My first lesson teaching small children - the poor kids!

I still remember the first time I taught a kids class, 15 years ago. The fact that I still remember it so well should give you hint about how traumatic it was for me. I still feel sorry for the poor little guys!! Just kidding. Well no, I DO still feel sorry for them.

And quite frankly I did everything in my power to not have to teach them. I started out teaching teenagers, so dealing with 3 year olds was really not on my radar until my boss told me to teach her new group. I thought she was kidding and was literally begging not to get this group. I told her that I have no idea how to deal with small children, that actually, I have never even SEEN a child in my life (well, yea, this exaggeration did not help much, but hey, it was worth a try). For some reason, she really believed in me (what I’m thankful for today) and basically made me understand that I have no option and that I should not worry too much, she would show me how to teach them (you don’t even want to know how that went). 

She “showed” me how to teach them for an entire 1 (!) lesson (half the time she was talking to the parents, so let’s say an entire half lesson!!!! 

The best part of all this for me was, that there was this 50 year old woman who would always speak very seriously, suddenly sitting on the floor with a handpuppet and speaking with squeaky frog voice. I just thought to myself “you gotta be kidding me, no way I’m gonna do THAT”.  I just thought she looked completely silly and I was convinced that all the kids and parents thought that she was stupid. 

Then she gave me a booklet with a poem and a coloring page (that thing was supposed to be a manual that I ”just have to follow”) and told me “have fun”. 

So now I was sitting there with 8 3-year-old kids (did I mention that I had never seen a kid before??? Well, ok the one or two from my neighborhood that I have seen from far maybe, do they count? I never talked to them!!!). I had nooo idea what to do, leave alone didn’t want to look “as stupid as she did” and was clinging to my manual, praying that thing would work! 

The first few minutes went quite well – to my own astonishment. I did my poem and my coloring page. And thought .. cool, it’s not that bad after all. Almost finished!!! 

What I mean with “almost finished” .. was NOT the lesson itself, but the manual!!! Looking at the watch, I had just taught 15 minutes!! Awesome, I’m here with 3 year old kids, no activities and still 45 minutes to go. Who on earth wrote this manual???? Did this person ever teach???

I decided to get creative and built an obstacle course with benches and everything I could get my hands on. It worked like a charm, we had tons of fun, and with the time I completely forgot about the “looking stupid” idea I had in my head and instead just enjoyed the lesson. And the more I didn’t worry about the looking stupid part, the more everybody else  also enjoyed the lesson .

Only problem: it didn’t have a lot to do with the topic I was supposed to teach. But the kids were happy, so I was happy. It was actually really fun teaching kids. Probably it would be a lot more fun once you know what you are actually doing!!!! 

So I went to the headmistress and asked her where the heck this manual is coming from and if she didn’t have anything better. (She is pretty cool, otherwise I would not have phrased it like that, believe me). She told me there was nothing else on the market. And about 15 years ago, that was pretty much true. Today you have a lot more choices, but back then .. not really. I was determined to make this work though and so I took this “manual” (cough*cough*) as a guideline and researched on the internet like a crazy person. I learned about child development, child psychology, everything I could get my hands on from preschools in the USA, England, wherever. I would research till 3 am in the morning and get up at 7 again. But it was worth every minute of it. I learned about so many different methods, I found out what worked, what did not. I found that many things that have been created for native speakers really do NOT work with ESL learners and many other things. It became my real passion until today. And I never stop learning. My classes became better and better, more and more children joined until we actually had a waiting list and had to hire another teacher to take over other groups. 

It is quite amazing to look back. Starting with nothing and today I’m a teacher trainer and educational manager working on programs for schools. And this is something that I want everybody to learn from this story. No matter how shy you are when you first start teaching children and no matter how insecure you are, and especially no matter how stupid you think you might look, you can definitely make it work and grow with the experience. For me, there is nothing more fun than teaching kids and to see the sparkles in the eyes when they love to come to the lesson and enjoy learning. We have all started small and you never know what the future will hold, if you set your mind to it. So, let’s rock the classrooms!!