When I signed up for YBM I was told that I would be teaching English to mostly older "Academy" kids. I'm thinking okay grammer, sentence structure, conversational stuff. Little did I know that I was signing up to be a babysitter until 3 pm everyday. I teach 3 or 4 of these classes every day to 5 and 6 year olds:
Science (where I swear every Science experiment involves them blowing through a straw which leaves me covered in spit by the end of class and completely grossed out)
Arts and Crafts (glorified title for playing with crayons for 40 minutes)
Drama in Education (they read a play and have to memorize it)
Reading Master (bullshit)
P.E. (hell)
Sure I'm no scientist and my drawing skills are lacking but I can handle that. P.E., on the other hand, sucks hard. After about 20 minutes of trying to set up a game for them to play I was sweating like crazy. At one point I was amazed at how I would turn to tell one kid to stop doing something and then turn back around and two others would be climbing on something dangerous. Like they had popped out of no where. Anyway so I decided to sit down well aware that there are cameras in every room so people could see the crazyness that was happening.
Rachel, the head kinder teacher, comes up and goes "You know I can see you right?" and looked at her quite angrily and replied, "Yeah." She told me that I couldn't just sit there and watch them run around. They are 5. She asked me what the lesson plan for the day was and I told her. It was review of some games they had played in July but heaven forbid me think the necessary equipment I would need for these games would be in the playground room. They were not. She told me I should have asked her for them. Hmm, that would have been good to know before the class wouldn't it. These people just assume you know everything.
She told me I should have come up with a new game for them to play with the stuff I had available. I'm sorry I didn't get a degree in coming up with fun P.E. games for 5 year olds when they are perfectly happy running around in circles. So her brilliant game that she came up with was to have the kids pair up in twos and roll a ball back and forth to each other. Genious... I'm sure they would enjoy that for 40 minutes.
After about two minutes of that most of the kids stopped listening to her. Great control I thought. How do you expect me to control 11 kids in a room called "The Playground Room," when I don't even know there names. "Hey you there, stop hitting what's your name!" "Pink shirt quit climbing on that!" "Ugly kid quit throwing the ball at the runny nose kid." Yes very effective.
I do teach the older kids after 3 and they are alright. I have about 3 or 4 of these classes a day. Basically we just go through a book that has stuff like, "What's your favorite thing to do?" or "What do you need for a science experiement?" It's ridiculously boring and they go through it really fast.
Live and learn. If I ever decide to do this again I will ask specifically which classes I will be teaching.
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3 comments:
I'm sorry you are having so much trouble with the kids and teachers :( It seems like they have a whole list of expectations that they totally didn't clue you in on. It seems like the thing you are supposed to be learning is "just wing it." I am totally NO GOOD at that. Ricky was saying that he did better with his kids on the bus if he knew their names. If they were getting into trouble and you could say " Hey Johnny I can see you back there! Come sit in the front by me," they get totally embarrassed and listen to you. I'm sure it will get easier as time goes on. Hang in there :) *hugs*
p.s. I wrote back to you in my blog ;)
oh scrish.. i have something that will make you smile... get on skype asap
Ick. Maybe you can come up with names for them. That'll be your next P.E. activity. They get to come up with a name, and in Arts & Crafts, they create nametags that they have to wear all the time. Call it a "learning exercise!"
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