Two weeks ago we had a debate competition among the ER-ban students (advanced-level elementary). This was a kind of consummation of all my efforts, and overall I was pretty happy with how it went. Some of the students clearly enjoyed participating and put in a great deal of enthusiasm and effort, which was great to see.
The classes divided into teams of 3-5 students, and at the end of the competitions (one on Monday and one on Tuesday), each of the ER classes had a champion team. Here are some quick portraits of my champion teams.
This is the ER2-Tuesday team. The most talented students, from the highest-level class. From left to right, that’s Tina, Christina, Maria, Cathy, and Stephanie. Tina is smart and a little goofy. She has a great sense of humor and is not afraid to try it out in English. Christina will someday be a famous cartoonist or manga author, and although she’s not intellectually inclined, her English is actually quite good. And she’s a great artist. Maria is brilliant and academically motivated. Not to mention brutally competitive. Cathy is one of those always-positive personalities that can make anyone around her happy, and never gives up. Little Stephanie, despite being several grades lower than the others, speaks phenomenal, idiomatic English and is quite thoughtful.
This is the ER1-Monday champion team. Actually, the reason they won was because John2 was visiting the Monday class from his home class, which was ER2-Tuesday. Otherwise the girls would have won this class championship. But they’re good guys, and I was happy to declare them the winners. From left to right, that’s Jake, John2, John1, and Joey. The ER1-Monday class has an informal tradition of making sure everyone’s English name starts with the letter J. Jake is extremely smart and very focused as a student, but needs to work on getting along better with his peers – he can seem kind of standoffish. But he reminds me of myself at a similar age. John2, as I said, was just visiting from the Tuesday “ban,” but he bonded quickly with the guys because they realized he was a huge asset to the team – he was only debater in the overall competition who actually spoke completely extemporaneously. John1 is the class goof, quite intelligent but uninterested in anything involving actual work. But he’s also almost always an asset to a class, because he’s constantly got something interesting or off-the-wall to say, to keep things entertaining. He says he wants to be either comedian or a doctor, but that he suspects being doctor involves “too much study.” Joey is moody but quite brilliant. He can often argue with his peers, but he also can surprise with his idiomatic, well-formed fragments of English.
This is the ER1-Tuesday champion team. They weren’t perfect, but they were impressive partly because they managed with only three members. These girls are among my favorite students in the school They are, from left to right, Taylor, Gloria, and Ellen. And me, looking bemused and dorky, as usual. Taylor is an extroverted yet amazingly intellectual kid, with stunning enthusiasm and a true gift for not only learning but also pulling her peers along selflessly. Yet she can also demonstrate a very competitive spirit. She’s a natural leader – and if she keeps her confidence, might someday be a stunning success. She wrote all of Gloria’s speeches for the competition, and refused to take credit for them, but I saw her doing it. Gloria is a super friendly girl who often gives the impression of understanding more than she does. She just grins and nods and shrugs, and only later do I realize she was faking it. But she has managed to make friends with the two smartest girls in the class, and she leverages that friendship to her own academic benefit, I don’t think cynically, but just as if it’s part of the natural order of things. I actually think she would do just fine in an immersion environment, because although she lacks a lot of knowledge, she’s extroverted and has good non-verbal communicative competence. Lastly there’s Ellen. She initially can seem very shy, and she’s much less extroverted than the others. But she’s got a quiet confidence about her, and in any one-on-one conversation, she’s among the best in the entire school – and not just among the elementary students, but including the middle-schoolers too. It’s not so much her level of ability as the fact that she refuses to ever give up. She just circumlocutes and puzzles along until she’s made her point, whatever it is. She will never take the linguistic cop-out and leave you with “I don’t know” or “I can’t explain.”
