Nate peered through the window into the kindergarten classroom. The principal had left him in front of the door while she’d gone in to make sure the kids were ready. Looking through the glass, he could see a row of parents sitting behind the children. He’d signed his contract with the education company two days before. They’d told him he’d receive two weeks of training before he had to teach but this morning they’d called and told him that he needed to do a demo at Happy Dragon kindergarten.
“What should I teach them?” he’d asked in a panic.
“It’s a demo. Just do whatever you want,” his boss had unhelpfully replied in her very broken English.
His hangover from the last night was not helping and the early morning rush hadn’t given him time to shave. In his opinion he was lucky that he’d managed to find the right school on time.
As he entered the classroom, three of the children started to cry. It had been many years since Nate had been around children this young and he wasn’t sure what he should do. He didn’t have any flashcards but he’d managed to cobble together a power point with some words on it. Once the power point was open, he began rattling off the words one by one. A few of the kids managed to repeat a few of the words but they soon fell behind.
After three minutes, Nate was finished with the power point. Looking out over the thirty kids and the forty parents sitting behind them, he racked his brain for a clue as to what he should do next. What do I do for the next twenty-five minutes?
Entering the classroom of her third class of the day, Mango 3, Latisha shouted a cheery “good morning” to the twenty-five kids sitting in a horse shoe arrangement who shouted good morning back to her. This was her second year at the same kindergarten and she’d learned how to fill up her class time.
First she put on a random video from her collection. This morning she went with “Baby shark” since the kids seemed to like that one. Once the song was done, she went through the words the kids were learning that week. The school had given her a curriculum to follow but she’d found it a bit boring so she just came up with her own words each week. After all, she’d thought to herself, she was American so obviously knew how to teach English better that whatever curriculum the Chinese kindergarten staff had put together. After drilling the kids on the words for about five minutes, she put on another random song, this time “Peanut butter and Jelly.”
Every couple of weeks, she’d get called in to a meeting between her official employer and the kindergarten’s principal. The principal would invariably complain that she wasn’t following the curriculum but Latisha knew that all the complaints stemmed from the fact that she was African-American.
“The kindergarten is complaining that you aren’t following the same curriculum that the previous teacher was following,” her director of studies informed her.
“Well obviously, he’s white and male and I’m black and female so we aren’t going to teach the same way,” Latisha pointed out, ignoring the fact that the question was about the curriculum being followed and not on teaching styles.
Jack shuffled through his flashcards once more. He’d already perused the lesson plans for the day and was now making sure that the flashcards were in order. Last Friday he’d watched a video on You Tube of a new type of activity and he was planning to try it out today. Since he taught the same kids every day, he was always on the lookout for new games or activities to change things up.
“What are you doing with your Sun class today?” his colleague Mark asked.
Jack explained about the new activity he’d found and how he thought it would go.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Mark replied. “Let me know if it works and I might use it for my Sun class later this week. By the way, I was just told I won’t have my second morning class. Do you want me to sit in on yours?”
“Sure,” Jack replied. “You know how I love getting feedback. I”ll even give you a checklist to go through.”
As I mentioned in my previous article, I’ll be doing a series of posts on EFL teaching in kindergarten in China over the next couple of months. Hopefully by the end, if you’re interested in working in China, you’ll know what to expect before you start working. In these three “case studies,” I’ve given true life examples of teachers and teaching styles you come across. What kind of teacher you want to be is a choice you have to make on your own. There’s many types of teachers in China, some do it for the money, others enjoy teaching. Hopefully if you are teaching EFL in kindergarten you will develop your own style and work ethic.
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