Laughter is the best medicine

The great thing about teaching young children is that it reminds me to laugh. One of my favourite classes I have is Saturn class (all out pre-school classes are named after planets) they're a group of eight, 6 year old boys. They're boisterous, loud and cheeky and I usually walk out of class feeling like I've just survived a natural disaster. But I love them. Every time I teach them I laugh. One of them is always doing something that is, usually unintentionally, hilarious. I can be having a rubbish day, fed up with lesson planning, report writing and questioning why I decided to do any of this at all. But, after 40 minutes with Saturn, I may still not be feeling like a box of birds but, I would have laughed at least once, which does wonders for the soul.

One of 'my boys' is a really good drawer. He likes to draw 3 things, jets, guns and dinosaurs. The other kids are great, they'll look at Sam's drawings and go nuts, pretending to be scared of one of his dinosaurs, they'll shriek and hide under chairs. Either that or suddenly I have class full of fighter pilots and machine guns. I love this, their imagination and creativity is fantastic. I feel like such a task mistress having to pull them away from their imaginings. I remember playing 'pretend' for hours as a child, we were everything from forest animals to French war heroes, the lunch bell ringing or home time at the end of playmate was always such a disappointment.

One of the things that I really like about Arche - my school is that its reasonably well rounded with an emphasis on play and creativity. By comparison to NZ standards there are a lot of expectations put on the kids and by proxy their teachers to work hard and achieve well. I am constantly stunned by the amount of home work and extra curricular activities my students do. Its nice to work in an environment that gives me a degree of space and freedom to make the lessons as enjoyable and creative as I can. I'm sure my kids will agree that I don't always succeed but at least I'm giving it a go.

Teaching should be full of ideas instead of stuffed with facts.

~Author Unknown