Good Morning Class!!!

9:30 at night, ‘Knock, knock’ who is that at my door!  “Shashar (is my name apparently) open the door”.  Luckily for me (or them) I was not yet in my really awesome teddy bear nylon boxer short PJs, not that it wasn’t anything the people in my building hadn’t seen before. After all the students have literally fallen through my door (stupid lock) only to be confronted with my nylons. They were pretty impressed, or was that amusement in their laughs!?

 

My not quite midnight visitor was my head teacher. “Shashar, tomorrorr you rill be teaching a speaking Engrish class to the Chinese students”.  Sweet I thought, finally I get to teach Chinese students and a class bigger than 5 kids!  What was not so sweet was the extremely LATE notice and the early morning time that I was to be teaching 7:45am!

 

Luckily for me this was the easiest teaching gig you could ever get! No lesson planning!  All I was required to do was read the students some dialogue and drill it so that they could learn to pronounce the words correctly (possibly in an Aussie accent) and build up their confidence in speaking English.

 

Bright and early but not so bright eyed and bushy tailed I got up to much pain and groaning!  After all, the time I needed to be in the classroom was the time I normally would get up!  One sugar loaded coffee later and makeup adequately covering how tired I really was, I psyched myself into “Hi, how are you going” overly chirpy retail mode (all my years working in retail got me prepared for something at least!).  

 

I headed to my usual classroom to wait to be taken to my new class.  After about 15 minutes of waiting (ample time to clean my desk and hide all the books so the kids wouldn’t steal them) I was finally taken to my new classroom, in a new building with my new students in grade 4 and 5.  When I got there only 6 out of the 25 were there.  Some of them greeted me enthusiastically, others shied away in nervous apprehension.  

 

As each class member walked through the door I handed them the days written dialogue, some of them barely met my eye while others enthusiastically thanked me.  I was introduced to the class all in Chinese and was pleasantly surprised when they all said “Hello, Shashar” it was pretty clear who had taught them my name!

 

The class was handed over to me, all the while the head teaching watching which was slightly intimidating!  I did the usual spiel, Hi my names Sasha (SA-SHA), I’m from Australia (AU-STRA-LI-A).  I drilled the word Australia a few times to the point where I could see the potential for them to sound Aussie! I then went on to tell them that I’m from Canberra (CAN-BERR-A) the capital city, like Beijing and handed them around a postcard. They were all wide eyed looking at the beautiful blue smog free sky on the postcard.  I then showed them a postcard with Australian animals, they were so fascinated by these weird looking creatures, they particularly loved it when I did an impression of a kookaburras laugh!

  

I started the lesson drilling away as I was told to do, sentence at a time.  I thought to myself if we spend the whole lesson drilling this they are going to be so bored!  Hell I was even getting bored!  That’s when I decided to switch it up.  In pairs (after some miming so they could understand the activity) I got them to go through the dialogue taking turns.  As I walked around the classroom listening in on their practice I was really surprised about how good their English actually was!

 

There was one pair who were extremely enthusiastic about the activity.  In fact I could hear them clearly from the other side of the room!  When the activity ended I called up the pair to do a demonstration to the class, they were fantastic!  So animated, enthusiastic and their English was mostly correct!  So far the students had outdone my expectations.

 

After this activity I felt the whole mood of the class change, the students seemed more relaxed and at ease.  Playing on this mood change I decided to test out their individual confidence.  I asked them questions based on the dialogue. “What time do you get up?, what time do you go to bed?, what do you like to eat for dinner?, what’s your favourite class and why?”.

 

At first when I asked the class to volunteer answers hardly anyone would volunteer, so to get the ball rolling I picked a few students.  After a while more students started volunteering to the point where nearly every student had stood up in front of the class and answered one of the questions.  

 

They were loving it! Laughing, smiling and most of all speaking! As the class left they all said an enthusiastic goodbye, waving vigorously!

 

It was so nice to get the chance to be a teacher for a change instead of a babysitter who also teachers.  Though, it wasn't long before again I was a babysitter. The moment I walked back into my normal classroom my usual day of discipline and children sitting on my desk had begun!  Although bless them they do certainly make the day interesting to say the least, and maybe now they may even behave because they are so insanely jealous of me teaching the Chinese students who I remind them are extremely well behaved!

 

 

 

• China internship
• teaching