Teaching in the Morning

Finally writing my teaching segment! I didn't keep detailed diaries this week, just segments here and there. This would be another pretty mammoth blog and I want to go into real detail here, so I'm splitting this whole segment into different sections and publishing them separately. So today, a typical school morning.

A nice early start of between 6 and 6.30 to get a shower after a very hot night. Apparently the temperature does drop a lot, and the fan isn't needed as much. I don't notice this and it just always feels hot to me! After getting showered and dressed, there is breakfast. This for me was generally a bowl of cereals with milk from a carton. It was actually good. Some days we were taken shopping in the evening (or even afternoon) and could buy some fresh stuff, so fruit and breaded foods could be on the breakfast menu.

We would normally eat at the table outside while students sat and watched us, refusing the offerings of food we gave them. From around 7am the students would start to arrive at school and any of the kids who were not kindergarteners would have a cleaning job somewhere around the school. The cleaning would normally continue until the music sounded for assembly in the main part of the playground.

There was singing of anthems, playing of music, raising flags and prayers every morning. I actually have a video of it somewhere, should really upload it! Then the morning exercise. Normally it was me because Vanessa would never lead it. I would just look like a fool. In the first week there was talk of YMCA, which I loved the idea of. Shouldn't have shown so much enthusiasm because it became my morning exercise song for six weeks. Every, single, morning.

Fully worn out and feeling like I need a drink and a sit down, it's off to the hardest lesson of them all. Every morning, first thing, kindergarten. Vanessa had various flash cards that the kids loved, so we would get them in a circle and do some nursery rhymes, then sit down in a circle and try and get the kids to say "Hello" to each other, shaking hands and going around the circle. Then would play with the cards for a bit. On a couple of days we read a book. Most days there were sheets with letters on for them to practice their writing and knowledge of the alphabet. Generally this would take up most of the half hour of teaching. Once the kids were finished we had a tub of biscuits that were shaped like letters, we would give each of them one and get them to say the letter and "thank you" before they could eat it. After the teaching, the second half of the lesson was play time. Some of the kids during play time would still want to do English. Some of the toys had numbers, letters and pictures. In nearly every single lesson the same kid would spend an extra ten/fifteen minutes practising English. He was great, but he tended to spoil it by drop kicking girls.

I loved teaching these little guys, but it was very difficult. And I am not ashamed to admit that without help I would have been lost and may never have gotten the confidence I was able to steadily built to take the class on my own longer term.

In the next update I will be talking about teaching group 1/2, the second hardest, and maybe even the hardest class at school.