This is my 11-year old Japanese student, Kakeru-kun. He's very playful even he has a hard time expressing himself in English. He will be staying in Cebu for 6 months, he came here sometime in December last year and it's surprising that he's left here all alone with other offline Japanese students because his mom has to go back to Japan for work. Basically, he starts to become independent at a young age. This was my third week as a substitute teacher in this offline school and my first time to handle a kid. I have been teaching kids mostly on online classes but never like this. I have always imagined myself how would it feel to handle a kid student in an offline setting, it was such a fulfilling experience in my ESL(English as a Second Language) life.
As much as I love to teach him basic English expressions or grammar words, but it was difficult to keep him still, he keeps on moving, roaming around or even tie my hair. LOL~ Well, I just let him do it. As not to disturb other classes at that time.
A bright idea came to my mind, I asked him what's his favorite anime character to make our class more fun and exciting. So I suggested to him that we will draw his favorite anime character and then I got his attention.
We drew his favorite anime character which is Totoro, one of the popular Ghibli stories by Hayao Miyazaki from Japan. This is my second favorite animated story next to "Spirited Away". Good thing, I brought my notebook and some coloring materials with me. We shared the two blank spaces of my notebook, I drew on the left side since I'm a leftie and he drew on the right side. LOL!
At first, he feels demotivated and slowly losing interest, he keeps on erasing his drawing and about to give up. Of course, I don't want him to feel bad, I keep on encouraging him that he's getting there that I can slowly see an improvement in his drawing.
I helped him traced the lines of his drawing while he was busy coloring my finished Totoro.
Here he is gleaming with a smile after he finished his drawing. I thought it would be difficult to keep our class going since I am not his regular teacher he might not trust or lose interest in me. Good thing, he participated very well!
There are so many things I have learned about teaching kids. In the beginning, it looks like a hard task to take, but you'll be rewarded at the end because kids are so sweet, loyal and loving.
Tips to remember: To keep their attention, you need to be patient, animated and creative. If teaching kids are not your thing, then you might feel stressed or burned out. Just love them, be like them and you'll see how fun it is!