My next lesson plan

Today I had class with the two young brothers, Guillermo and Javier.  Luckily, months ago their parents talked to a friend whose children were taking English lessons separately and asked me if I thought the boys should do the same and split up instead of having class together. I was all about the idea, since as soon as I would focus on helping one of them, the other would be squirming out of his chair onto the floor or trying to copy answers.  So now I have 45 minutes with one and 45 with the other, twice a week.

At first I was going straight from the book with them, because I didn't have any experience teaching kids and they basically were starting from knowing how to count to 10 and say some colors.  But I abandoned that idea as soon as I saw how much faster they learned from playing games.  I could have them spend half an hour doing exercises about the different between "there is" and "there are" and they'd be bored and wouldn't retain anything, but after a few times playing "hide the phone" for 10 minutes, they knew how to ask "Is it under the table?" "Is it on the bookshelf?" without even having to think.  We're currently throwing a ball around asking each other questions in the past tense, while the book is collecting dust with my useless TEFL materials on the highest shelf.  

Anyway, I'm enjoying their class more and more each time.  I'm able to be more creative and impulsive with them than I am with the adults, and I think it's pretty funny that immediately after graduating from University I took up a job that pays me to play Simon Says.  It's actually pretty gratifying when the 7 year old kicks my ass at our past/present tense memory card game, or when he makes a steering motion when I'm teaching him the word "dry," because it sounds like drive (I think him knowing that "bat" sounds like "bad" has more to do with Batman than our lesson on animals, so I can't take credit there).  

But it's still my first year teaching, and I have a lot to learn.  My first life lesson about kids came after I started a reward system with them for good behavior and doing the homework.  They can earn up to 3 stars a day, and after every 25 they get a "premio," a litle prize.  It's thinly veiled bribery, I know.  But they're doing their homework now, so give me a break!  So, I scoured El Corte Ingles until I found something that I imagined I would love if I were an 8 year old boy -  mini motorcycles with little matching helmets.  I paid 8 euros for them, and then, por si acaso, brought along two things that my mom gave me in my stocking for Christmas - these plastic containers of a gak-like substance.  (Remember Gak? )

I gave them the choice, thinking for sure that they would chose the motorcycles.  But no.  They went all crazy for the goopy stuff that I got for free, and made me think about how much fun we always had with the empty refrigerator box when we were younger.  So now I frequent the dollar (euro?) store to buy something like squirt guns or paddle balls for 50 centidos.  

But today I learned another lesson: to never bring permanent markers around these kids ever again.  We've been learning a lot of verbs, and at one point I made them a big posterboard chart with the present, past, translation, and an example sentence.  Today, I thought it would be a good idea to add some of the newer words to the chart and have them come up with sentences.  What I didn't take into account was the permanent marker smell.  You know how some people like the smell of gasoline?  Well both of these boys apparently really like eau de Sharpie.  So there I was trying to write out a nice chart, and Guille was literally sniffing the paper asking me repeatedly if I liked the smell too.  I told him it was bad for him and thought it was a freak thing, but the during the next class Javi started doing the same!  I was a little scared their mom would walk in while I was trying to convince him to stop inhaling deeply everything I wrote a word because the chemicals would go to his head.  The last thing I need is to have to explain to the mom in Spanish why her precious boys have a vacant look in their eyes after the lesson.  So, it's colored marker from now on, and for the next homework assignment, 100 written lines of "Sniffing markers can damage your brain."