Day 4&5: The School is Alive

I didn't have a chance to document Monday's experiences because it's been so crazy busy. We spent nearly the entire day training and making lesson plans for the week. Our head teacher, Amanda, also said that our lesson plans were due for the next week every Thursday prior to that week, so we had four due yesterday and have another five due Thursday. Needless to say, we've had our hands full.

At first, I didn't think making a lesson plan would be that difficult of a task. However, there is so much that goes into each lesson, and I found myself struggling in hitting every aspect for each lesson. We have a different targeted concept that each lesson needs to hit: we need to title it, have it match the assignment we have been given (I've been given games for the next four weeks) and have 8-12 objects incorporated, along with 16-20 different tasks, that you do, not say. When this was all getting explained to me, I was about as lost as I was trying to find my way through the city the other day. As we worked as a group, however, we seemed to grasp the idea of how to make a proficient lesson plan as the time (and by time, I mean hours) went by.

Our native coordinator Marine is in charge of the kindergarten, or "kindy" as they call it, and she gave us a tour of the classrooms Monday before we taught. I can't even begin to describe how cute this school is. It's almost entirely outdoor, but at the same time not. It kind of reminds me of the set up of the Gateway mall in Utah, if that helps better describe it. As soon as you walk in, there is this giant play center with that rubbery like surface, almost like a track, with teeter totters and other things in it. Then, right next to the play center, there are a set of spiral stairs that take you up to the third floor where we teach.

We found out on Monday that this is basically a week long school where the kids stay overnight and go home on the weekends. I had no idea until I walked into the classroom and attached to the class was a room full of beds. They were all so uniform and tiny, I just loved them. Also, their bathrooms were so organized and each of the kids has their own cup and toothbrush with their name on it. Kind of precious I thought. Everything else in the classroom was so well organized and just perfect. It almost looked like a little doll house magnified, a tiny bit.

After seeing our classrooms, there was an overwhelming sense of excitement and anticipation to finally meet our kiddos. Marine gave us the student profiles that included a picture of the student, as well as a description of each student that the last head teacher had left behind. The way teaching and divvying up students works is that there are 6 ILP teachers in the kindy class and there are six different areas that we teach: shop, arts and crafts, drama, gym, games, and kitchen. We each have one of these teaching areas for the first four weeks, to get the hang of the teaching method and to get used to how things work, which is pretty nice I think.

Within those groups, each of us have a "home group". This group is the group that we will be spending the most time with and we are in charge of keeping track of their tokens they earn in class, writing notes in their student profiles, etc. Naturally after receiving my home group student profiles, I wanted to take a look and see what I was in for. The kids were all so cute and most of the reports were so positive, until I got to Samson. His read, "He was an absolute nightmare in class..." and "he is the leader of the black market token trading, he always has more than the other students and he is sneaky!". I got kind of concerned about this little one. However, I did get really lucky to have one little guy named Alex. He is only five years old, but I swear he is nearly fluent. He can spout off English words with no hesitation and is just so smart. He really helped me out in my lesson today and really helped clarify the other kids' names for me. Star student potential right here.

I'm not going to lie and say that today was easy, it was actually pretty overwhelming and stressful rotating through 50 different kids and trying to learn their names, especially when kids like "Jeremy" would insist his name was "Jelemy" or "Marcus" was "Amalichius". It was tricky, but thank goodness for those student profiles. I've got my work cut out in just memorizing those names for both class and the scheduled parent's meeting, this Thursday, yikes.

When I was teaching, I would often ask for help from the kids, because it naturally draws more language out of them. Whenever one of them would want to help, I instantly got the same response from almost every kid, "teacha teacha, I been good, teacha teacha I wan try". I couldn't help but laugh, these kids were well trained! They would fold their arms and raise their hand, but not like we raise ours. They raise their hand by raising their right hand and putting their right elbow perpendicular to their left hand, it looks so official. They are just so stinking cute, their funny little mannerisms just crack me up. Also, when I was done teaching and was leaving the kids' tables, they would say in unison, "Goodbye teacha Kasey (or Krasey, or kayyyyssssseeeeeyyyy or kay kay or kiki, there was quite a variety of names I was called today). I absolutely loved it.

By the end of the six lessons I had taught, I was beat. It's a lot of work keeping five and six year olds engaged and continuing to initiate opportunities for them to continue speaking english for each lesson. However, I really like what I'm doing and can't wait to improve so my teaching techniques will be more organized and be more language based. I struggled with that today, because all I wanted to do was play with these cute kids like I have been doing these past three months I've been at home through my many nannying jobs.

We have a little bit of downtime right now before we go to dinner and continue our training. We are pricing all of our "store" items this evening so the kids can begin receiving tokens and saving them to get prizes, a little motivation always helps with the cause! It's been so good so far and I can't wait to see the crazy little ones tomorrow.

Pictures:
#1: My freakin ankle, I am so dumb. It's getting better though.
#2: A cool fruit Jenna and I tried. Still have no idea what it is, but it was derishious.
#3A: Our kiddos little beds. So cute right?
#3B (since 4 is bad luck): Some of my home group -- from left to right: Alex, Jason, Coco, and Karen. Such fashionable little ones they are.
#5: Lexi, Chloe, myself, and Jenna in our teaching aprons, we keep the kids tokens in these babies.