In the Classroom

The Teaching Life

Many ask to describe what it is like to be a teacher overseas, especially when they hear that 75% of my class are learning English for the first time. Normally teaching primary kids requires a special level of ingenuity and patience, perhaps even a little more so when 90% of the time you get the "deer caught in headlights" expression whenever you ask a student a question.

There are many miscommunications that happen like one student complaining that another keeps telling him that he is stupid only to discover the child was actually telling him "stop it!" ... stupid ... stop it I can see the confusion. However it never ceases to amaze me how quickly they learn and make connections.

Cute Things the Kids Say

My days are full of these and if only I could remember them all! I've started to write them down when they happen so as to not forget.

Miss R: God can understand us no matter what language we speak. Whether we speak English, Korean, Dutch or Portuguese God understands.
Student Blurts out: "He even understands Canadianese!"    

While learning about careers and jobs people do, I ask one of our student's, whose mom works at our school: "What is your mom's job?"
Student: "She does the laundry and makes us dinner."

Talking about how we will learn our memory verses in no time I get this response:
Student: "Miss Robinson that is impossible."
  Miss R.:  "Oh I think we will be able to do it."
Student: "No Miss Robinson! It takes time to do anything! We can't do anything without time!"
They got me there!

Indeed teaching the little ones takes a load of patience, and creativity, finding dozens of ways to teach the same thing over and over. Playing pictionary, charades and using google translate and google images to get the ideas across. Yet those moments when you hear them singing Jesus loves me when washing their hands in the bathroom just makes me smile with a sense of success knowing we will get there!