I was nervous and my palms were sweaty. I felt my heart race as I headed towards the classroom. It was the first time being physically in front of students in the classroom in 6 months. After tireless months of online teaching, I was finally going to get to see my students in real life. Had they grown taller? Lost any teeth? Would they still remember our classroom rules and the format of the class? Would I?

Teachers and students had to wear masks at all times and the desks were spaced out in the classroom. There were also visibly fewer students in the classroom (which was something I was quite happy about). The first class I had was my J3s, who I have taught since there were K2s and who I genuinely love having seen them grow up over the last two years I have worked for Kid Castle. When I walked into the classroom, they were as excited to see me as I was to see them but we couldn’t hug. Instead, I used my hand clapper to give them high 5s. I wish they could have seen how big I was smiling and how they appeased my nerves but my silly mask was blocking it all. However, this only served to motivate me to make my voice as animated as possible.

The class started off with a bang as I remembered how much I loved being able to stand in the front of the room and see all these faces in front of me. I greeted them and it felt like no time had passed. However, I had forgotten what exactly my classroom rules were so I took that as an opportunity to get them to tell me. I was happily surprised to have a few students volunteer. At least one of us has a good memory! Given that it was the first class back in so long and online classes had limited games, I had made sure to prepare a lot and keep things as interactive as possible.

The energy in the classroom was palpable, the students clearly happy to be there and of course also seeing classmates for the first time in ages. I managed to use this to my advantage with us playing games in pairs and fuelling the competitive spirits. The first 40 minutes of the class raced by! Before I knew it, it was time to line up for break time. The corridors had been lined with footprint stickers to make sure when students went to the bathroom they walked with sufficient distance between them. The students seem to find it fun to use the stickers as suggested jumping platforms all the way to and from the bathroom.

The second half of the class included some writing practice which went slower than usual, given that the students were probably not doing any time pressure writing at home. The result was that only two students completed the class practice in the time I had allocated. The rest were just going to have to finish it at home (I made sure to let my co-teacher know after class so he could also send a message to the parents). Once again time ran away and before I knew it, the class was up. We counted our stars and everyone was thrilled to get some Chevady points as a reward after months of promises online (we have these points to use as a reward for the students and when they accumulate enough they can use them to buy things from our schools, such as toys or stationary).

I found myself quite exhausted, realising how much more energy you need in comparison with docile online teaching. It was such a rewarding sense of tiredness though and I found myself looking forward to the next class with renewed gratitude at being back at school!