I was consdering whether to apply for my Bachelor's of Education when I got the offer to come teach in Mumbai. I dropped the Faculty of Ed application in an instant. I was raised that when you et a chance to live in India, you take it.
My decision meant though that I would be learning to teach while I... you know, taught. It has progressed steadily from planning my class an hour in advance, to a day in advance, to a week in advance. I've figured out which classes respond best to what jokes, and now I'm trying to prepare them for their semester finals.
There are still days I feel like a fake teacher but today was not one of them. My objective was to teach the kids how to conjugate -ir verbs in French. (Yes, I teach Indian children French using English and sometimes they dont understand either. Yes, it can be frustrating.) I decided to challenge them to use the verb endings as a tongue twister and see if anyone could say it faster than me. It sort of escalated from there when one student started using his watch as a timer, and another one started using an MC name for himself. Everyone got fiercely competitive and someone started writing people's best times on the whiteboard. After about 15 minutes of yelling and debating, we had a clear winner and thank god it was me. It could have become quite embarassing if I lost. We had more time left in our period, so we played another game they dubbed ''colour colour.'' I say a colour in French, then everyone runs like mad to touch something in the classroom of that colour. They're out if two people use the same thing, they're out if they say the word in English, they're out if they're the last one to find a coloured object and they're not allowed to use anything they're wearing. I can't believe how much my 7th graders love this game. They spent another ten minutes tearing around the classroom, yelling at each other ''non c'est vert, it's not bleu, tu es out!'' Today I didn't feel like a fake teacher.