What did you want to be when you grew up?

Today there were four new students in our class of fourteen. One had moved up from the beginning class, and the others were new students to the school. Today we continued talking about what things were like when the students were children. It was an excellent way to incorporate past tense verbs, and we used the chart mentioned in the previous posts.

One of the most interesting questions the learners answered was what they had wanted to be when they grew up. We compiled quite a diverse list of professions: artist, teacher, cook, seamstress, writer, doctor, doorman, tailor, soldier, dancer, disk jockey, etc. Ayanna said she had wanted to be a mechanic or an electrician. Faizah said that she had wanted to be a nurse, but instead she was now a cook. The new student from the beginning class, Lina, said she had wanted to be a police woman. Aziza insisted that she had wanted to be a soldier or a business woman. Makda said that she had wanted to be a teacher and that in Ethiopia, she had taught young children at the mosque near her home. She said it made her sad that she was not currently teaching here in the United States. I can just picture her teaching young children, and she seems like she would be a patient and wonderful teacher. We didn’t talk about what they were doing now, but it would have been an interesting discussion about what opportunities they feel they have here.