Kids

So, we've had quite a few kids through our doors in the last few weeks. Some are our students, some are potential students, so I've done quite a few lessons or 'demo lessons' by now.

My 8-year-old student is a very good student and nice girl. Every time I ask her 'how are you?', she replies with an enthuiastic smile: 'I'm great!' After a week of students saying 'I'm fine', it's nice to get an 'I'm great' from someone!

In my last class with her, this girl asked me, 'how long have you been in Japan?' I was very surprised. I think her mother might have asked her to ask me, because it's a question a lot of my adult students have asked me. The difference is that this 8-year-old girl got the grammar right, and many of my adult students don't. Hahaha...

My 2-year-old student is very cute and happy and has taken to giving me numerous hugs. She does have a slightly unfortunate tendency to open the classroom door and escape the room while I'm giving the lesson. About 10% of each lesson is spent trying to entice her back into the room (or else leaving the room carrying various materials and trying to show them to her while she's running around or rolling on the floor).

I had a demo lesson today with a 6-year-old girl. She was very cute (to be honest, most Japanese children are very cute, actually) and very, very shy. She didn't say anything to me but smiled very timidly. I gave her some pencils and paper to draw with and told her to draw anything. But she just held the pencil uncertainly above the paper. She was clearly thinking 'what if I draw the wrong thing? I'd better not draw in case I do something wrong!'

So I started drawing on my own piece of paper, to relax her, and you know what, she copied every picture I drew, down to the exact colours I used and the way I drew them. What's more, her likenesses were very good; some of her pictures were better than mine. So we drew lots of things, trees and flowers and animals and fruit and a house, with me occasionally saying the words in English, and her saying nothing at all.

The funny thing about kids' lessons, or generally playing with kids, or doing demo lessons, is that somehow the language barrier doesn't seem very noticeable. Sure, the kids often don't understand what you're saying. But most of the time you're just trying to get them to do very simple things - say a specific sentence, or repeat words, or play a game - so you actually don't need that much language to show it. It's very different to adult classes where you're trying to explain concepts, or have a conversation with them.

With this girl, after a while I ran out of ideas to draw but then it was time for the demo lesson. She spoke very quietly and nervously in the lesson, under a lot of encouragement, but afterwards as they were leaving she told her mother that she'd had fun. So that was surprising but good. Kotoba wa iranai...

We've had quite a variety of kids in; silent and sullen kids, sweet and shy kids, happy and outgoing kids. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with any crying or distressed kids, but I guess if you deal with 2 or 3-year-olds for long enough, you'll eventually encounter one...