The brief for my first English teaching gig could not have
sounded sweeter. I was to give a 30-minute lesson to a group of
2-year-olds in a bilingual kindergarten in an upscale part of
Beijing. Instead, I ended up with 30 mature-aged budding astronauts
singing along to an obscure kids' nursery rhyme at a corporate
language class their company had organized.
The call to teach the businessmen had come out of the blue, a
couple of weeks before I was due to start the plush job I had
landed at the kindergarten. Suddenly, I found myself in the back
seat of a chauffeur-driven car, rushing to a company somewhere on
the other side of town.
I would be standing in as instructor for a group learning spoken
English as part of their job as aeronautical engineers. Never
having been the scholarly type, I hadn't pegged myself as a teacher
before the kindergarten job came up.
I thought hanging out with 2-year-olds would be fun, but
astronauts-in-training?
This new assignment was particularly daunting, as my preparation
for a career in education had to this point involved collecting
colored crayons for the kids, and consulting over the phone with
mom to brush up on the lyrics to the nursery rhymes I'd grown up
with in country Australia.
No scope for curriculum overlap with this new situation, I
thought.
My panic rose when I arrived at the complex to find rows of
earnest pupils, dressed in sober suits and already seated
expectantly before a blackboard. I wouldn't call myself shy, but at
that moment I felt more nervous than I'd ever been. I began to
sweat and struggled to string a sentence together.
"Oh, so what do you want to talk about?" I said. Silence. Eyes
averted. Feet shuffled beneath desks. Then, finally, one of the
more outgoing members of class offered: "You lecture us for two
hours."
I fell back on a spiel about my hometown, and luckily it seemed
there were some swimming fans out there. "Oh, Ian Thorpe!" came the
approving cry, creating a ripple of appreciation. Deciding to milk
the Down Under connection, I turned to the yet unused
blackboard.
"Sydney Harbour," I scrawled on the slate. So far, so good. The
eager students copied down the letters before downing pens. Soon, I
felt 30 pairs of eyes upon me again. Several seconds passed, then
came the strategic coughing. Up went my missing Woops. We got on a
roll chatting about sports, and I began to relax as I went from
desk to desk having a chin wag with each of my students.
Small talk exhausted, I stole a quick glance at my watch, and
struggled to contain a shocked gasp. Still 45 minutes to go!
Racking my brains as the minutes drew longer, finally a faint tune
found its way into my consciousness.
I rallied the troops for a good, old-fashioned sing-a-long.
"Down by the station, early in the morning. See the little puffin'
billys all in a row..."
The nursery rhyme saved the day, and the company was none the
wiser. To my amazement, they asked me to come back and teach again.
But I think I'm more on the level with 2-year-olds.
(China Daily November 2, 2007)
