Teaching All These Children!
Hello and xin chào! This post comes by request: I’ll be talking a bit about my experiences in the classroom so far.
The center I teach at accepts students from ages 4 to 15, broken down into eight levels: Pre-School (4-5), Pre-Starters (6-7), Starters (7-9), Movers (8-10), Flyers (9-11), and then three more levels for older kids. When I got my work schedule and saw that I would be teaching almost exclusively the younger classes, I was admittedly a little distraught. I teach one Pre-School class, four Pre-Starters classes, two Starters classes, and one Flyers class, so my students are mostly 6-8 years old. Luckily, the center provides the native teachers with teaching assistants, two in Pre-School and Pre-Starters classes and one in the other classes. Their role is basically to manage the classroom and student behavior as well as provide Vietnamese translation when the need arises. In the end, I've actually come to enjoy teaching the little kids—it's pretty easy to do with the help of the TAs, and there's not really any serious academic pressure on them.
My classes range in size from 6 to 15 students, and class time is usually just a mixture of playing games, doing some textbook activities, and writing practice. For the younger kids, that means spelling words on mini-whiteboards, and for the relatively older kids, that means doing some guided writing worksheets. The material isn't too complex: Pre-Starters only know the present simple (e.g., I go), Starters add the present continuous (e.g., I'm going), and by Flyers they add the past simple (e.g., I went). My role really isn't to teach them any grammar per se as much as it is to get them firsthand exposure to a native speaker. For the younger kids, that entails working a lot on pronunciation, and for the older kids, that entails improving fluency and comfort using the language.
As with any group of kids this young, some of them are angels, some are know-it-alls, some are adorable, some are a little too energetic, some are shy, and some say hilarious things. For whatever reason (movies presumably?), it seems like a ton of my students know how to say "What the hell"—I even heard a six-year-old say it. I'm also supposed to have the students tell me the class rules at the beginning of every class, and one time I had a seven-year-old offer up "No WTF" as a rule. There's another class where the kids like to draw on the whiteboard during break time, and they love drawing babies and labeling them "Baby Gray." In another class' break time, some of the kids like to render English words with Vietnamese spelling (banana becomes bờ na na, for example) and also teach me some Vietnamese words.
Something that's been unsurprisingly difficult is learning all my students' names. In addition to the names being unfamiliar, there is a relatively limited set of names that Vietnamese people have, which applies to both family names and given names. Across my eight classes, I have at least three or four students each named Minh, Linh, An, Huy, and Lâm. In one class alone (the one pictured above, actually), there are students named Hiền Anh, Tuệ Anh, Hà Anh, Anh Khôi, Minh Khôi, Bảo Linh, and Gia Linh. It took me awhile to get those straight.
In Vietnamese—as far as I can tell—you always address someone by their given name combined with an honorific like Mr./Ms., and for teachers, you refer to them as Teacher [given name] like we do with doctors in English. So in the classroom, I'm Teacher Gray. I have one older student who looked closely at my ID badge one day, and now he gets a real kick out of dramatically calling me Mr. Brakke, which is hilarious but also jarring for me as an almost-22-year-old.
Though I don't see myself teaching long-term by any means, I've found it to be a pretty pleasant way to earn money while living abroad, particularly given that I only teach 15 hours a week and I'm largely spared the most difficult parts of teaching young children. I also genuinely like most of my students, even if things get a little out of hand sometimes (by which I mean a lot of the time).
Till next time,
Gray
The center I teach at accepts students from ages 4 to 15, broken down into eight levels: Pre-School (4-5), Pre-Starters (6-7), Starters (7-9), Movers (8-10), Flyers (9-11), and then three more levels for older kids. When I got my work schedule and saw that I would be teaching almost exclusively the younger classes, I was admittedly a little distraught. I teach one Pre-School class, four Pre-Starters classes, two Starters classes, and one Flyers class, so my students are mostly 6-8 years old. Luckily, the center provides the native teachers with teaching assistants, two in Pre-School and Pre-Starters classes and one in the other classes. Their role is basically to manage the classroom and student behavior as well as provide Vietnamese translation when the need arises. In the end, I've actually come to enjoy teaching the little kids—it's pretty easy to do with the help of the TAs, and there's not really any serious academic pressure on them.
My classes range in size from 6 to 15 students, and class time is usually just a mixture of playing games, doing some textbook activities, and writing practice. For the younger kids, that means spelling words on mini-whiteboards, and for the relatively older kids, that means doing some guided writing worksheets. The material isn't too complex: Pre-Starters only know the present simple (e.g., I go), Starters add the present continuous (e.g., I'm going), and by Flyers they add the past simple (e.g., I went). My role really isn't to teach them any grammar per se as much as it is to get them firsthand exposure to a native speaker. For the younger kids, that entails working a lot on pronunciation, and for the older kids, that entails improving fluency and comfort using the language.
As with any group of kids this young, some of them are angels, some are know-it-alls, some are adorable, some are a little too energetic, some are shy, and some say hilarious things. For whatever reason (movies presumably?), it seems like a ton of my students know how to say "What the hell"—I even heard a six-year-old say it. I'm also supposed to have the students tell me the class rules at the beginning of every class, and one time I had a seven-year-old offer up "No WTF" as a rule. There's another class where the kids like to draw on the whiteboard during break time, and they love drawing babies and labeling them "Baby Gray." In another class' break time, some of the kids like to render English words with Vietnamese spelling (banana becomes bờ na na, for example) and also teach me some Vietnamese words.
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| One of my Pre-Starters classes after we made paper lanterns for Mid-Autumn Festival, or Tết Trung Thu. |
Something that's been unsurprisingly difficult is learning all my students' names. In addition to the names being unfamiliar, there is a relatively limited set of names that Vietnamese people have, which applies to both family names and given names. Across my eight classes, I have at least three or four students each named Minh, Linh, An, Huy, and Lâm. In one class alone (the one pictured above, actually), there are students named Hiền Anh, Tuệ Anh, Hà Anh, Anh Khôi, Minh Khôi, Bảo Linh, and Gia Linh. It took me awhile to get those straight.
In Vietnamese—as far as I can tell—you always address someone by their given name combined with an honorific like Mr./Ms., and for teachers, you refer to them as Teacher [given name] like we do with doctors in English. So in the classroom, I'm Teacher Gray. I have one older student who looked closely at my ID badge one day, and now he gets a real kick out of dramatically calling me Mr. Brakke, which is hilarious but also jarring for me as an almost-22-year-old.
Though I don't see myself teaching long-term by any means, I've found it to be a pretty pleasant way to earn money while living abroad, particularly given that I only teach 15 hours a week and I'm largely spared the most difficult parts of teaching young children. I also genuinely like most of my students, even if things get a little out of hand sometimes (by which I mean a lot of the time).
Till next time,
Gray
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