Sensei! Sensei! Sensei! Sensei! Sensei!*

(*teacher)

Today was a LONG day (09:30 to 21:00 in the school). After the lovely springness of yesterday, today was again grey, miserable and raining. This grimness was broken only by reams of pink paper lanterns hanging everywhere to celebrate the hopefully-soon-to-be-in-bloom cherry blossom.

I had to start the day much earlier than normal to do a special two hour class. With seven four year olds who were the sweetest things ever. Well, six of them were. The seventh cried quite a bit at the beginning and then spent time distracting the others.... But they were lovely and we had lots of fun.... Someone obviously likes me as I lucked-in on this one. My colleague had seven kids aged between six and ten to contend with. And I had my little angels :D

Luckily, it'll be another couple of months before I have to do any of these again.

This was followed by a sample lesson with a really cute little 2.5 year old boy who came in clinging to mum but didn't cry, got involved in the lesson and was heard leaving the building singing the song I'd taught him. Bless!

For a bit I had mixed feelings about having kids so young in a classroom but I do believe it's beneficial for lots of reasons. Firstly, proper contact with a strange white adult. Secondly, they're years away from starting school so it teaches them classroom behaviour, concentration and socialisation skills - remember most of these kids don't have siblings. And of course it's fun for them, they get lots of attention and, hopefully, get an enthusiasm for English.

I meted out my first punishment today when one kid kept pushing another one and my instructions to stop didn't work. I threatened if he did it again (and he's persistantly overbearing as he's physically bigger than the others) I'd send him out the room. He begged, so I let him stay. He pushed the other kid again and I sent him out to sit in reception for two minutes. Which I think is a good punishment for a six year old. I think his mum had stern words with him later as my colleague saw him sulking behind his mum as they left us... Oh well, it's tough being a kid I guess!

I've been sleeping badly recently and the first two hours left me in a heap for ages before coasting through the rest of the day caffeine by lesson by caffeine by lesson.

Zonc.