In the beginning, I attend the seed-teacher training class of DENER because I heard my friend’s experience of teaching in rural area of ​​China.

Because I like spending time with children and also the unique opportunity to go abroad to expand my experience, I decided to come.

During the training class, each teacher’s method was a little different. It also allowed me to see the different essences. I’ve also learned how to make extensions to different picture books. It really benefited me a lot. However, although I’ve learned a lot of skills, methods, and concepts during the seed teacher training class, I was still worried.

In the past, my duty as a big brother or small team leader was to make sure children’s security, manage order, take them to class on time, and accompany them to learn and have fun.  However, now as a teacher, you need to lead children to learn, read, and teach them the correct concepts. And we must be more careful in all aspects then before. For me, the biggest challenge was speaking on stage.

Due to nervousness when speaking on stage, it was easy to be totally blank minded and didn’t know what to say. But that is the reason I should go to DENER! Together with my friends and children, I can break through my inner anxiety and even if I’m not perfect, I will try to do my best.

To lead a camp team, one needed an itinerary to see the whole process of the event, but I never thought that I needed a teaching plan to do a lesson as well. At the end of the training, all students wrote their own simple teaching plans. I naively thought that I just needed to fill in a few loopholes.

However, a good teaching plan needed to write out each process of the course, including time, methods, teaching aids used, opening remarks, closing comments…etc.

I’m grateful to everyone who helped me complete the teaching plan so that I now know how to start and proceed. The preparation of teaching aid was much easier, but it also took a long time to prepare.

My first-time teaching, I was very worried about whether there was loophole in the curriculum planning.  But fortunately, DENER arranged an internship for us. It helped us review our plan and see what we needed to add to the curriculum design, and it was also for us to show the results of our training!

On the day of our internship, we were faced with a group of children with mixed ages, from first grade to sixth grade. I was not too worried.  As soon as I came to the teaching podium, I began thinking about what to do, when to ask questions etc. During the day, I’ve noticed many insufficiencies in my own teaching, I’ve also seen the advantages of others methods.  In addition, the advices given by teachers, this internship really benefited me a lot.

During the internship, we noted that due to technology advances, when a child receives a wrong message, if the teacher does not correct it immediately, a child will not be able to discern right from wrong. This showed the importance of a teacher. 

Therefore, we revised our teaching plan and teaching aids, and carefully checked to see if there were any details that we may have not noticed, to ensure that the information we are going to teach to the children in Yujing was correct.

After many days of preparation, the courses in Tainan Yujin finally began! We started with dancing to let children know us.

Then we used ice-breaking game to shorten the distance between us and our children. Although we didn’t remember everyone’s names at first, we remembered the looks.

The group was divided into two classes according to the grade. Although the younger group of grade three to five years old was not my home field, I could see their activities. Some children were shy at first, but they eventually responded.

The senior class in the afternoon was not as smooth as that in the morning. There was no rest at noon, so many kids were not motivated.  Although the second day was much smoother, I still had a lot of space for improvement.

For example, when leading different grades of children, one must make corresponding changes to attract the attention of kid. If the story is long and repetitive, other methods should be applied and be flexible.   

This Yujin experience made me feel that the children are very innocent and cute. We needed to take more time to understand them, and then they will take their defenses off and come to us actively.  We should try to use their mentality when accompanying them.

At the end of the event, we said goodbye to the children on the stage. At first, only a few children came to the stage to hug and shake hands with us.  But later on, more and more children run to the stage and many unexpected children also appear. I felt very touched. Tears were swirling in my eyes, but I held back the tears and replaced them with smiles. Although it was sad to say goodbye, but I also felt motivated with the experience and look forward until we meet again.