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Teaching Little Kids
Thursday, January 27, 2005-12:26 AM
Since the orignal plan to go to Tibet got nixed, I took on a little extra work at a primary school. They told me I'd be teaching English. But after Natasha observed for one day, she described it as "bao hu"---babysitting.
The youngest kid is three years old. He mostly wanders around the room. When he notices the other kids writing at the chalkboard, he'll walk up to me and say, "Wo mei you qu hei ban"..."I didn't go to the chalkboard".
The other little girl, who I think is four, mostly entertains herself drawing. She has a pretty large English vocabulary and can, if she wants to, pronounce words correctly. But, when I ask her to say something, she almost always does one of two things: ignore me or say some gibberish, laugh, then continue drawing.
The two middle kids, a boy and a girl between six and eight, are the most out of control. The girl climbs on my back and pulls on my shirt while the boy runs around screaming and making enemies with the other students.
The oldest three, an introverted girl, and two boys don't have much patience while I'm trying to control the younger ones and end up being just as bad.
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The first day I couldn't find anything to keep them busy. They were much more interested in my hairy arms then anything else.
Then, I remembered a drinking game I learned in Prague. I adapted it to the environment (removed the drinking element), and it turned out to be very successful.
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Later that day, I ate lunch with the kids. I sat on a plastic chair made for a person between two and a half and three and a half feet tall at a table that went up to a few inches below my knees.
They started asking me how to say words like "spoon" and "carrot" in English.
Pretty soon, they got bored and started asking me how to say stuff like "pee" and "poop". At that point, I couldn't be sure if they were asking me real questions or not. For example, I sometimes confuse the word "fang qi" (to give up) with the word "fang pi" (to fart).
So, when the little girl asked me how to say "fang pi niu" in English, I didn't know if I should refuse to tell her because she was asking how to say "farting cow" or if all she wanted to know was how to say, "the cow that gave up."
I started to feel uncomfortable. The other Chinese teachers could hear the conversation. These little kids were in complete control. My size advantage was useless against their home court advantage.
The kids have since learned how to exploit language in their favor. They know what they can and cannot say in front of me. That makes the job even more difficult.
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Today, I taught the kids how to buy stuff in English. As usual, they weren't listening. The other Chinese teacher tried to persuade them to behave by offering to take them to the grocery store the next day to buy somehing on the condition that they use English to buy it.
One girl immediately pointed out a fundamental problem with the proposal.
"But teacher, will they be able to understand?"
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