The living breathing walking English puppet
If I ever want to have a career as a stand-up comedienne (since there’s a word, I figured I should use it – what with me being an ENGLISH teacher and all [yes this is going to my head]) for the 4-6 yr old audience range, I figure I’ve got it made.
I began my Kindergarten teaching today. Here’s how it works, beginning my original classes: I teach Class A and B of the 1st grade and Class A and B of the 2nd grade. There are five classes in each of these grades (A-E). My schedule is different everyday, but, essentially, I teach four 40-minute classes within the 6 periods in a school day. On Mondays and Thursdays, my first class isn’t until 10:20am, but then I’ve got four straight periods of teaching. On Wednesdays, we have half-days, so all four classes are before lunch (periods 1 through 4). With this original schedule, I was teaching 20 periods a week. In the in-between time, there’s tons of grading and marking to do. Later, I plan on writing about my “day off” – being so ill that I stayed home and in between bouts of feverish tossing and turning, graded 180 tests. Yes, it was the best day of my life.
Then, Mr. Ye approached me about doing extra classes at the end of the day. Of course I said yes. Although the original schedule was wearing me out, I figured an extra 35 minutes of teaching wouldn’t kill me for the additional 88 kuai a class. I might have been very, very wrong. This isn’t teaching. There should be a show called, “So you think you can ad-lib…for children…who don’t speak your language?” I mean, I’ve never ad-libbed so much and had my voice crack so much and felt like such a performing monkey…or had so much fun! But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
7th period is a sort of “fun-time” right before the school serves dinner to the children. Yes, the kids eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at school. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I feel it deserves another acknowledgement. My goodness, they’re holding jobs already and not even getting paid for it. Anyway, for the Kindergarten, which is actually a “school” – it should be called preschool because there are three grades of Kindergarten. The K1 class is full of 3 yr olds. The K2 class is 4 yr olds and the K3 class is 5 yr olds. Children start 1st grade at the age of 6. So I’m teaching K2C and K3A. I have K2C on Mondays and Wednesdays and K3A on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Okay, getting back to stand-up for tots.
After teaching my two Grade 1 classes, having lunch and then teaching my two Grade 2 classes, Matthew, a teacher from last term, took me to the Kindergarten building and showed me to my class. I walked into a small, airy room on the second floor with 25 tiny children sitting in little tiny chairs around little tiny tables. All of the children smiled and gave me friendly looks as I introduced myself to the co-teacher. I was told the children didn’t have their books or packets yet and that the room wasn’t yet equipped with a CD player, so, I was on my own for 35 minutes. Okay, I thought, they don’t even know how to read their own language yet, so I’m not going to write on the board, and I started in with, “My name is Lillis” and they all dutifully chanted, “My name is Lillis” and then the co-teacher told them what that meant and then I said it again and they repeated it again. So, then I said, “Hello, boys and girls!” They all replied, “Hello, boys and girls!” The co-teacher told them what they were saying and then I had them repeat just “Hello” several times. I went around the room, asking groups or individuals or the whole class to say “Hello”. I won’t bore you with the entire 35 minute program, but by the end of class, I had the children saying, “Hello, teacher” when I said “Hello, boys and girls” and “Good afternoon” when I said “Good afternoon” and “Goodbye” when I said “Goodbye”. When these words became tedious and I started seeing glazed-over eyes and fingers and clothing going into nostrils and mouths, I quickly moved onto numbers. For the most part though, the children were smiling and laughing at my antics – I kept up a healthy amount of walking and gestures and silly faces. We counted up from 1 and then down from 10 and one clever little boy said, “Bast all” when we came to 1 and shout out of his chair with his arms over his head. I loved this and had them all do it when we got to 1. The children were in stitches over this and couldn’t even wait to get to 1 before they were out of their seats. The other crowd-pleaser was holding my hands in front of me with fingers up and letting the children say how many fingers I was holding up. I’d move quickly back and forth between two numbers and then change it up on them and they’d go rolling. I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that my sense of humor was on a small child’s level, but the fact was hit home during this class today. But the thing that had them running in place and screeching at me like a pre-teen at an N’Sync (Lord, I don’t even know how that band’s name is spelled!) concert, was the “Wave goodbye and walk out of the room” trick. I’d say, “Goodbye, boys and girls” and then walk out of the room. They’d go quiet, and I’d hear them whispering, presumably saying, “Where could she have GONE to?” and then I’d peek back into the room and they’d lose it. I did this five or six times and the noise grew so loud that the co-teacher had to ask them to put their heads on their desks and calm down. I felt terrible, but secretly loved the effect.
The 35 minutes took forever, even with this success, and I hope I can pull more things like this out of the air as the time goes on because I get the feeling that I’m encouraged to entertain them, if nothing else. Like I said, if I ever want to cater to the 3-5 yr old comedy bracket, I think I’ve got a chance. It’s funny, I like the Kindergarten because I’ve just got to familiarize them with English and I like the 2nd grade because they’re working beyond the basics now. The 1st grade terrifies me. Everyday, I’m really worried I’m creating bad habits or starting out all wrong. I mean, if they don’t get the basics down, what chance do they have later on? Eep, that’s almost too much pressure for me to handle. Today went really well with them, though. Yesterday was an absolute disaster and their test scores were in the dumps. I had little girls and boys crying all over me about an alphabet with spaces for missing letters. It was terrible. It reminded me that I have no idea how I learned the most important things…like how did I learn how to read for goodness sakes? Or, how did I figure out what it meant to subtract things, much less DIVIDE things! I guess a lot of the mystery is taken out when you get a degree in EDUCATION. I’m thinking an ESL course would have been really helpful right about now. I’d like to switch co-teachers, as my co-teacher for 1st grade, Season, knows little English, let alone how to control a classroom full of itchy, boisterous little people. I’ve rambled on long enough and have other topics to cover. I can tell you one thing, Kindergarten is going to do the OPPOSITE of “wonders” to my tired, sore, dry throat. Raspy-Mc-rasperson is what I am right now.
