Back before graduating college in June, whenever I told anyone that I was majoring in English, they would imminently ask me, “Oh, so you want to be a teacher?” My response was always a firm, “No, English majors can be lots of things, not just teachers.” Of course, that was up until Nolan told me about international teaching, and I decided that maybe it was something I could do after all. However, even at that point when I had decided that teaching may be in my future, I never imagined working with the youngest kids, Kindergarten and Preschool. It wasn’t until my interview for Ayeyarwaddy International School when our interviewer mentioned a job opening in the Montessori school that he believed I would be perfect for that I even considered it. And my considerations were quick, as I was hopeful to land any job that I could.
Now, half way through my first year of teaching, I could not imagine doing anything else. Many teachers say that the only ages they would never want to teach would be the young ones, the three to five year olds that come to my classes every day. But for me, these students are a light of joy that I never knew I needed. In this blog post, I want to share some of those moments that make me so grateful to be a preschool and kindergarten teacher.
Games on Games on Games
How does it sound to spend all day, everyday, playing games? Because that is, for the most part, what I do. Kids don’t want to sit around and listen to me lecture about proper nouns. No way, they would get up and leave. So, instead, we just play games, literally every day. Some class favorites are Bingo, Tic Tac Toe, Find the Letter _ (I show them a picture where a few letters are hidden and they need to find them), and my favorite game ever- Bamboozle. It is my favorite because it is barely even a game at all. Its just flashcards, but the people at Bamboozle have dressed it up as a game, and so the kids think its a game.
So we just play games. Now, of course all of these games are full of puzzle words or magic e words or words with consonant blends or vowel pairs, whatever they are working on learning, but all of us look at them as games, and so I play games, every day. When we aren’t playing games, we are usually reading books (amazing), singing (OH yeah), or dancing (boo ya!). If you can’t tell, my job is pretty fun.
The Elegant Swan
In my job description, most of my main responsibilities are with my 5 year olds, the KG students. They are at an age where their brains and tiny hands are now capable of learning how to read and write. My second responsibility is my 4 year olds, who need to have a solid foundation of letter sounds so that when they turn five, they can start their journey into reading and writing as well. The last responsibility that I have is to teach my 3 year olds, the Nursery students, for just 15 minutes a day to give them some English input to start to understand how the language sounds. Little did I know, the Nursery class time has become a little respite from the real work (of playing games) each day where I give them just a few simple ideas to learn, and then listen for them to drop some kind of comedic bomb.
One of my students, the Elegant Swan, may be one of the funniest people I have ever met, and I am not just saying that because she is three years old and I’m proud that she now knows how to hold a marker the right way. She is sharp, and witty, and never misses a beat. She is the first to point out my own mistakes in my slideshows, and to introduce us to our own new vocabulary as well.
I am sure you are curious as to why I keep calling her The Elegant Swan. Well, one day she showed up to class in a new jacket, because the morning temperature of Mandalay probably fell to 75, causing most of my students to show up in heavy jackets and earmuffs. This student was wearing a new jacket that was white with long sleeves, and had small pink flowers patterned across it. She joined the zoom meeting, and before she even said good morning to me and my co-teacher, she stood up and, while dramatically raising her arms, said, “Look, Teacher, I am an elegant swan.” And so, she was.
At the beginning of December, during a Friday round of Show and Tell, I was showing my students a poinsettia that was in my dads office. I started with the very teacherly phrase of, “This is a poinsettia, can you all say poinsettia?” They all repeated the word back to me, and I continued on to tell them the cultural significance of a poinsettia during Christmas. Next, was The Elegant Swan’s turn. She held up a new doll and started her show and tell with, “This is my doll, can everyone say doll?” She’s a teaching protégée, and I could not be more impressed.
Now besides mocking me, she has one more talent: pointing out every mistake I have ever made on a slideshow. One week, we were learning the names of all the different kinds of fruits. I was clicking through my slideshow of apples, oranges, lemons, and limes, until I accidentally found the end of that days slides and clicked right past it, showing one of the pictures from last week's topic of farm animals, a rabbit. The Elegant Swan immediately withdrew all the air in the room and said, absolutely horrified at what she had seen, “No no NO! A rabbit is not a fruit!”
Did you just read that WHOLE BOOK?
The last thing that has filled my heart way up to the top is that these students are really learning! I remember, in the weeks after signing my job contract, I had an overwhelming fear that I was not ready to be a teacher. One night, sitting in my college apartment with one of my roommates, I almost broke down in tears as I ranted about how I was going to create a whole class of illiterate Myanmar children and it was going to be all my fault. But now, even while doing distance learning, I am proud to announce that my students are by no means illiterate, and are actually really learning and growing!
At the beginning of this year, my five year olds were working on how to read individual three letter words. It would take them a few seconds to blend all of the sounds together, and they would proudly shout out the word when they were done. Since then, they have memorized fifty puzzle words, learned how to read words with the magic e at the end, and almost any other four letter word. Just a few days ago, I decided to open one of the books that our workbook works with. Usually, I would have them practice reading a few pages of these, or I would read the book to the class as they followed along. This time, I hesitantly decided to have the class read the book, one student at a time reading one page each. I was nervous, and blocked off about 10 minutes of class to this activity. And they hit it out of the park! They finished the book with absolutely no problem. Every student participated, and we made it through the book in about half the time I expected.
At this moment, I had the chance to look back to August and really see how far they have come. In the midst of all of the roadblocks put in their way, not being able to go back into a classroom and having their teacher what feels like an entire world away, they are truly learning and growing. Besides reading, my five year olds can count and write numbers over 100, they know all of their 2D shapes and are learning their 3D shapes, they can do simple addition, and their speaking skills have grown exponentially. My once shy students are raising their hands almost every day, and my never shy students are still bursting out of their seats with answers (we’re working on it). My four year olds and three year olds are also making similar strides in their curriculum. I could not be more proud of them, and if they have listened to my lessons, they should also know to be proud of themselves.
Teacher, when are you coming to Mandalay?
The last thing that I adore about my students is they have absolutely no fear of telling me what they are feeling. And they want to go back to school. Almost every week, one of my students asks when they can go back to the school or when I am coming to Mandalay to be with them. As a teacher, I like having simple answers to all of their questions, but this is one that is stumping, not only me, but every teacher, administrator, and parent in the world. They want to be in the classroom, learning with the hands on Montessori materials that I have learned so much about. But, we all know that that can’t happen right now.
So, I try to reassure them that I will be there eventually. We will be in our M6 classroom in real life, we will meet, it will happen. Just not right now. And, I try to joke with them and make them laugh. Many of my students love bringing toy airplane to Show and Tell and I always ask, “Do you think you could come and get me with your airplane and bring me to Myanmar?” They always laugh and respond, “Teacher, it is just a toy” or, “Teacher, it is too small.” But this way, they know that I want to come and be there with them. Young children need to feel wanted from those around them, and even though I can’t sit next to them and show them how much I care about them, I can tell them, and I try to do that every day.
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