the Rose Bowl (again), and of course most recently we have simply been getting to know each other. He's a typical 9-year-old boy. He loves to play soccer, watch Indiana Jones, and read Harry Potter (and actually, for a 9-year-old boy and a 23-year-old girl, we do have quite a bit in common).

He also loves technology. In fact, we spend a lot of our time playing with his Ipad (well, I play. He probably considers it very serious work). He shows me his Facebook (to which I asked, "Do 9-year-olds do that? Are you allowed to have a Facebook? And to which he replied, 'Yes' and 'Yes,' followed by a detailed discussion on the politics of Facebook and young boys). In our second class, we poked around Google Skype Maps, and he showed me different constellations, explaining that you can only see certain ones at specific times of the year from specific locations (I already knew that one). We also looked up Wisconsin on the map. I pointed out the Great Lakes and Madison, of course. But when I pointed at Kenosha, he immediately and rather nonchalantly pulled up an online, live surveillance camera which allows one to watch the inside of the Harley Davidson store in Kenosha (can you DO that?!)

Needless to say, I was, how should I put it, pretty freaked out at the nerdy capabilities of my youngest student. But I also quickly realized that he may have the highest language level of any of my students. He is my only student who correctly identifies the long 'i' sound (eeee) as the letter 'e' and not 'i," which Spaniards often confuse since the letter 'i' in the Spanish alphabet is pronounced 'eeee.' Also, not only is he always 'in the know' on the latest technology, but he is able to talk to me about it in English. He is, in fact, my only student who speaks with this level of fluency; freely and  fearlessly. He isn't afraid of making mistakes, and corrects them later if he does. He is curious and inquisitive, and the cleverest 9-year-old I have ever met.

And so, I think we will indeed enjoy our Tuesday/Thursday hangouts after school. And did I mention that sometimes he shares his after school cookies with me?