Janine Teacher's New Class

I say all the time how cool my students are, and how much work they have to do every day, right?

Well, right now it's "summer vacation".

During "summer vacation", which lasts from July 22nd to August 20th, the students continue to attend classes. Usually, they have to stay at the school until around 10PM, but during "summer vacation" they get to leave around 9 PM- amazing!

During "summer vacation" the girls take classes with their regular teachers for extra help or to make up for a bad grade. They also take part in special classes, like the one I'm teaching right now about essay writing.

While I feel bad for the girls and their lack of a real summer vacation, I'm really enjoying this class. They picked 30 of the smartest girls to take it, they had to write an application form in order to be admitted and then they split them up into two 15 student classes. I teach them about different kinds of essays and how to appropriately express themselves in English (without using the ubiquitous electronic pocket dictionary).

Yesterday, I split the girls up into five groups of three. I gave them a random newspaper headline and told them to write me a story, as a group, about the headline and then present it to the class. Some of their stories were quite funny, and I don't think they would mind if I shared them with you!

Headline: Mother Goose, a Fixture at London's Public Gardens, Dies of Old Age:

Story:

Once upon a time, there one goose couple in the London. This couple was famous for sincere loving each other. One day, this lovely couple bore a female goose. She was named after "Mother Goose" because she did a great job. What do you think the great job was?

When she (Mother Goose) was two years old, she fell in love with a handsome goose which was known for F4 (Janine's note* F4 is a famous group of handsome Korean men on TV- the girl's are all crazy about them). They were married and, after a year, Mother Goose couple stood on their own feet.

They laid seven eggs on the tree, which was symbol at London. One day, the cute goslings were hatched, Mother Goose couple went out to find food for their babies. Suddenly, a fire broke out near their nest and their seven eggs were in risk. The people, hearing this situation, came out the nest. They tried to put down the fire, but they couldn't. At the moment, Mother Goose couple came out and spout water in their mouths.

The fire put out. The people clapped and applauded them.

(Janine's note* at this point in the class I told them they had one minute to finish- these girls were just getting started! They could have written this story into a novel.)

By the way, the wonderful goose died yesterday. We won't forget her love for babies.

The End


This one was my favourite, but there were four other strong efforts- including a story about a girl named Janine who went to Harvard but, even though Harvard guaranteed their grads jobs once they graduated, she couldn't get a job so she sued Harvard for $70,000.00.

Another was about a famous fish who was a popular TV personality in Britain. He died.