Teaching Tots in China

Setting: Near the city of Guangzhou, Southern China.

Role: Teacher of English and Music/Movement to pre-school children

Elapsed time: Day 114 in China...

If I said to you ‘’I work abroad as an English teacher’’, you might imagine me in front of a semicircle of adults, encouraging them to repeat new words- or with a classful of high school kids who can’t sit still in their seats. That’s probably what I would have pictured too.

That is, before I accepted a job to become a pre-school teacher in China.

When I arrived in Autumn, these pretty lanterns
the students had made were adorning the playground

One slight problem with accepting this job was that I didn’t have knowledge of how to teach English to 2-5-year-olds. I was honest during my Skype interview: ''I’ve taught teenagers and I’ve looked after younger children in France''. And that experience along with my CELTA qualification and summer school work was enough to get me the job. 

I knew I'd be able to manage this job after spending three years in a high school in the UK. No, I had not taught preschoolers, nor had I worked in any English department, but my achievements often began with my skill in winging it. Here are three examples:

Having assembled a 12 piece jazz band, I led them to perform at three concerts, despite only a little experience playing music, and none teaching it. I ran games lessons while the P.E teacher was injured for a term, even though I am clinically crap at sports.  And my best achievement was teaching biology to eight classes of high school students, with no teacher training at all.

So I decided that teaching English and Music/Movement to little ones was within my winging potential, and so I (waited ages for my visa) and then flew to China.

Teaching Tots

If my instruction had been: colour the Simpsons as if
they are possessed.. she would have been bang on

The job did take some getting used to. The greatest challenge was growing accustomed to the fact the children hardly ever know what I am saying to them. There’s no point asking, ‘sit down everyone’, its all got to be gestures and body language. Thankfully there are other teachers to assist me in the classroom- taking kids to the toilet or cleaning up when students afford themselves the luxury of doing toilet whilst still in their seats (which happens weekly). The catch is that these teachers are all Chinese-only speakers too, so communicating with them is just as tricky as with the children! 

So the question is: how to teach without verbally communicating with the students. The projector is a huge help for leaning letters and words, and you can use animation on PowerPoint to make pictures fly on to the screen and keep the attention of a two-year-old (sometimes). I’ve winged a few techniques too, and now revising vocab via a lucky dip of flashcards from my rucksack is much more exciting than it sounds.

I aim to get students speaking English as I know that will be useful. The most I can do is say single words or short sentences and get children to repeat what they hear. Some are pretty accurate, where others are still learning. A student called Bill was attempting to say 'giraffe', but all I could hear from him was 'a-wah'.

'Its giraffe, Bill. G- g- giraffe' I prompted.
He said 'a-wah', again

Nursery rhymes are as commonplace as they would be in a preschool or nursery in the UK. The difference being that it takes the tiny Chinese kids a long time to learn a song in a foreign tongue. 

Here we see Michael pointing to the crab and telling
 me that in Chinese it is 'pangxie'. Sometimes we swap
roles and they are the ones teaching me!

They do try their best at this- often they correctly sing key phrases such as ‘’eey-I eey-I oh!’’ and then the rest of the song is a mumbled garble of neither Chinese nor English. Last month there was a case of a five-year-old proclaiming ‘’Dego-bah, dego-bah, dego bah de bay!’’ and getting frustrated when the English teacher didn’t know what he was on about. It was discovered to be a well known Christmas song- sing his words to the right tune and it becomes pretty cute.

I love the job as funny and touching things happen every day. There’s a boy called Michael who always sees me out at the end of the lesson by holding the door for me. Now that is a three-year-old with manners!

My attitude towards the job is that not too much can be expected of the little ones- for the most part simply hearing me talking in English every day puts them far ahead of similar-aged children who don’t have access to a native English speaker.

My emphasis is on having fun and I don't over work the students as they are so small. Some of the parents have asked for homework for their toddlers. This is not something the school agrees with, but it might start to give you an example of what some members of the Chinese community want for their toddlers. 

Pleasing the Parents

Part of my job is visually being on display at the school. You might have read that sentence and not understood it. If so, I don’t blame you. 

This is not at all related to the text you are 

reading... But I was amused (and confused) 

to see this page in a Chinese story book.

Everything else was in Chinese, but this

page had 'GROIN' written in English...

Explaination: A key reason why Chinese parents send their kids to this particular school are its four British teachers. As such, we spend half an hour outside when students are arriving and leaving so that the parents can see us. We wave hello to the kids and it is nice to greet them in this way, but I know its for the parents rather than the children.

When I was interviewed, a seemingly casual question about my surname was brought up. I sound British, I am British, but I have an Indian surname. On reflection, I think my employer was trying to determine my heritage to the tune of whether I had light skin or not. In these types of schools there is a certain, inaccurate, idea of  what an English speaker should be (light skinned).

A native English speaker with tanned or darker skin does not fit the bill, unfortunately. My slightly tanned friend Pablo, who is a teacher in Beijing, lived the first seven years of his life in Spain before moving to the UK. He speaks perfect English but is actually Spanish. Needless to say, there is no mention of Spain at his school, as the truth might displease the parents. And maybe they say his colour is due to some good holidays in the sun.

There are times when I am at a loss, kids are running around the music room, trying to grab any instrument they see and I can only observe them and smile. I smile because I think about my degree in biology and wonder how I ended up in a filthy town, thousands of miles from England, with these crazy children.

Most days I love it though, and I’m pretty sure when I leave China later this year, my next job will be in another pre-school.

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If you are thinking about teaching the very young, somewhere abroad, let me know in the comments. I don't know it all, but will gladly help  answer questions where I can.