The most exhausting 45 minutes of my life :)

Who would have thought that teaching children can be so complicated? Not me, apparently. We’ve done a course in teaching children at college but in my opinion, it’s definitely not enough to become a successful primary school teacher. There are so many peculiar features of children that you cannot possibly predict. Of course, I knew that teaching children is all about visuals, games and fun, I even revised some theoretical knowledge about young learners. So, after doing my teaching practice in junior high school for a few weeks, I was very enthusiastic about my first lesson in second grade of primary school. Seriously, how difficult could it be? Before planning my lesson, I told the teacher that instead of singing the ‘Hello’ song (which was their routine), I was going to do a different worm-up hence I didn’t know the words of the song. The teacher said it was absolutely impossible, which I thought was a little weird. Couldn’t they just do something else for once? But as soon as I entered the classroom and saw thirty little pupils all pumped and ready to sing their song, I realized what the teacher meant. So we sang the song and then moved on to some exercises. Having done a few settle activities, it was time to do the stir ones (as it’s methodologically required). See, I was prepared, wasn’t I? :) I’d panned an activity called ‘caterpillar’ which involved walking around the class in a snaking queue (like a caterpillar), singing a song and performing some gestures. I asked if there were five volunteers for the game and before I even noticed, I had the whole class next to the blackboard. The teacher sitting at the last desk couldn’t stop laughing. Somehow, by promising that they would take turns and everyone would play, I managed to bring the chaos under control. Then they were supposed to revise their vocabulary which involved drawing. It took ages for some kids (future perfectionists for whom it took plenty of time to choose proper colors and draw perfect lines) to finish their drawings, whereas others just scribbled something and ran to me asking if I liked their work :) Finally, the bell rang. The lesson seemed to last for hours and I was extremely exhausted. As much as I really admire children for their energy, passion and unique intellectual capacity, teaching them is a real challenge. It was beyond any of my expectations :)