So because i am kind of free since school hasn't started (2 days left oh my)
i accompany my dad every Wednesday to teach the kids who come to our church for tuition
OK, so at first i was apprehensive because i'm pretty good at learning stuff but I've never really tried teaching.
I quickly proved that i wasn't that great at teaching because i was assigned to a group of P5 and P6 kids who had never done algebra (except for the P6 kid) and i was supposed to explain to them what algebra was
So i tried to tell them that in algebra, letters are numbers. So this letter (pointing to the y on their worksheet) can represent any number at all, from 0 to infinity. One very earnest boy in thick black spectacles caught on pretty fast, and so did the chatty girl next to me, but the last little squirrely looking boy just didn't get it and kept copying from black spectacles boy. Even after i explained it twice over, and even helped him do some of his exercises, he still didn't grasp it.
Luckily (for me) i was transferred then to the secondary group. I sat opposite a Sec 3 boy from China who did his work quickly and quietly and didn't ask me anything or talk to me at all even when i asked his name. I also sat next to a very sweet Chinese girl called Han Qian, who i helped with her Sec 3 amath. She was lovely and kept looking worried that she couldn't do this or that when it was all really careless mistakes.
It was really nice sitting next to her because we just talked and she's actually a really nice person.
I promised to lend her some of my old school notes and essays for stuff like social studies.
That was all last week
This week (today actually), i was first assigned to a VERY chatty girl called Swetha ("my friends call me sweetie pie") who we all thought was P2, until she told us that she was actually P3.
I helped her come up with a story for creative writing, diverting all her attempts to draw and colour in her characters ("you can do that later, Swetha")
In the end, she came up with the idea of a girl whose father makes a special medicine which she wasn't supposed to drink, and when she drunk it it caused her skin to turn green, which made her father jump in shock. Just as i was telling her that her character had to have a name and couldn't be called she, i was transferred to teach 2 sec 1 kids. The girl, Evi, was very friendly and told me all about herself.
But when i asked the boy questions, here's kind of how our conversation played out:
Me: "So, what's your favorite subject in school?"
Him: " I dunno"
Me: "Oh....So, what subject do you do best in?"
Him: "I dunno"
Me:"Oh....So, how may times have you come here before?"
Him: "I dunno"
Me (a little desperately): "Is this your first time or have you come before?"
Him: "I dunno"
Really? i felt like such a failure. I made them both do a composition, and marked it, and talked through their mistakes (which were mostly using the wrong tense for both of them, while the boy rushed the ending of his story so it was very disappointing because the beginning was quick interesting) Then i talked to the girl before they went into the room for a bible story.
I saw Swetha and my father still working on math so i went over, in time to hear my dad call her "Swetha...Sweetie Pie" and her indignant reply "No! Only my friends call my sweetie pie."
HAHAHAHA
During Bible Story time Swetha was just as funny, asking for "The god to give us lots of food" when they asked for prayer requests
And when we drove home she was with her friends, dancing in the church canteen.
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