If You Give a Mouse A Cookie (IN CHINA...)

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I mostly teach small children, ages 5 to 10 I would estimate. These are generally lower-level/higher-energy classes and really aren't that much fun if you are as non-energetic and overly-verbose as I am. I am privileged, however, to have one upper-intermediate class, for whom I live and breathe.

This is my last class of the week, by which time I am literally too exhausted to teach adequately anymore. And this is not a problem, because the class should be doing most of the talking at this point! And do we have our laughs together! One time, we improv'd a series of interactions in a store. One of the students played a "rude customer" facing a "bored employee" and a "shy manager". I am in hysterics right now remembering this as I write. You are not, because you had to be there for it to be funny.

But, you can hopefully draw some humor from the next instance I will describe.

I have begun to introduce the students to childhood English classics. Last week, it was Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. This past week it was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. We were discussing "if...then" statements. I showed them how to make threats, and even enacted a rather Monty Python-esque confrontation between North and South Korea ("If you sink my boat, I will call the Americans!!"). Then I had them write their own story about giving a mouse a cookie.

I am paraphrasing here, but my student wrote,

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

If I gave a mouse a cookie, I would put poison in it so the mouse will die. But then maybe a cat will kill and eat the mouse before it dies. If the cat eats the mouse, then it will die. But if a dog eats the cat first, then the dog will have the poison. I will see the dog and want to eat it, but if I eat the dog, then I will eat the poison, and I WILL DIE.

Not only do we know that dogs taste good, but we have just witnessed a 14-year old girl accurately describe bioaccumulation. Brilliant! Only in China.

And I bitterly ask myself: Why, why, why can I not have other higher-level classes???

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