Caveat: Jenny’s Magic Machine

I have a 5th grade student named Jenny. She is pretty smart, but has a bit of a melancholic personality. In fact, I've known Jenny for a long time – she was, long ago, in one of my Phonics cohorts, when she first studied English. As a result, I feel like I know her pretty well. Nevertheless she surprised me a little bit, yesterday, by expressing what seemed to me to be some pretty deep ideas, in English.

We were having more-or-less free conversation during class, talking about how to get motivated to prepare for our up coming talent show event. Several of the kids complained that they felt too shy and didn't want to do it, including Jenny. Then she said, "I wish I had a machine." 

"What kind of machine?" I asked.

"A machine if you click it, it changes feeling." She made a gesture of operating a computer mouse. 

"What do you mean?"

"If I am shy, I can click it, and I am happy. If am sad, I can click it, and I am OK." 

"That would be a pretty good machine," I agreed.  "I think everyone would like a machine like that."

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

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