The thing about children is your impression is just as important as what you will teach them. You look like a friendly teacher? Good, she can play with us. You look too serious? No, I don't think I like him.
Blending is the key to facilitate rapport. Ika nga, matuto kang makisama sa mga bata.
People mistake children as simple-minded but they can be just as creative and manipulative as adults, or even more. This fact cannot be undermined when we did the fieldwork in San Mateo, Rizal. We were told to expect 5-20 children to attend the activity and so we adequately prepared audiovisual aids, tokens, handouts, games, ice breakers, a quiz bee, prizes and soap and tissue for the demonstration. We were to teach the proper way to wash hands. When we arrived, our worlds have been turned upside down. The clubhouse was blank and we had to wait for more than 30 minutes to get a glimpse of any small life form known as human children. And to add to our surprise, there were only four of them, even less than the minimum expected number. Our instructional design now had to be revised at the spot. Indeed, yes, our creativity was challenged. These four boys were witty and they were running around to the point that we had to make a bargain and lure them through prizes. Extinction wouldn't simply work because time was limited. When finally we took a hold of them, we did as much as we could to teach by being loyal to the ID but also by adding novelty along the way.
One of the best things our instructor pointed out was our flexibility in handling the situation. We omitted parts which we deem unnecessary, though it would have been fun if the participants were many. Likewise, we have prepared enormously. The prizes were overflowing, as well as the tokens or stars given to them (of course, this is because there were only four). Also, we were able to handle the kids much better because of their number. Can you imagine us chasing 20 children and get them to sit down to listen? We must have burned enough calories equivalent to a full meal in an eat-all-you-can buffet. However, we cannot undermine the fact that there were some negative things. The degree of adaptation was not near perfect since this was a first time experience (maybe not for each individual but for all of us as a group). The time was limited to build enough rapport. The children wanted to play patintero afterwards but we couldn't due to temporal constraints. One of the greatest mistakes we made was also the type of prizes given. It appeared that all the children did not want the cookies we bought--it was too sweet for them. One of them was allergic to chocolates. We gave ballpens and some of them don't work (though they were brand-new). If given the chance to repeat it, I would have asked the children what they wanted to do as a reward instead of trying to impose our own reward. Likewise, we should have checked the pens we bought if they worked correctly. Maybe we could have put colors in our visual displays. We could have been more organized by having four of us hold one child each and the last person would do the teaching activity, just so they wouldn't run around and create a ruckus.
I gave our performance a 6-7/10 rating since I really thought we didn't do as good. I was surprised however when our mentor told us she would give it a 9/10. It made my heart swell.
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