My dancing student

I once had a student in an afternoon class who went to school all morning, went home, probably ate a quick lunch and then was off to my class.

The unfortunate thing is that he couldn't sit still. That is hard for a six year old boy who hasn't played all day.

I soon found out though, that his inability to sit didn't affect his ability to learn. On the contrary, he couldn't learn if I made him sit still. He was too distracted thinking about trying to sit still!

And so he would stand. He would dance. He would twirl. He would fiddle with his pencil. He would do anything but sit. For the sake of the other (also very active) students, I tried to get him to at least dance in one place and not go all over the room.

And he learned. He was very smart and had a natural gift for learning English, and so he excelled. The other students also did well, but when I asked a question, he would stop moving around (or not) and spit out the answer before anyone else. And the answer was right.

Nevermind that to all outward appearances he wasn't paying a bit of attention.

He learned the material and much more importantly, he wasn't learning to hate learning.

I just hope someone doesn't ruin it for him.

—Luke