You take my class now

Despite having timetables and being told we have to stick to them, very often we’re just asked by one of the teachers, or the pupils to take their class.  This can mean anything from just minding the class for 10 minutes, to taking them all day with absolutely nothing to teach them.  I can confirm that my improvisation skills have come on leaps and bounds in the last five months.

One of the worst times we’ve had to take a class was the day that both of the nursery teachers were off, so Sarah and I were left both LKG and UKG by ourselves.  A group of about 35 3-6 year olds children.  The UKG teacher had told Sarah that she would be off so Sarah had the chance to at least partly prepare herself for what was to come, but I had no idea the LKG teacher was not going to be there.  Which was a fabulous present to get that morning.  The LKG class is slightly larger than UKG but the kids don’t really have the English skills UKG have.  Although, with LKG you can often just tell them to sleep and they do it.  Perfect for when I was just sitting on a chair at the front freaking out over what I could teach them and wondering how many times I could realistically listen to “Johnny Johnny yes papa” before I would have to go and find Johnny and his father and murder them.

The thing about Indian teaching is that you can prepare so much but that could all go out the window the minute you turn up at school and a child comes running up to you saying “no teacher miss.”  What I’ve discovered works really well is spelling tests.  They take up loads of time so you can mentally go through every lesson plan you’ve ever done, or even just thought about in passing so you can prepare for the next seven hours.

The kids get bored, I get bored.  I end up unable to even think up new words for the game splat.  It just goes down-hill.  I have so much more respect for Primary School teachers who deal with the same class all day, every day.  I am really not built for that at all.  I have a shorter attention span than the kids.  Which is good because they get lots of different activities in a forty minute lesson.