Tuesday 18 June 2013

Meet the little ones


This was my year 1and 2 intro lesson,
the numbers are them guessing my age

So yeah it has been a while- sorry.

Anyway enough of the apologies (imagine me bowing really low, like I'm going into flat back (insanity joke) )  Hmm can you put brackets in brackets when it's not math?  Well , I can


Anyway for the second time a couple of weeks ago on the 6th I had to teach the 1st and 2nd graders at my elementary school. Most times I teach the 5th grades and they are energetic enough BUT the 1st graders and 2nd graders are like little Ninja duracell bunnies and they don't understand more than a couple words of English but they are the most enthusiastic classes I have taught.

The way they got excited when I turned up you would have though I was a power ranger or something they went crazy and I went crazy and it was just a crazy day. Like working with kids puts a lot of people off having kids but this was the opposite. I gave out high fives and the kids literally mobbed me at one point. They see me as a  high five giving BFG climbing frame from a mysterious land. I remember having kids n my legs climbing them like trees and a couple kids swinging from my bicep and this was before I even stepped into the class.

And  playtime I'll go into that in another post but  I really enjoyed that day and yeah I got paid for it. :D Good times  Shame is I don''t have the 1st and 2nd years in my regular schedule so who knows when the next time will be.

What is funny is that the little kids who you think would be scared and apprehensive when meeting a giant foreigner are the most welcoming and friendly and then it's the adults who are the fraidy cats. I think it's great to get foreign people into Japan so these kids will understand and grow up knowing foreigners and not having some of the fears that their elders have.  I'm just glad that for the students I have had the pleasure of teaching, I'm glad that I can dispel many of the negative stereotypes they may have otherwise received about my demographic and to realise that personality has no real relation with race or background.