I guess it's better than handling rattlesnakes

I'm now two full days into my new career as a teacher of small children. I'm still trying to decide whether or not I'm better or worse off for it. At least I can certainly feel empathy for all those teachers that I had over the years. Not so much because they had me, because I think I was a fairly good kid to a certain extent, but rather just for having to teach kids in general.

You may have gotten the impression that I don't like teaching kids and that would be incorrect. It's actually a fair amount of fun. A kids class is basically 40 minutes where you can shut your brain off for once and just be a kid like all the others. The problem with that is that being a kid is draining. Maybe you've forgotten, but it actually takes a heck of a lot of energy to be a kid. Maybe that's why you can see a kid running around like a crazy banshee one moment, and then be dead to the world the next.

Fortunately it can only get better (or easier at least) from here on in. One of the more difficult parts right now with teaching kids is that you're not quite sure what you're doing next. The lesson plans are completely different from the regular lesson plans. And then there's the fact that you're doing a lot of kid things like playing games or singing songs. Now I may only be 25 but it's still been quite a long time since I was a kid in the literal sense of the word and I've forgotten or never learned quite a lot of the songs. That means a lot of preparation before the begining of class where I go to the Activity Glossary and basically learn how to do the games or sing the songs (how many of you can honestly say that you know what comes after the second line of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?)

The kids themselves are decent. I've always heard stories about how well behaved and polite Japanese students are towards their teachers and I can tell you now that this is 100% not true. Well not exactly anyways. They're polite enough and so far they haven't behaved badly but they certainly don't sit there like perfect students. For instance today I had one student called Manami who is probably about...5 or 6 years old. Now it would only be slightly generous to say that she has the attention span of an ant. And not a sensitive ant at that. She was fun to teach but also frustrating because you couldnt control her. She walked straight into the room and grabbed a marker and started doodling on the board rather than sitting on the floor and getting out her homework. It took about 5 minutes to finally get her started. Later we played a game called "Blast Off" where you crouch down, hold your hands together over your head like a rocket, count to 5 and then jump up and blast off. Only in her version of Blast Off, when we got to 5 she would leap at me like a leopard, wrap her arms around my neck and I would have to blast off with her attached to me. She was in a Man-to-Man class rather than a class with other students and I have a sneaking suspicion why.

So far getting jumped on seems to be the rule rather than the exception. I had another one-on-one student, different girl but same age. We were playing a game that involved putting a group of cards at one end of the room. We would stand at the other side of the room and I would tell her a card. Then after a "1....2....3....GO!" we would rush to the other side of the room and turn over the cards until we found the right one. After she identified the card she would then jump on my back and I would have to piggyback her back to the other side of the room. As hard as I looked, nowhere in the Activity Glossary could I find the step that detailed piggybacking the student back to the original start.

Anyways so far so good. It's fun but tiring. There are 3 levels of students: Kinder, Junior and Senior. So far I like Kinder and Junior the best. Seniors are a little better behaved in that they aren't running around all over the place but they are also starting to get to the age where they are a little more sullen and too cool to participate fully in the lesson. Kinders and Juniors may be little Tazmanian Devils but at least they are enthusiastic. I think I shall sleep soundly tonight.

let me get to sleep