For the past two months or so, I've been teaching English to a group of 3 thirteen-year-old girls, who are in their last year of middle school. One of them is the daughter of a German woman in my choir, which is how I was put into contact with them. We spend an hour together speaking English, talking about whatever we want, and the idea is that they'll get a chance to practice speaking (they learn only grammar in school).
The cast of characters:
Matty, the half-German, half-Italian daughter of my choir-mate. She has grown up bilingual and is extremely gifted with languages, as I frequently tell her mom (her mom just rolls her eyes; I think she's OD'd on teenage girls). She understands everything I say and is often subjected to bizarre rules ("Matty, you have to be silent for 7 seconds every time you want to say something!") so that her two friends get a chance to speak.
Marta, one of her childhood friends. Marta looks like a fairy-tale character: she's almost as tall as me, super skinny, and has wispy blond hair and massive blue eyes that take up almost all of her face. She is sort of fairy-tale-like as a person, too, with lots of independent nature-related interests and spaced-out moments.
Sofi, the third Musketeer. She's more recognizable to me, as far as teenage girls go, because she wears her insecurities more visibly. She recently created a diet for herself that included the following rules: no pizza, lots of fruit (which she hates), take the stairs (this is an established rule despite the fact that her apartment is a walk-up and she takes the stairs anyway) and she has to drink water for 92 seconds at a time. At our last lesson the girls learned the verb "to pee", because Sofi had to use the bathroom 7 times after her water-drinking session.
The wonderful thing about conversation lessons is that you end up learning tons of stuff about your students - including the most unexpected tidbits of info - because your position as a "listener" means that they tend to open up more readily than they normally would. And I've discovered that 13 year olds, at least Italian ones, are totally adorable - they're slightly vain and insecure, but still young enough to want your approval and enjoy the attention of someone a bit older. And they're utterly bizarre and irrational, which makes them hilarious company.
One highlight stemmed from their frequent descriptions of Omar, a 16 year old high schooler whom they met through mutual friends. Among his shining qualities: he's Moroccan, he plays the guitar, he plays soccer, he's very sweet when they all chat online. And after a few weeks of their giggly descriptions, the girls actually dragged him to Matty's house one afternoon so that I could meet him before their lesson! I have to admit, for a 16 year old he was extremely polite and very handsome. Perhaps most endearingly, though, when it turned out that he actually had a crush on Matty, she became embarrassed and terrified and prayed for it to pass. Many of these boy conversations take place in front of unsuspecting, non-English-speaking parents, which is something that the girls seem to relish.
But it's not all boy talk. We also discuss their ballet competitions, their siblings, and the differences between Italian and American breakfasts. They've given me a little window into Italian life that otherwise I'd never have been able to experience; despite the many cultural and linguistic differences, they come from families not too different from mine (including violin lessons, younger sisters and organic groceries), and this familiarity makes the lessons interesting and poignant for me as well.
Tomorrow we'll be talking about Matty's recent breakup, and the girls' classical dance competition, along with some classmate of theirs who predicts the exact dates in which their high school friends' will be "doing it". I'll keep you posted...
