Today I had my kliene Kindern, definitely one of my most challenging classes. Five kids, at a German pre-school.
I do love teaching children, but it poses some special problems. Like they can’t read yet, so that constrains my teaching style quite a bit. And they can burst out crying for no apparent reason. And, mostly, they just seem rather oblivious to the fact that this hour is supposed to be an English lesson.
They just see it as a play hour, and I am the stupid teacher who can’t speak to them in Czech or German.
Today, I was informed as soon as I got there that I would only have two students – two of the girls. Didn’t know if that was going to make it easier or not, but I figurted it would be easier to focus, as any rate.
But getting the two of them, two little girls, to come in off the playground was not easy. Today wasn’t a particularly cold day, it wasn’t windy at all and it wasn’t actually raining but, still, it’s November and no adult would be outside voluntarily at all.
One girl in particular was dragging her feet, and I was worried that she was making me look bad in front of the head teacher. Anyway, got them into the cloakroom and then the other one went to my bag and pulled out The Cat in the Hat and brought it to me and that’s the best student response I’ve had to a book in a long time, and there was a chair right there so I sat down and read some Dr. Seuss and before long the whole school was gathered around me, so I guess my reputation was redeemed.
So, I had 5 students after all, but by the time I got them into the room we usually use for their class, they were ready to start ignoring me again. It was a roller coaster.
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