Saturday, April 1, 2006

Little Emperors

I didn't come to China to teach little kids - I have done that for years and years and years ... hmmm, too long ... in Australia and I came here for a change. I love teaching corporate classes, real people, big people, people I can relate to. I know kids are people too, but in a different way ...

But suddenly I am back teaching kindergarten again. Ooh, hard work. The all-singing, all-dancing, all-piano-playing Lucy Show. Its very hard to teach the little tikes without becoming the performing monkey - well, clown more like it. And don't the children love it!

They phoned me and asked if I would make sure I wore bright coloured clothes. Hmmm.

All the little emperors (5 yr olds, 30+ to a class) were dressed in uniform, a sort of beige tartan. I have seen a lot of people wearing coats and scarves of this exact pattern and colour, there must be a factory around here that makes it. All the little boys and little girls in the same ridiculous clothes - rather reminded me of the Von Trapp family ...

Well, how hard can it be, to keep the little blighters entertained for an hour or so? All sitting around in a neat semi-circle on their little wooden chairs, eager upturned faces ... and there is another bigger, but still very low, wooden chair for me out the front. And they are watching and waiting. What on earth are they expecting?

I launch into telling a story - the three bears, and Goldilocks (the girl with yellow hair - "yellow!" they whisper back with something like awe, but more likely they just suddenly recognised a word I said.) Of course this is made a whole lot harder with the language barrier - at this stage I don't really know if they are understanding any of it. The little girls are fascinated - or at least well-behaved - but the boys are getting restless already. Time to really get into character. So I'm on my feet, doing actions and voices - and they are loving it of course. They did warn me that today was "photo day" and they are certainly taking lots of pics of me prancing around. I try to get them all to join in with the repetitive voices bits: "Someone's been sitting in my chair ..." and all that, but nothing doing there.

End of story, I'm exhausted, brilliant performance, Lucy ... I flop back into the little wooden chair and glance at the clock. Aaahh! 20 minutes gone! And there are the little eager faces - now more excited - looking for more.

I have a teddy bear in my bag. We practise saying "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear ..." rhythmically until we can all do it just right. And then I teach them the rest of the rhyme: "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around..." We do the actions, line by line, then cumulatively until we have done it all. We stand up and do it again, and I choose some little girls, and then some little boys to perform it for us. Then we do it all again.

The clock has dragged its hand around another 20 minutes. My throat is sore and I hate Teddy Bears. Oh look, there's a piano. I remember a kid's song or two from teaching in Australia. So how about we learn "I'm going to Kentucky" because that's easy to play and we can all prance around being "Senorita"s. The children get very excitable, especially the boys, and they are not at all interested in learning the word "Senorita". I have been sitting at the piano to play and then leaping up and coming back to the circle to demonstrate, then back to the piano. Let's get back to the wooden chair and settle things down.

I can't believe it - still 15 more minutes! I'm dying here. Then I remember - "Open, Shut them ..." kids love that little hand song from Play School. And it saves the day. Every single child learns it off by heart and has to have a chance to stand up and perform, they are all so pleased with themselves.

Only a minute left, and the Chinese assistant comes up to me and says, "I think its time to go to the other class now." Aaaaaaaaaaah!

As I launched into the story for the second time, feeling like a veteran, I realised they had not saved the best til last - this was the second class for so many reasons. The Chinese teachers were working hard in the background, removing disruptive kids from the circle and seating them off to the side at various spots. The kids still loved the story, and the teddy bear rhyme with actions worked quite well - but I was getting better at it now and it went even quicker. "Senorita" was a bad flop with this crowd, "Open, shut them" was brilliant ... and I still had 10 minutes left!

It felt like the end of a hard day's work. Next week will be different, because next week I won't have these two classes, I'll have the four year olds. What on earth can I do for two hours with them?

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