The Schools

Today was my first official day of teaching! I had to teach 5 classes, from 4th grade to 6th, at two different schools. I don't understand how anyone is comfortable doing this job with no understanding of Japanese. Not that I am all that capable; to the contrary, I sound like a monkey stringing syllables together. But at least I can manage to figure out what the teachers want from me, and they all want very different things. Some turned the class entirely over to me, while others wanted to teach jointly, and one just wanted me to parrot pronunciations.

The lessons themselves were not nearly as intimidating as I expected, thanks entirely to the kids themselves. They were all shy, but immediately responded when I taught them games and used funny voices or gave them high fives when they did well. At one school the teachers had me read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Eric Carle. It was perfect because I made all the animal sounds we grow up with in English (woof, ribbit, neigh, etc.) and the kids thought it was the most ridiculous thing they'd ever heard. In Japan, apparently dogs say "wan," frogs say "garro" and horses say "heehee." I considered myself a success when, at recess, a crowd of kids asked me to play kick the can with them. It was more fun than I've had with some people my own age.

The only significant challenge so far is the way the classes are integrated: kids with learning disabilities are mixed in the classes, with no indication of their unique needs. I've worked with kids like that in high school and never had a problem engaging them, but it's really sad when you call on a kid who starts crying from fear at the mere thought of speaking English (that happened today) and the other kids are just waiting for you to move on to the next game. And these kids are COMPETITIVE. It works to my advantage most of the time; if I ever sense their attention beginning to drift, I just have to turn the activity into a contest. I just have to make sure they don't exclude the less confident kids in the process.

All in all, I don't know what the teachers or other staff members think of me, but I'm relatively sure the kids like me. And they're way fun. :)