THEORY IN PRACTICE

Who am I? I’m an intern with a degree in teaching, who just dived into the world of tiny tabula rasa creatures for the first time.

The one thing which I like the most about working with children is constant learning. Learning about them, about teaching and parenting and about yourself.

Today, in the kindergarten, one boy was quite cranky in the morning and for almost a half an hour was crying without even a break. To distract him from the reason of crying, class teacher told a story about the boy, who is her neighbor and whom she met yesterday crying. According to her, the boy noticed a caterpillar and wanted to touch it, but suddenly it bit him.

“He was crying so badly and he had to go to the hospital with his hand, where the doctor applied to the boy some oil treatment and he got an injection. We should never touch any insect! It can bite us!”

That actually worked: the boy was listening carefully, without any drop of crocodile tears. But the thing is that after a few minutes, the teacher left and I asked the 4 year old student from our class, who was sitting nearby, what she was doing yesterday. And you might not probably believe in this! She told us the same story; just word in word and with so much passion and using various face expressions, that you would not ever believe that she is retelling something.

And this happens quite often. Their minds and memory are like a sponge. From time to time, parents tend to worry that their child is somehow behaving in the way parents don’t like. Not a surprise, but the thing is, as you’ve read : these tiny creatures tend to copy most of the things which they do from their environment, especially from parents, their main role-models. It happens almost in every aspect of their life: the way they talk, move, behave and react.

At this early age kids are so innocent, they believe you without any hesitation. The interesting thing is when one creative teacher in order to attract and discipline one proud boy, told to the children that we have superheroes in the class and she started to nominate each child with the name of the famous ‘Avengers’. I’m still wondering about the kids of our time, in what world they are living in and how different they are from 10 years back children. At that time when teacher started to do nominating, as she shared, she was hardly realizing what Power she got. All of them know about these things (superheroes), they were really excited and according to their faces it meant a lot to them.

“We have a superman in the class! Aarnav is our superman! And we also have a superwoman! Come, Aarohi! You are our superwoman!”

It meant a lot to them and especially to one boy. At the moment when they started to misbehave, teacher claimed that she had to take away their superpowers. One more time, you could not possibly imagine what happened next. I couldn’t. That boy started to cry. Because someone took his superpower. He is not a Flash, he can’t run as fast as the Flash can only do. After understanding the causation, he changed, got his superpower back and started to run all around the classroom as happiest child ever.

Isn’t it so sweet and powerful at the same time?! At this age, children grasp everything at once: all the concepts, manners and more importantly they believe you! You just need to find the key to their heart and spend more time with them, because you know they will never be at the same age again! Please, don’t miss the moment!

Lunara

DRS International School