First Week of Teaching!

So I am writing this blog entry at 8:15 pm on Friday night, which means that I survived my first week of teaching! Woop woop! The week definitely started out kinda rocky. There were two things that really gave me a run for my money. The first thing was figuring out timing, such as how long it takes to teach a song, sing a song or play a new game. The second thing was creating a lesson plan and using language that the kiddies could understand. Along with these two challenging aspects of learning how to teach was the overwhelming interference of my classroom facilitator. While I LOVE having her in the classroom because she is so sweet and helps me out so much with figuring out what the little ones are saying to me, she tends to take over teaching a little too much and doesn’t allow me to try and be the teacher. I would have a lesson all planned out but when she would come into the room she would start doing what she wanted and telling me to do something besides what I was doing. So it kind of made me feel like I wasn’t doing anything right and that I am a complete moron. But the classes in the afternoon that she didn’t come to went really well because I was able to go with my own flow and was able to figure out my own teaching style. As the week went on she slowly stopped going to every class with me and I was able to put a good lesson together by Thursday! Don’t want to toot my own horn or anything….but my classes on Thursday ROCKED! I had so much fun with the kids and my timing was perfect Finished all the lessons on time and didn’t have to struggle to make things last longer.

I was hoping that my Friday lessons would go just as smoothly as Thursdays. I felt pretty confident about my lessons so I wasn’t too worried. And when I walked into my first class(the 3 year olds) one little girl walked up to me as I am putting my stuff down and handed me a little thing of some kind of candy. And then another little boy walked up and handed me some flowers. Naturally they were both accompanied by a few pals, meaning I was surrounded by a group of three year olds just chatting away to me in CHINESE! They were so stinking cute but I could not understand a word they were saying. I quickly turned to Christy(my classroom facilitator) with a panicked look and my face and said “Christy! What are they saying to me! They just keep handing me stuff but I don’t know why!”. Hahahaha! She giggled and informed me that it was teachers day today so the children were giving me presents! I seriously just wanted to cry because of how precious they are. They were so cute and excited to give me these presents and I did not understand ANTYHING! Throughout all of my classes my students gave me flowers, chocolates and handmade cards and paper flowers Although they were all so sweet and I LOVE all of my presents, I do have a favorite. It was given to me by a little girl with the English name of Cathy. She made a card for me and placed it in an envelope. She came up to me at the beginning of class and handed it to me. I melted instantaneously as she looked up at me and said “thank you teacher” in her tiny little voice. But the gift became my favorite when I looked down at the envelope and it said “To Mike. From Cathy”.

My first week of teaching was an amazing experience. Even though it didn’t start out very smoothly(not only were the lessons hard to configure, but on Monday I got on the metro going in the opposite direction that I needed and wound up at Shanghai Railway Station. Not SOUTH Shanghai Railway Station. Had call some peeps from my school and they had to talk to a security guard once and the taxi driver 3 times to figure out where I was and how to get me to school. I was over an hour late after my 35 minute taxi ride. Sorry for the long side story) it ended up being fulfilling on so many levels. The fact that the week ended on a good note is so encouraging. I left school today in the most amazing mood. I just kept thinking about how amazing my life is right now. I AM A KINDERGARTEN TEACHER IN SHANGHAI! I feel so blessed that I am able to live here for the next year and get to have these children in my life every day. I am so looking forward to getting to know each and every one of them.