It’s Monday morning, my first day of teaching! I’m walking around campus at approximately 10:02 am, minding my own business because I don’t have a class to teach until 2:45 pm…or so I thought. Next thing I know I’m getting rushed to a 1st grade classroom to teach an English lesson. Now this wouldn’t have been an issue had I prepared a lesson for this age group, but I was under the impression that I was only teaching middle schoolers this year. Needless to say, I was unprepared and didn’t know what I was about to do for the next 40 minutes. I had to think quick on my feet and try to come up with a number of activities to capture the wondering minds of 6 and 7 year olds. There was no time to be nervous or develop deer-in-headlights syndrome. It was time to react! Thankfully, all the children were very excited to see a foreigner, and the class period turned into a ‘Let’s get to know Nika’ class. After singing a few songs, such as “Head Shoulders Knees & Toes” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” I was put in the hotseat and the students demanded that I answer all of their questions. Their English competency is very limited, so I was asked the same basic questions multiple times: What is your name? How are you? How old are you? What can you do? Can you dance? Can you sing? (They were clearly reciting the 5 English sentences they learned from their textbooks). But the funniest question I heard all day was, “Are you Japanese?” At least I can certainly say that my lessons got better and better as the week progressed.
I guess the moral of the story is: Your whole life could change at any given moment, so be ready for battle at any time.
- FBG