The Native Speaker

Kids dressed up for carnival day, school in background

view from my classroom

It’s been three months now since I started my job.  I am really enjoying it although there are a few too many hours which left me exhausted at first.  The first week was great, I was a novelty.  Second week the novelty was beginning to wear off as the kids began to realize I couldn’t really understand them, and some of them became curious to see how far they could push the limits.  The third week was terrible!  If the teacher left the room, it was chaos!  It was like I was invisible, and mute!  They completely ignored me, and it was a real struggle with the language barrier.  In the first few weeks one little girl cried every morning about coming to Kindergarten – all because of me!  Because I only spoke English and she didn’t like me!  She gave me the foulest looks!  And one little boy wouldn’t even look at me when I tried to approach him, and apparently only referred to me as ‘that woman’!  It’s almost impossible to build a rapport with the children when you can’t speak their language.  Things slowly improved as the weeks went on.  I am picking up more words and phrases every day which has made a huge difference, but still half the time I have no idea what they are saying to me, and it must be frustrating for them if they need help with something, or have a problem with someone and I can’t help to sort it out.  There are 19 in the class, 3-6 year olds.  Some of them still ignore me if they are up to no good and I am trying to put a stop to their behavior, which is incredibly frustrating, but I think I am slowly winning them over with the gymnastics every second week in their P.E class, again extremely difficult and I am having to demonstrate much more than I am actually physically capable of at the moment having not exercised for months!  And miming and silly facial expressions and speaking broken English with a funny accent all seem to help!

Every second week during the winter we took the kids Eislaufen (Ice skating) at the outdoor rink.  This entailed helping 19 children put on all their snow gear including helmets, (this took 30 minutes), traipsing to the ice rink in town, helping 19 children take off their snow boots and put on their ice skates (all have different types of clasps and buckles etc which I am now an expert at!)(this also takes 30 mintues), being the tea and snack lady on the sidelines (beats making a donkey of myself on the ice!), and then helping them all take off their ice skates and put their snow boots back on (this takes another 30 minutes), and then traipsing back to Kindergarten, before helping them all get their snow gear off again and get ready for lunch.  All this for 20 minutes on the ice.  And I always broke a nail!

Everyday they play out in the garden (again during winter this entailed helping them all get dressed up in snow gear which takes about 20 minutes for a 20 minute play!).  The garden was under nearly two metres of snow.  The boundary, in the way of a fence, was invisible.  So much of the time was spent making sure kids didn’t wander into the carpark.   One of the weeks some areas completely iced over, and I went over on my bum a couple times.  Somewhat embarrassing!  And then the snow began breaking up and becoming unstable once March arrived, and most of us became half buried if we took a step in the wrong place!  This was funny because is happened to everyone and not just the silly ‘English’ teacher who had no water proof pants (that would be trousers for ‘English’ readers, not underwear!)  Speaking of pants, there is a doctor nearby called Dr Pantz.  And whatsmore, his wife works with him, so they are a ‘pair of pantz’!  As you can imagine this had me in a fit of hysterics when if first heard about it! (and while we’re on the subject, there is a law firm also called ‘Schlapper and Fuchs’!!)

So back to Kindergarten - Amelia had trouble at first with me being there and not being able to see me whenever she liked, and there were a few tears to begin with, also from Noah who could see me from his classroom when I was in the garden, which broke my heart!  But then Amelia’s ‘English’ teacher told her she was the luckiest girl in the kindergarten because nobody else’s mummy worked there, and after that she was great!

A few things are hard to get my head around, there are things that go on which in Australia and England would be unacceptable and leave me wide eyed and speechless, but it’s hard to know what is simply cultural difference (which I have to leave alone) or what is actually unacceptable only nobody is doing anything about it!  I am constantly asking ‘is that okay?  Is that allowed?’  Some examples:

·         Lunch is cooked at the school, lovely fresh organic food (my favourite part of the day) and sometimes during lunch the food runs out, and little 5 year old Annie (not her real name) is sent down to the kitchen to fetch a refill, carrying a hot casserole dish for which she was told to pull her sleeves down over her hands so she wouldn’t get burnt.  Another time 6 year old Susie (not her real name) brought up a steaming hot heavy pan of soup, which she was just about to drop before she laid it on the table.  The kitchen is two flights of stairs down, by the way.

·         In the snow filled garden kids use ‘slidies’ which they sit on to slide down little hills formed by the snow, one of which ended with a wall.  No-one told the kids they shouldn’t do this, or that it was dangerous, until one kid actually smacked into the wall which ended in tears, but the activity was still allowed to continue.

·         At gymnastics the kids are allowed to run around in the gym hall in socks, which has resulted in quite a few slippages!  They also played a game in the classroom where they ran around with their slippers on and at certain signals had to remove a shoe, the removed shoes being left where they were taken off, resulting on kids tripping over left right and centre.

·         We went to the park and six kids had climbed up a big tree at once.  I don’t think kids are even allowed to climb trees in Australia anymore?

·         ‘Kid A’ aggressively bit ‘Kid B’ and I jumped into the situation making out that ‘kid A’ was in serious trouble.  I took them to the teacher so that she could sort out the problem only to be told ‘well that’s because ‘kid B’ was waving his photo in ‘kid A’s’ face and ‘kid A’ doesn’t like this, so, that’s what happens’.  And that was it.  Whaaat??

Some of you may read that and think so what, not a big deal, but it’s a struggle for me after working with kids for such a long time in a place overrun with health and safety do’s and don’ts!

Anyway, I’m grateful to be able to work here instead of cleaning toilets in a hotel!  Apart from a few frustrating bits I really enjoy it.  My job is to expose them to as much English vocabulary as they are ready for and as much as they want to learn.  Some kids are really interested and want to do the English work all the time.  For a bit of fun I might start to teach the ‘How Now Brown Cow’ and ‘The Rain in Spain’ stuff, just to see if they can say it, and for even more fun I might teach them Maciek’s favourite – One smart fellow, he felt smart, two smart fellows, they felt smart, three smart fellows, they felt smart, and they all felt smart together!  Too inappropriate? (If you don’t get it try saying it quite fast!)

P.S  The little boy who wouldn’t look at me and called me ‘that woman’ at the beginning of the year, actually blew me a kiss the other day as he skipped out of the classroom to his mum!  Which was nice!

my little English section!