I have a dominantly speaking Spanish student in my class. He understands very little English. He knows a few phrases. I pull him at the end of every day for English language instruction. We go over the English alphabet, we learn frequent words, the numbers, the early things. He's very receptive and eager to learn, but the language is hard. I don't blame him! Anyway, he kept saying something funny in our first few lessons. I couldn't figure it out. Our conversation would go something like this (lets call my boy Luke):
Aleni: Okay, its time to get to work! Go get a pencil and paper!
Luke: Yes, Master (in English with very thick Spanish accent)
Aleni: *puzzled look* Master?
Luke had already walked away. I'm thinking, 'am I a slave driver?' I ignore it and we keep working. After a while we're done.
Aleni: Okay, time to clean up! That was our English lesson for the day.
Luke: Thank you, Master (In English again with thick accent).
Aleni: Hmmm...you're welcome?
Well, now that I've gotten to know him well over 8 weeks I've pieced together a few clues.
1.) Star Wars backpack
2.) He checks out Star Wars books from the library...every week.
3.) Star Wars shirts
4.) I've overheard him trying to explain the 'force' to his classmates
5.) The other day I caught him playing with a ruler calling it a light saber (In English)
So, today, now with all this information put together I've realized he has been calling me 'Master,' what a Jedi calls his teacher/mentor. I'm trying not to seem conceited. But technically, I AM his teacher. So, today we had our lesson plan like usual, however, our conversation was a little different:
Aleni: Okay! Its time to work!
Luke: Yes, Master.
Aleni: *sneaky grin* Yes, my Padawan.
Luke: *blinks* *huge grin*
Apparently, Star Wars is a universal language
4 comments:
so you hypothetically named the kid in your story Luke...like, the name of Luke Skywalker?
Excellent deductive skills. At first I figured he was calling you "master" because of how close it sounds to "maestro" (which is, of course "teacher" in Spanish). But you totally figured him out. Well done, my young padawan.
To Keishah: Yes, I called him Luke as in Luke Skywalker.
To Abinadi: Actually he calls me Profe, because in Tijuana they call teachers profesor/a.
lol that's beyond adoreable. excellent detective work, holmes! ;b
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