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I’ve been teaching for almost two years in China as an English teacher. At first, I was only assigned to teach pre-school children, due to the sudden leave of their last teacher. I was nervous and didn’t know whether I could be able to teach them. They were very young and were absolute beginners. I had to teach letters with paired vocabularies every lesson. But as soon as I got to know them, all my worries disappeared. They were supportive and had the eager to learn. I would start my class with greeting part, by ask students their names and how old are they, then I drew a little figure next to their names, so they would know they are special. Then I would play a warm-up song, so we can dance and sing with it. This is a nice way to start teach, it definitely helped the students to be comfortable in the room, and are more relaxed for the followed learning lesson. Like it said in TEFL course, children are one of the most rewarding of all classes to teach. They are willing to learn more, and they can be really excited once you reward them with some stickers for their good work. That will influence you, and inspire you to become a better teacher. I had a really hard time to say goodbye with them. After that, I started to teach students from elementary school. As for right now, ninety nine percent of my students are from elementary schools. They are similar with pre-school children, but they would consider themselves to be much mature. And instead of flashcards and fun cartoons, now I have to use course books and work books in classes. We do have some really cool smart boards which had the applications for all the Pearson course books, it decreased a lot of preparation time. So I would use the time and prepare some fun activities for students to practice. If teachers only use the course books to teach, students are more likely to get bored and their mind might just wandered off from the lesson. It’s important to keep class interesting and challenging, let the students know that every goal they achieve or every work they have done, they will get award and it means a lot to me that they are getting further. I believe encouragement is one of the best ways to build confidence in students, and lack of confidence is not a good sign for studying anything. Be honest, teaching in China is not easy. All of the students are buried in their school works, and all the other lessons with instruments, dancing, sports, robot, programming etc. Even listen to that make me feel stressed. Most of the students won’t have any day off in a week, even the weekends. Not only they have schools, right after school, they have to rush to all the institutes. Their schedules are normally fully booked. And the parents expect great things from the children. I can’t really understand how they don’t crack under that pressure. They have to learn many courses when they were little, and it seems like they don’t have any problems with that. Maybe because everyone around them live like this, and not having a fully booked schedule maybe consider “weird”. Because of these reasons, sometimes I would feel bad for leaving them homework, because I don’t want to put any more burdens on them. I guess it’s not easy to teach English in any countries. We all have our own obstacles. But teaching is the best choice I have ever made, and I enjoy it every minute.
