19 years of formal education….

…and look at me now !

Monday was our second of only 3 rehearsals for the Christmas show. After a quick run through of the “Last Christmas” song with all the staff, us boys broke off to practice our “In The Navy” dance routine. We made some good progress but are still only half way through the song and haven’t even added the flags in yet. We are going to need a miracle to pull this off. And before we knew it we all had to go our separate ways with classes to teach, lessons to plan and lunch to eat.
I had my 3rd lesson with my VIP adult ladies who I managed to establish are all married so that pretty much closes that chapter for all of you waiting for the next instalment.

Then on to Tuesday (my Friday or end of week) and what a way to end with 2 x 1hr 30min classes back to back with 4 year olds. The first class was food vocab where the kids learn spaghetti and cornflakes which just doesn’t seem appropriate but I suppose when you are only 4 you are just associating a picture with a word and that’s ok. Although these do seem particularly difficult to pronounce for the Chinese. For my second class we were finishing the Unit on animals and my chinese co-teacher had promised the kids the week before I would make masks with them in the next lesson. Great, my lesson is planned; but how the hell am I supposed to make animal masks. Some plaintiff cries for help and brief instructional conversations with some of the other teachers I had a vague idea. In the first half of the lesson we did some grammar input and speaking practice then a 10 minute break before launching into the mask making which I had no idea how long to allow for.
They took a while to carefully cut the masks out of their books, choosing 1 out of 4 (cat, dog, mouse or duck). After that they glued them to some cardboard before bringing them to me to have the eyes and elastic band holes cut out with a craft knife. Then Jason (my teaching assistant) helped out attaching elastic bands to the masks which then fitted around their ears – Viola. So proud of having accomplished my first craft activity I had Jason snap the following pic. (left to right: Coco, me, Sam, Leo, Vivian and Kitty) The kids absolutely went crazy with their masks on and went careering down the passage to their waiting parents who had quizzical looks on their faces; obviously excited for their kids but worried about possible injuries from the combination of speed and reduced visibility in the corridor that is littered with the occasional pot plant.

At last the weekend, and while i walked home I couldn’t help but reflect on what I had spent the last 3 hours doing after 19 years of education from pre-primary to postgraduate level all the time wandering if this is progress or am I doing something wrong?

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