East Pacific Premier Kindergarten

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EPP - East Pacific Premier - The kindergarten that is now my new place of work.

There are two amazing things this place has given to me - Friendship and the opportunity to work with the cutest children.

Friendship

Fiona, Laura (soon to be known as the Irish - not a derogatory comment) and Val. I don't know if, when the four of us met we knew how much we would mean to each other and how important our friendship would be. Together we had the best times and thanks to them I have the best and funniest memories.

These three will be mentioned constantly throughout the entire blog but for now I want to talk about the children and teaching them.

The children

The main reason for coming out to China was to see more of the world and to do that I needed to work to make money. As mentioned before I've always wanted to work with children so choosing to teach them abroad was easy. I've always preferred the younger aged children, six and under so when I was told I'd be working in a kindergarten I was thrilled. The perfect age for me and they are so cute cheeky but loveable way and to young to answer back - perfect!

However when it came to teaching them for the first time I was so nervous; what if they didn't understand anything I said and I stood there talking to myself?! I was that nervous, for the first three lessons I hadn't told any of the children my name. It wasn't until a teacher in one of my classes asked if I could tell the children what they should call me I realised I hadn't introduced myself. Yes I've worked in nurseries and schools back home but standing at the front of the class and having 40 4-6 year olds stare at you three times a day is scary - especially when you don't speak their language!

Once I finally introduced myself the children started talking to me more and let me tell you that considering their age and English is their second language they can talk. Some can only answer basic questions such as what is your name and how old are you? Some can tell me what the object in the picture is. Others will have a full conversation with me, telling me their hobbies, what they like and dislike, their favourite food etc. At least I don't had to worry about them understanding me.

Even though the range of abilities was so different I found a that asking a question to the whole class and sometimes letting them call out the answer, sometimes choosing a child with a hand up and sometimes picking specific children to answer questions allowed me to see who knew more and to encourage those children who needed more help. Sometimes none of the children knew the answer but that's why I was there.

I slowly started to learn the chidlrens names and as I got to know them this became easier. I wrote down a list of names from each class and used that to call a child up, sometimes calling out a child and not knowing who would come up. Fiona wrote all her children's names on stickers and pulled them out a bag, this was to be fair and a fun way to learn their names.

I was lucky all my children had English names. One even had two - Felix and Wesley, it took me ages to work out it was the same person, all his documents said Felix but he only answered to Wesley. Most of the names were recognisable however I did have a few strange ones - Tiger, kenvin (Kevin with an extra n), Stary And Dou Dou. Laura had a dragon and Val had a boy called Summer.

Slowly I started to fall in love with each and every child.

Teaching these children became so much fun. I loved going to each class to spend time with them and to get to know each child better. I tried making the classes as much fun as possible so the children enjoyed my time with them, but hopefully they also learnt something and personally I think they did.

The children may not always have been on their best behaviour but theres nothing the bribe of stickers won't fix, so if your even thinking of teaching either abroad or at home - STICKERS are your best friend.

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