First Day Teaching Pre-K

Uniforms were similar to this (but blue)

On Monday me and another teacher from the LanguageCorps went to visit this new school called Phnom Penh International.  As it turns out no Westerners have ever taught there so we were going to be their first.  We visited them on Graduation day, most of the students are 4-6 but some are 3.  Graduation day was one big party where I ended up making balloon animals for the kids and drawing angry bird/pig faces on balloons as well.  The kids are so cute, one of the reasons why they are cute is because they all wear uniforms which is white shirts with blue plaid bows and bow ties and their shorts are blue plaid as well.  One of the balloons popped on me and a little boy this balloon was filled with flower so my pants were now spotted with white.

Second day which was technically my first day teaching was a whirlwind.  I had to stop and make 20 copies (they told us we would have 18 kids per class) of my handouts, then when arriving at the school the kids were on recess so they said hello while we ran upstairs to the classroom.  My class was pretty messy so I picked up some toys and rearranged some of the desks to face the front.  My classroom has a nice big whiteboard, a big ceiling fan and an aircon (I still sweated!).  I ended up having about 16 kids most were 6 or 5 but I got a hand full of 4 year olds and a little girl who was three (she basically ran around stealing pencils and helping me erase stuff).  

I began the class by saying Hello and Good Morning, most of them responded back by saying Hello Teacher.  Then we sung the ABC's, which all the kids loved.  After that we began learning AaBbCcDdEe which I showed examples of the letters and wrote them on the board.  Then I handed out a worksheet for tracing AaBbCc (the school supplies the children with pencils and crayons) which most of them were pretty good at so I handed them another sheet so they could retrace again for practice while the others worked on their letters (I got the Teaching Assistants to put some of their names on the papers but not all of them).  After that I called some of them to the board to write some of the letters, most could do it but some had a little trouble with motor functions when writing with a thick marker and on the actual board instead of paper. 

Next I began to teach them some animal names: Ant, Bear, Cat, Dog, and Elephant.  Each corresponded with the letters they learned previously (I had pictures of each animal).  I also tried to mimic what that animal would say; No Ant noise, Rawr, Meow, Ruff, and Insert Elephant noise!  They really seemed to like doing the animal sounds. They really liked my bear picture (I used most of my own pictures that I have taken). I think I sped through the lessons quicker than I should have, so I had some extra time and we sung the ABC's while I pointed to all the letters surrounding the whiteboard.  Then I wrote the animal's names on the board and quizzed them with either the pictures or the words (some ended up saying the animals sound instead of the name but I'll take it for the first day).

I was so nervous the entire time about messing up and not being a good teacher, it was very difficult.  I believe I did a good job for the first time teaching kids in another country.  I got to chat with owner for a bit, the other class was taking a bit longer, and he said after the two weeks we could have a permanent job there.  I said thank you for the offer, but I had to explain that after two weeks both of us have to go to China where we already have a job.  I also told him that by two weeks their would be new teachers ready to replace us in the program.  The owner is very nice and seemed to like us a lot.

We will see how day 2 goes....