It’s summer school here at New Life School and I have been trying to plan some creative lessons that are different to my regular school term teaching. Hey this is a holiday program so we need to make our lessons enjoyable and outside the box.
My most successful, yet interesting, English lessons have been cooking up pikelets. The kids get so excited when I bring up the cook top, fry pan and bag of ingredients. I introduce them to the ingredients and utensils, having them repeat the English words as I then hear them calling out what it is in Khmer. Then they attempt to repeat it in English.
I’ve done this lesson with 4 classes now, each time has a different story to tell. Like how I had to get the Khmer teacher in the 2/3 class’ teacher to cook as I did and activity sheet with the rest of the class, trying to contain the hungry kids’ excitement to a manageable level. Or how my Year 4 students really got into cooking with one kid with the ladle at the ready to scope in more batter for cooking and their shouts of “bubbles, bubbles” in warning that I need to flip those little treats over. Or the gorgeous kindy kids who joyfully laugh as we created a huge mess while cooking. Or how I have had comments from the Khmer teachers wanting to learn how to make these “baby pancakes”
But I think today’s Year 1 lesson took the cake for all flexibility and craziness in teaching English. I had bought 10 eggs and some milk yesterday and since I was going to use some to cook I decided the safest place to put it was in the fridge rather then taking it home and bringing it back the next day. This was my first mistake.
This morning I started looking for the eggs. I couldn’t find them anywhere in the fridge, instead all I can see in my milk hidden at the back and two birthday cakes. I try to explain what I am looking for to the school’s cook who is looking at my slightly bewildered by what I’m doing but resorted in getting Eileen to assist. It was she who found my full box of eggs gently placed – IN THE FREEZER!!!!! Fridges and freezers are not the same and they do nasty thing to eggs like crack open their shells and make the insides solid.
I’ve learnt here to just go with the flow, to be flexible and improvise. So when you have lemons you make lemonade, when you have road solid frozen eggs you make egg free pikelets.
Next I noticed that someone had left the gas on with the cooker, so there was an empty can inside – this meant that the class teacher had to rush to the market and get a new can of gas while I sang songs with the kids.
Finally we could cook. The kids liked them, even though they don’t taste as good as regular ones – but hey they don’t know that.
It is great to have these opportunities to do fun lessons with the kids and share with them new experiences. To see the joy and delight on their faces – no matter how many things go wrong for me in the process of teaching these lessons – is totally worth it.
