Leading and Whiting

Well, I didn't make the studio a sky at all. Not even a little bit. I didn't make the studio a sky, or a sea, or the bottom of a garden occupied by fairies. I didn't convince them that they were pirates, or spies, or aliens, or princesses. No. What I did, in fact, ran something like this:

Me: "Yoshi, please stop crying."
Yoshi squeezes herself behind door and continues crying.
Me: "Yoshi, sweetheart, please stop crying."
Yoshi continues crying and says something indecipherable in Japanese.
Me: "Look! Yoshi! Here's a rabbit! Can you say rabbit? It's coming to..."
Yoshi looks appalled, smacks the rabbit and starts crying so hard that snot drips off her chin. Hiro runs up and tries to kick Yoshi.
Me: "No! Hiro! Don't kick Yoshi! No kicking of Yoshi! Naughty!"
Hiro kicks Yoko instead. Yoko starts crying.
Meanwhile, Shina - who wants nothing more than to stay away from kicking boys - creeps into the corner and picks up a red brick. "Brue!" she shouts enthusiastically.
Me: "Good girl, Shina! Except that it's red. Can you say 'red', Shina? Red?"
Shina nods and screams "Brue!" again. Hiro - in sheer fury that I told Shina that she was good, and, possibly, that she can say 'brue' - kicks Shina, who throws the red brick at Yoshi. Yoshi screams something in Japanese, hits the rabbit again, continues crying and desperately tries to turn the door knob, like a tiny little prisoner in a bad made-for-tv drama.

Frankly, my studio wasn't so much a sky as a warzone - with little plastic bricks as weapons and laminated word cards as shields - and my imagination ran out after 45 solid minutes of screaming girls. The bunny had used three different accents, I had crawled around on all fours mooing like a cow, I had hopped around the room like a rabbit only to be met with three seconds of blissfully shocked silence (followed by shouts of "Usagi! Usagi!"), and the only thing that could distract the kicking boys was to give them something to kick, which they promptly lobbed - with their hands, just for the sake of irony - at the girls, who sniffled even harder. It was less about inspiring children and more about acting as a policeman for teeny tiny ASBOS.

Which is not to say it wasn't also rewarding. When they were good - when they sat down on the carpet neatly, or thought that my cow puppet pretending to eat their hands instead of an imaginary sandwich was the funniest thing they had ever seen - I got a glow that leaked out of my ears, because they were the most adorable children in the world. When the little Japanese version of myself (an eight year old who has her own English dictionary that she carries around with her in a tiny pink satchel; her mother says she "wanted it for her birthday") grabbed my hand and said, very soberly, "I am leeding" - instead of "I am reading" - the high five I gave her was so genuinely enthusiastic she almost fell over.

But... My God. It's bloody hard work. And it's far less about teaching, and far more about trying every single thing in your power to get them to notice that you're even in the room at all. It's like the world's worst date; every time you think you've come up with something interesting, and you're mentally patting yourself on the back, their eyes suddenly glaze over and they're staring at a fascinating bit of fluff on the carpet again. For every inspired puppet show that sparks something for three minutes, there are another fifteen minutes where you are desperately grappling with basic verbs and trying to distract them from a piece of blue tac on the bottom of their shoes. And yes, all you have to do to get their attention again is scream "race to the wall and put your heads on the floor!" but a) that's not on the curriculum b) somebody usually gets trodden on and c) you have to do it too, and there's only so much flexing my body can take before it starts making loud snapping noises.

I'm going to stick it out, though. I may not want to be a teacher on a permanent basis, but this is a life lesson. I'm stretching myself in directions I never thought I could or would, and I mean that metaphorically, spiritually, and very, very literally: even my toenails ache with all the jumping and crawling and hopping and hokey pokey-ing (American version: presumably "cokey" is too drug-addled for toddlers). And yes, I did spend at least ten minutes (while at the convenience store, queuing up for yet another bloody rice ball) calculating that I worked half as hard and for twice as much money when I was in PR in London, but hey: if that's what I wanted from life - an easy, well paid, ride - then I would have just stayed there. Clearly self-inflicted torture and bruises on the knees are what I prize above all experiences; that and the shame of knowing that a 1.7 year old with the world's cutest mullet and a passion for ponies can speak more of a second language than I can.

Anyway, it's all very good practice for when and if I ever decide to inflict my genes on another human being. Because you can bet your arse that they'll be fascinated by blue tac and carrying a dictionary around with them. They'll probably have asked for one for their birthday.