Teacher me! Teacher me!

Today was my first day teaching. The way that classes work here is pretty odd. For one thing, this "cram school", which is (and I say this pretty lightly) 'English Only', mostly in that that is supposed to be the only language spoken in the classroom and it is the only subject taught here, teaches classes from around noon to 9:00 pm. There seems to be a young-child school or a daycare that goes on in the mornings, but even that doesn't start until around 10:00 am. Each teacher has a class for an entire day that is at a certain level. So say I have a group that speaks English pretty proficiently - they can say "I wish I were taller" and "I went to the market yesterday" and some slightly more complex sentences - but they are all different ages. All of those kids would be in one class that was a level 11 or 12 class. Now, most of the proficiencies are grouped pretty well. You don't typically have 4 year olds and 12 year olds in the same classroom. However, 8-11 is a pretty standard spread, and that's a hard range of ages to try to cater to.

Where I come in is even stranger. I teach for half an hour to an hour at a time, taking over a block of another teacher's class. This apparently is not just a bridge period before I get my own class. This is how they use the "foreign teacher" so that all of the kids get the experience of working with a native speaker. So I spent today jetting around from a 3rd level class of about 5 year olds to an 11th level class of 8-10 year olds (one of whom cried because I unwittingly put him on "the girls' team"), a pre-K class which was a BALL because basically the sillier I was, the more responsive they were, and a level 12 class of 10-12 year olds who were bouncing off the walls. I teach one class tomorrow (yes, on Saturday. It's a prep-course for the nationalized English Proficiency Test. When you look at that acronym, you'll see why I kind of snickered seeing it on the wall of an elementary school) and then I start over next week with a whole new set of classes that I get to meet and try to acclimate to my presence here.

Teaching was exhilarating. I am, of course, completely exhausted, but the kids and the energy and really seeing them understand was so exciting for me. My biggest challenge today was not running away with the language. Of course I understand the difference between "I wish" and "He wishes" but they don't, and I had (and have) to make sure that I clearly explain that before I started playing games to practice. Not to mention that I speak so quickly as a general rule that I am REALLY having to ssssssllllllooooooooooooowwwww iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttt doooooooooooooowwwwwnnnnnnnn for anyone to understand me.

A few funny notes, though. In my pre-K class, the kids were learning the CK sound, so they had a rhyme that we were all saying together. It was:

Rick and Huck
kick a rock
block the ducks
from the dock

accompanied by a neat little picture in the book. So after repeating this a few zillion times, I had a few of my kids come up and pretend to be a duck, pretend to be a rock, and show me what a kick was. It was absolutely the cutest thing in all of history. And I got to pretend to be a duck for my job.

Also, and this may just amuse me, the older kids resolve absolutely ALL disputes by playing Paper, Scissors, Stone. And the whole class gets in on it. It's REALLY funny because, be it a game that they think is tied or a matter of whose pencil that is on the floor, they'll all shout, "PAPAH SCISSOH STONE!!" and play paper rock scissors for it. Everything. I cannot express how prevalent this game is. It's even in the teaching manuals.

So, all said, I think that teaching is going to kick some serious butt and that I am actually going to be pretty good at it. I only have a couple of kids (so far) who may be problematic, and that is a very good thing. Maybe this was a very, very good idea after all.

I am going to go to the night market and see if I can get a couple of things and then, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to pass out.

All my love, and look for the next post!