In order to make a little extra money so my wife can open her pet supply shop next year, I recently started teaching a few classes on weekends at a English school for little kids (ages 4-7). It's exhausting work — not exactly what I had in mind when I went for my PhD — but that's where the money is, and we need money to start the business.

The first couple of days, I absolutely hated it. 

I'm not really teaching English. I'm teaching words, and playing games. "Father." "Grandfather." "Giraffe." "Play." Walk in a circle around flash cards laid out on the ground, until I call out "Shirt!" and they all jump on the right one. Dance around the room to a song that goes "Itchy, Itchy Insect, i-i-i!"

The most complicated sentence I got to teach them, the one that made them tremble with fear whenever it popped up on the screen, was "I like to do things with my family." (Incidentally, I'm kind of on their side: "do things" is far too vague a verb to be throwing at a five year-old ESL student.) The ones they could manage were things like "I like to cook with my mother" and "I like to play with my sister."

The job isn't mentally stimulating in the slightest, but it is physically exhausting. At first, I was thinking "why the hell am I doing this?!"

Eventually, I came to enjoy the work quite a bit, just as I imagine I'll enjoy fatherhood. The kids are adorable, and their personalities are disarmingly simple.

There's poor William, who enthusiastically volunteers to answer every question, but consistently gets them all wrong. I swear, his percentage of correct answers would be below random, if anyone bothered to conduct a study. But he is undaunted: he jumps up at every opportunity to jab at the wrong answer on the screen. Especially when we get to use the extended magnetic pointer to bang dents in the Smartboard at the front of the classroom. He wields that thing like a monkey with an epee. I expect eyes to be lost at any moment.

Then there's Tony, whose father already taught him the alphabet, so he's at a tremendous advantage. Just as adventurous as William, yet armed with a lot more knowledge. He's got the alphabet down, though when you put it together into actual words, he's not always on the spot.

Little Sir, the youngest of the boys, jumpy and distracted. He's smart as a whip, and gets the material when his mind focuses on it for even half a second. But it doesn't always do so.

Grace, the older girl in her class (at all of 5, I think it is). She's too shy to jump up most of the time, but she usually knows the answer if I ask a direct question.

The one who intrigues me the most, perhaps, is Yun Hang, the tiniest little apple in the class. Her features are exquisitely sculpted, like a classic baby doll — she'll be a model in 15 years, if she wants to be — and she's as silent as a doll in my class. If I ask her to say a word, she mumbles it. A sentence as long as "I like to shop with my mother," she can barely manage even to mumble. Yet she's got a functional grasp on the vocabulary that bests even Tony with his alphabetic advantage. She understands and gets the right answer, even if she can't express it. She never, ever volunteers: I always have to pick on her, but she almost never disappoints.

I look forward to Ma Lei starting the pet supply shop, so I can quit this job and we can focus our attention on something with greater long-term benefits and more intellectual challenges. However, in the mean time I've found out that teaching the little critters can be fun and interesting.