Cool Kindle for a Cool Kid

This week I started tutoring for a 3rd grader who attends a local private school here. His mom works at Chumbageni, and asked if I could help him learn English.

For a 3rd grader, I was pretty impressed by Emanuel’s abilities. I found out later that the school he attends is taught entirely in English (unlike most of the other private schools here) which explains why his English is so advanced. However, he is still incredibly smart, composed and conversant in English. After two days of working out of his school’s exercise books, it became clear that the material that he is using is too easy for him.

Emanuel told me that he really likes to read story books, so in an attempt to help him with the language I downloaded an illustrated version of "My Father’s Dragon" onto my Kindle. We took turns reading the first two chapters during the tutoring session, and had a few discussions about what we were reading, and some new vocabulary that we came across together.

After the session, I heard him tell his mom he really liked the book. I had a feeling that he might not be able to wait the entire weekend to keep reading, so I had already come up with a plan for him to keep reading. Emanuel’s home is right on the way to my soccer practice every day. I have it perfectly timed that I jump from one activity to the next, but am always a little concerned that my stuff might be stolen from the sideline when I am practicing. I definitely didn’t want to risk having my Kindle stolen, so I asked Emanuel if he wanted to read the book while I was at practice, and then I’d come to collect it on my way back home for my own tutoring session.

After picking up the Kindle from his apartment, Emanuel decided to walk me home. He was so excited to tell me about everything that he had read in the book, and was on quite a roll in both English and Kiswahili (he doesn’t quite know that I don’t speak Swahili). He didn’t have time to finish his explanation by the time we got home, but he seemed like he had really enjoyed reading the book and managed to get a lot out of it.

When I was crawling into bed later that night to read my own book, I turned on the kindle to find a screen with a picture of the dragon and only two words…..THE END……No wonder he didn’t have enough time to finish telling me about the story.