stickers

Coming into this teaching gig with no training or experience made me learn a lot of things about dealing with kids the hard way. For example, discipline, as in i have no idea how to discipline kids who can't understand what I'm saying to them (pretty sure i'd still have problems if they could). And so as a result unless we're having a particular good day, all of my younger classes are really draining. Sundays especially, I have 5 classes back to back in the am (essentially 3 hours), 4 of which are with 3-4 year olds and one 5-6 year olds. This past sunday I had 5 or 6 crybabies, 2 tantrums, 1 ball thrown out the window and 1 toy hammer broken. A particularly, exciting, day. Lunch, then 3 classes of older kids in the afternoon, half hour each, over 5 hours, no big. still was very tired from the morning and a bit frustrated, and was sitting in the office when a student came up to me and poked me on the neck, playfully.
I turned around and it was Grace, 4 years old from one of my morning classes, she was still there to make up a missed class or something, and waiting for her parents to pick her up. The last thing I wanted to do was talk and play with her but no one else was in the office and I couldn't leave her alone. That day in class we learned colors, so I got out some stickers and told her if she told me the colors i'd give her a sticker. well, 20 minutes and 12 stickers later, she was telling me about the 4 stars, 5 flowers, yellow giraffe, etc. she had all over her hands. So happy to get all these stickers from me. It was great though, because I really must've spent 20-30 minutes with her just saying "what color is this? what animal? how many stickers do you have?" and she sat there fascinated by the beautiful sitck colored paper on her hands. Then she took them and put them in her book and said [in chinese], "the stars go in the sky, the flowers go on the ground,..." and made a little scene with the stickers I'd given her.

After she left to go home I felt just a little less tired. For those 20 minutes I wasn't thinking about my sore throat or tired feet or gross lunch I'd had, I was just playing stickers with this cute little girl.
Solid day :)