Teaching 101

Some teachers make it look really easy, with a class of students who come in prepared and ready to roll. Well, that’s usually NOT the case! So far, I’ve been assigned to preparing some kids for reading and story telling competitions. It’s just a few kids at one time, but already, there’s a huge difference between teaching students who are ready to learn and those who climb around like monkeys.

The first group I taught were 4^th graders whose class teacher demands a lot of discipline from them, and teaching these kids is surprisingly easy. They corporate, they repeat after me with attention to details and they stay in their seats. At the end of the day, we all leave happily.

The second group isn’t so easy. Nope, they are definitely not ready! These third grader monkeys run around the room, play with the microphone (cus they know it’s always turned on), climb the desks and draw on the white board. “Sit!” Well, that apparently only works on dogs, not kids.  Well, they are good-natured kids, but just with over load of energy coming in to the classroom. It was a tough session, but we made it through. The next day, we have a second session and they are behaving much better this time. Perhaps they now know me better, know what to expect and how I interact with them. There are still climbing of desks and drawing on the white board and making weird sound into the microphone, but they sat eventually and progress was made.

The toughest part thus far is leading the whole school. Well, there are only 40+ of us, so it’s really not supposed to be a big deal. After all, I remembered my second grade class had 63 students!

Leading a group like this is tough because when you finally get one side to pay attention, the other side is messing with each other already. So you can only teach part of the group at one time. Then is the yelling part. I am yelling the whole time, not to scold them, but to teach! It’s not a big group, but it gets loud, so there’s no choice but to be louder than them for the sake of those who wants to learn.

So for today, they learnt “Excuse me!” and “Bless you” as applied English phrases. I was really glad that, even though 90% of them left without anything registered in their brains, a few picked it up. In the afternoon after the class, a student came into the staff room to pick up keys. While I was going through the door way, she blocked me, testing me to say “Excuse me!” Of course I am not to be messed with, so I said,”Excuse me!” “And what should you say next?”

“Errrr…. Sure!” She got it right!

That was rewarding!