Really nice apartment building (not mine)


Today will be my third day teaching at Noble. It is really going well. This week I am teaching kindergarten in the mornings and elementary in the afternoons. The needed an elementary sub for this week. It is really a nice mix. My “kindergarten” students are actually only preschool age. Most are 3 years old, some are only 2, and a few are 4. They are sooooo cute though.

These past few days have been a struggle because a few of the students are new and two of them cry for their mom’s the entire day. I am lucky because I have a Taiwanese teacher in the classroom to deal with that sort of thing. When the kids come to me crying, I am no help because I usually can’t understand what they are crying for (most of the time it is there mom, and I can understand that, but they want someone who will listen to their entire plea). One little boy, Chris, who is especially smart and especially attached to his mom went on a hunger strike yesterday. She stayed in the class for about an hour in the morning and after she left he began to scream and kick. When he stopped crying he told us that he would not eat until his mom comes to get him. He even threw up the only bite of lunch he ate.

Aside from all the crying, I have a pretty good class. Most of them do not know any English. It was a struggle just to get them to sit down in a circle for a lesson. When they were finally seated and I said good morning to each of them, the looked at me with blank faces. The Taiwanese teacher told them to say good morning back to me in Chinese and I went around with cookies. This sure did the trick. Out of the 13 students, about 9 said good morning the first time. Two said it the second time around when they realized that the others were getting a treat and the last two managed a wave. Yesterday morning, which was only the second day, everyone but the last two said good morning to me as soon as I said it to them.

This week we are working on the ABC’s, numbers 1-10, and a few songs. I am also reading them a pop up story about animals and colors. It is really simple, for example: “Yellow Lion, Pink, Pig, etc.” Perfect for their level and they love seeing the animals pop up. They are very receptive and are learning so quickly that I think it will be very rewarding to teach this age. They are complete blank slates, almost all the English they learn will be from me. That is so neat to think about.

The elementary students are also a lot of fun. But they already know so much! I am subbing for a class of 6 year olds and all of them can read already! And I am not talking about a story they have practiced. I gave them a word search yesterday, with words like tricycle, wagon, etc. and they read it perfectly. I was impressed. We are working on long vowel sounds all this week and they pretty much have it down after only two days. I will have to find other things for them to do.

Yesterday we went to the gym with another class and played a few games. I taught them a game from camp, called Dead Ant, and they loved it! I am sure we will have to play again soon.