Teaching is fun!

My 20 minute lessons with the grade 4, 5 and 6 years olds are always good fun. There's really nothing like a classroom full of  40 beaming faces greeting you with a loud "Hello!" and waving madly, obviously ecstatic to see you again. I respond with "How are you today?" and the reply "I'm fine thank you!" in metered chorus. They are total parrots, teaching them words such as window or door, then pointing to a chair and asking "What's this?" inevitably begs the repsonse "What's this!" so back to basics, I need to play out their response and walk through the motions. We are now onto the difference between "This is" and "That is", with me sitting on a chair, patting it rhythmically to the words "This-is-a-chair" and then they copy, I walk away from the chair and throw my arm rhythmically at the chair saying "THAT-is-a chair" - total basics, I have been taking the English language for granted for so long, I never even noticed all these differences in how we say things. Learning French on the other hand, with all these masculine and feminine differences - what's that about?! Glad I don't have to teach that but it's hard to learn.

I took an English club last week of fifteen17-21 years olds, beginners, the teacher explained to them that I don't speak English or French, and then LEFT THE ROOM. I couldn't believe my eyes. But it was great, somehow I had them playing Simon Says using "Please", referring to my French dictionary intermitently, smiling faces of "he" and "she" on the board and hand signals, we got through a lot. I wasn't prepared, however the English club yesterday, 100 pupils. Somehow I fudged through the half hour but I really don't know how half an hour in a class as big as that can be of much benefit to them since they get no individual attention at all.

Teaching is kind of like being on stage, I think I like it!