On the Job

Subtitle: Yes, I actually do work occasionally

This week marked my first week of actual on-the-ground classroom teaching with real, live children. An apt way to imagine this would be a boxer's first big fight, except in this case I still have all my teeth and there is less blood. I visited three schools this week, and I'll cover them in order.

DAY 1

I began the week at my school the farthest away from town, about a half hour drive. While I had had some meetings with teachers prior to this session, my meeting with the teacher at this school was scheduled to take place when I got there - right before I was to teach. I wasn't nervous at all, that would be silly.

For my first class at any school, the obvious topic to cover is myself. The kids are always excited to have a new assistant teacher in the classroom, and always have lots of questions ranging from the predictable ("Do you have siblings?") to the esoteric ("What is your favorite insect?"). Since I am in elementary schools, my introductions are in both English and Japanese.

I knew all this going in, but I didn't really have a clear idea in mind about how, exactly, the 45 minutes would go by. I didn't know how the kids would respond to things, or how long any given activity or segment would take. I also didn't know, being new, where the kids were at regarding English or what subjects they had recently been working on.

The teacher met with me and we worked out a rough plan of attack. First, I'd introduce myself and my state, and a few other simple details of myself. Then, the kids would ask any questions they had about me. After this I'd get a simple self-intro from the kids, using English they had worked on earlier - primarily, names and likes. After this, since the kids had been working on numbers and times, we had a simple activity planned using a clock and various activities throughout the day ("What time do you get up? What time do you take a bath?"). We wrapped up with a game of bingo using numbers.

I'll be honest: I don't actually remember this class very well. I was suffused with terror and operated on auto-pilot; I have a vague sense that I was not very good. The kids were great, however, and there were no major disasters. My self-introduction, which I had pegged at perhaps five minutes, took about thirty seconds. The kids probably wondered if foreigners always have such confused smiles on their faces.

The class ended, however, and while I didn't do a great job the kids didn't seem too put out. I took my leave of the school and felt marginally more comfortable about the next day, since I had 1) met with the teacher previously and 2) had now had invaluable classroom experience, and knew a bit more of what to expect.

DAY 2

Day 2 took me to a school in town, with about forty kids between grades 1 and 6. I was scheduled to teach the 5th grade class that day, and we had previously worked on my self-introduction activities. While waiting for the class to start, however, I thought about the previous class and decided that perhaps my preparations were not adequate. I quickly came up with a game of charades in which the children could guess and ask what sports I liked, a common question in the introduction. This time, I felt a bit more level-headed, and the class was a success; we did have extra time so I was glad to have prepared an activity. The kids seemed quite happy.

I was scheduled to spend all day at the school, so I ate lunch with a class of students later in the day. In Japanese schools, students eat lunch in their homeroom classrooms, where they spend most of the day outside of breaks. The desks were clearly not designed for adults. The kids in the classroom were quite excited to have me eating with them, however, and peppered me with questions and explanations of the classroom. After lunch, the children clean up their places and then have a period of cleaning their classroom; older students also clean the school halls and other locations on a rotating basis.

After lunch, my assistance was requested as a native speaker example for the 6th graders. In Japan, English instruction is not required of elementary school students, but beginning in April 5th and 6th graders will be required to attend 20 hours of English classes per semester. For this reason, 5th and 6th grade class schedules are beginning to resemble the more rigorous curricula of the middle and high schools. ALTs like me are now in demand in elementary schools for this reason, as many teachers in those schools have not had post-secondary English instruction and are often not confident of their skills. For this class, I was asked to read passages from the book so the kids would have a native speaker's pronunciation to model after. I did manage to spice up the class by having the kids use the English they had practiced that day to guide me out of the classroom with my eyes closed (I only ran into one desk).

After this class, I was asked if I wanted to go practice with the kids for their "marathon" (a generic term for any kind of distance running event). I said "sure!" and thought myself that a bunch of ten year olds can't really be running that far. I heard 1.5 kilometers, and since I'm a big dumb American I don't really know how far that is. The answer is that it's not far, but it's farther than an out-of-shape guy like me can run without wanting to die. My legs still hurt three days later!

At the end of this day, I waved goodbye to most of the kids as they left, and consulted with the teachers about our next meeting. I felt much better about how the day had gone than I had about the previous one, and much more sure that I wasn't actually here by mistake.

This post has gotten quite long, and is already my second of the day, so I believe I'll save the third day (today) for another post. Suffice to say, it was the best one so far.