Between a Rock and a Wet Place

Today I taught a lesson I thought would be a little challenging. As it turned out, it was, but completely not in the way that I thought it would be. But somehow I think I reached them?

Our lesson plan was about embedded sentences, which is a difficult topic. For example, “I’m glad that (I studied Spanish,)” or “I’m sorry that (your cat died.)” So I taught them a list of expressions (I’m glad that, I’m sorry that, It’s a good thing that, etc) got them to separate them into positive and negative statements, and then I taught them some vocabulary phrases, such as “I transferred schools,” “my parents got divorced,” and “I broke up with my girlfriend.” That was easy enough. After they’d learned the phrases, I divided them into two teams and held up pictures representing the phrases. If a student knew the answer, he had to stand up with his arms out like an airplane to get called on. If he was correct, he got a piece of an airplane for his team. I made some pretty sweet airplanes, by the way, complete with spoilers, rocket boosters, sweet racing stripes, and lasers. Then they practiced a dialog, and at the end we played Two Truths and a Lie, where they had to make sentences about their lives using the same “I’m __ that ______ grammar,” and their partners had to guess which sentences were true and which one was the lie.

Anyway, I focused really hard on keeping the grammar in chunks and simplifying Two Truths and a Lie because those things are hard. After the first class tripped up a little, however, I was surprised to find that my grammar lesson had worked, but they were being really shy about answering the questions, even when I was 100% positive the new the answer, and it was something easy like “I fell in love,” that they could read straight out of the book. The sweet airplane building game just wasn’t enough to make them want to raise their hands. For the next class I resolved to thoroughly explain the new words that might trip them up, especially focusing on pronunciation so they wouldn’t be afraid to try them. The next class, however, was terrible. I realized maybe it had something to do with them not wanting to stand out from the class by standing up, but I did all the other right things to make the environment safe, like allowing them to confer with their teams, check their books, etc.

The most frustrating thing about Japanese culture is that everything takes so darn long because the students need 9 invitations before they believe it really is ok to talk. It comes from a nice place – not wanting to take the opportunity to speak away from someone else - but when you’re sitting in my classroom taking 5 minutes per question on an activity that ought to take 5 minutes total, I get a little frustrated. Just break the ice! Still, I know it’s difficult and there’s cultural influence at work. I think every teacher can relate to this, but the trick of it is, after 2 minutes of awkward silence, an America kid would say something. My students pushed “wait time” to whole new limits today. Usually I just do my stuff with confidence, and the American style of the classroom combined with the students’ excitement works enough to trump the cultural obstacles. Today, however, I got some major resistance from my students and it was perplexing. Furthermore, my frustration was pushed to the next level because I had the most resistance in my troublesome first year class, and as it is I usually feel like they’re not meeting me halfway, even behind the culture mask.

So, in short, what they taught me in teacher school was right. Individuals from some cultures don’t like to stand out, which will directly impact verbal participation – sometimes it will kill it. Today was one of those days. Like I said, I think it was a combined result of scary new vocabulary, having to stand with their arms out, Japanese silence culture, and the regular old universal: fear of talking in a foreign language. Anyway, I did my best to raise confidence in the oral component, and I amended the activity so they could stand without raising their arms. I let them confer with the group first (which is always an easy trick to confidence), and still no dice.

It got me thinking – what the heck does a fun class look like in Japan? They must have them, right? You know like how in high school in the States, you bust your butt on grammar and readings and problem sets, and then every couple of weeks you’ll get a movie or a jeopardy review game? Do those exist in Japan? I don’t even know. I’ve never sat through a real Japanese class. I’ve seen examples of other Western style English classes taught in Japan, of course, but obviously that’s not the same. In order to be successful, I need to see what I’m up against. I need to witness the lecture-basis first hand. I need to see what teachers do when they think kids aren’t paying attention, I need to see what teachers do when no one answers (provided students are even asked questions during class). Do they ever even call on students to do problems?

Being part of a team teaching pair is difficult. Even if I teach my classes myself, I’m completely oblivious to what they do during their English timeslot on days when I’m not the special guest. I’ve tried asking and I’ve tried spying, and everyone is still a little shy. I’m hoping that in April when the next school year starts I can make some changes, because right now I feel limited by my lack of in-class experience. Today was a great example of that and how as a result my troubleshooting skills are weak.

But I guess, if I were these kids I’d be terrified of English class too. Obviously, I can’t take the oral component out and I can’t do anything to lessen the blow unless they are very comfortable volunteering. I have to call on people to break this ice. This goes against everything I stood for as a student. I seem to remember vowing to myself that I’d never call on unwilling students if I ever became a teacher, but that’s just impractical. Someone needs to answer; I can’t just lecture at them the whole time. What’s the right way to handle this problem?

As a teacher though I recognize that it’s my problem to solve. They’re young, they’re scared, and they’re dealing with a cultural difference. They’re just not experienced enough to know that it’s okay, even necessary, to make mistakes in language class. I have to find a way to draw the answers out of them. Tomorrow I’m going to try getting the whole class to stand up and sit down together to practice first. Warm up, break the ice, all that. I’ll make it fun. I’ll do it fast, I’ll do it slow, and I will have them flying imaginary airplanes until it’s a reflex.

This whole thing also makes me think about trying to use unifying games over competitive games. Clearly that’s more cohesive with Japanese culture, but the reality is that most of the games in this world are competitive. Especially in the culture I come from! However, it would be naive to say Japanese games aren’t competitive too, Japanese people are as competitive as anyone else. Pride, accomplishment, jealousy, and all the rest- they’re universal feelings. I think the difference is that it needs to be pitched with a different slant and in a socially sanctioned way. In fact, now that I think about it, the whole “If you don’t volunteer, I’ll call on someone” angle never made sense to me in the States. I always thought, “uh, the problem is that I don’t want to talk, so I’ll take my chances still,” but I’ve heard it work with teachers here. Maybe it has to do with the whole, “for the good of the group” mentality where if someone suspects he knows, he’ll volunteer to save face for the others.

Anyway, my teacher training came through after all. I’d brought a bunch of candy canes back from the U.S., so I decided to give them out as rewards for doing an optional homework assignment. My goal was to get students more comfortable with visiting me at my desk. I didn’t expect it to work…but it did! Within two hours from when I assigned the work, I got 13 responses from the 2 classes I taught. In fact, in my troublesome class, even though none of the girls participated at all during the class period, I got all 10 girls from class to come to me with the finished homework. It makes me feel good that, even though I felt bad about the execution of the lesson, I provided them with another way to participate. I’ve successfully navigated multiple learning styles :)

I suppose that teaches me another lesson – keep on keepin’ on, keep on diversifying. Whether they show it or not, the students enjoy my classes.

So, I've been sick a lot on and off since October. I don't know if it's actually a normal amount of sickness but since time is passing so quickly it feels like I'm always sick, or if I really am more prone to sickness these days. Usually it's the typical cold thing where I feel kind of crappy and I sneeze and it passes, but for the past few weeks it's the works - sneezes, aches, coughs, feeling like I've been hit by a truck, you name it. I think I might finally go to the doctor.

I mean, it kind of makes sense. I start getting better quickly, then after maybe 10 days or so I think I can go back to normal life, so I take a run or a stay up late and I get annihilated. Last night I felt fine so I went for a run, but then this morning I could barely get out of bed. Fortunately it staved off long enough for me to teach my two classes today, and then immediately after I got back to the office I collapsed into trembling aches and involuntary nasal whines. I should probably go home...but I just don't want to. I have a busy day planned during and after work, and I don't want to reschedule any of it! That's probably realy stupid, but I've been sick and late to things so often lately, I feel like I owe it to the people around me. Even if they understand and forgive me, I can't forgive myself. Though now that I think of it, maybe there's a pattern here. I've been sick 3 out of the last 4 Tuesdays, I know this because I always want to cancel my eikaiwa (English conversation). I did actually cancel it a few times, but there must be some pattern to my weekend if it's always Tuesdays that are the worst. Dang.

Ow. I sneezed again.

Anyway. I taught a lesson on Christmas today where we decorated chalkboard christmas trees with magnets every time they remembered a vocabulary phrase. Then I told them the story of Scrooge (complete with pictures!!) with the target vocabulary phrases written into the story. After that, I had them take turns being Scrooge, rejecting christmas invitations on the basis of not wasting time or money, etc, and then we yelled, "You're such a Scrooge!" It was really fun! When the first class went well my spirits were high, but then the second class went well too! And the second class was one of my worst and least motivated classes and not only did they actually participate but they understood everything and had a good time! I was so pleased! They've been a thorn in my side since the start, not understanding the simplest activities or ever even repeating after me when I ask them to, but I took really careful notes and was really thoughtful about how to engage them...and here I am! Success! In general, all the students are more giddy about me lately - I can feel it when I walk down the hall - which is a really rewarding experience.

We were struggling with what to do for international club on Wednesday too, and I was proud of myself for coming up with some ideas. I also refreshed myself on the rules for "Big Booty" (though we'll say "Big Cutie") and now not only am I excited to teach it to them, but I'm excited to play it again. I really hope I can simplify "Bippity-Bippity-Bop" enough that they can play that too. Oh! And line tag! Those good old Adventure Learning games. I'm so glad I was an RA. I was explaining my high school lessons to my adult class today and they were thrilled and had a lot of nice things to say about my creativity. It was a rocky start and I had trouble breaking out of the boring stuff, but I think I've hit a bit of a groove. Too bad that after next week I won't teach again for a month!! Still, most of that break is to go home for Christmas, so I wouldn't change it for the world.

I struggled a lot with high schoolers initially. They're a little too old and a little too shy to do pure game play like the uninhibited elementary schoolers and middle schoolers who are learning English from scratch, and yet they don't have as much English as college students so they can't actually do conversation activities. For a while I viewed it as a bleak world lost between fun and conversation, but with a little extra thinking, I think I've finally come up with a balance between the two. Additionally, I'm getting used to the level of my eikaiwa as well. More or less they're the same as the high schoolers, but I can use a little more challenging explanations of things. I'm really getting excited about pedagogy, actually. I mean, I always have been a bit of an education geek, but now that I've settled into Japan I'm able to find my stride as a teacher again.

I even had some successful conversations in Japanese today too.

With the exception of the illness, today is another one of those on-top-of-the-world days. Huzzah!

In traditional Japanese style, I got to work today and food had appeared on my desk without explanation. And in traditional Japanese style, I ate it without question lol Usually it's snacks and sweets, omiyage from trips the other teachers took. Todays looked like a rice cake but it said cream on it, so I figured it was something sweetish filled with cream. Then it also said "fermented in beer," so I was skeptical but it was all right lol

Today I taught a new lesson for the first years. We use an atrocious book full of slang, and not the useful colloquial type, but the type you really can’t understand and won’t learn from unless you’re a native speaker. I kept a lot of the activities because they were good, but I edited them to suit my needs. The lesson was about art and how to give soft and strong criticisms (adding adverbs and such to soften, etc). I borrowed a bunch of art books from the art teacher and they had to listen to identify which pieces I was talking about and whether I liked them, then they categorized words and phrases isn’t soft and strong and positive and negative, and we practiced some dialogs.

In the final activity, I asked them to rank 8 pieces, then get into groups of four. I told them they were art thieves and they had 3 minutes before the alarm in the museum goes off during which to work out which 4 pieces to steal as a team. At the end of three minutes, I blew my whistle and yelled, “Guess what!? You all got caught by the police!” While they were working, I handed police badges (something I found in my desk! Lol) to certain students. At this point I told them they’d found the badges and were able to slip away undercover as police officers with one piece of art, the art the group thought was the best. At that point they came up to me, told me their piece and why they chose it, and I handed them a card with a picture of the piece on one side and a fortunate on the other. The backs had the amount of money they got for their pieces on the black market – anywhere from $1 Million to $0, along with an explanation like, “Oh no, $0, the police got you anyway!” “this artist isn’t famous yet,” “you accidentally took art from the kid’s corner, this was done by an 8 year old,” “You tripped and broke it before you can sell it,” and my personal favorite, “Great! Now you can afford to get a lawyer for your friends!”

The students do get me down sometimes though. They’re so depressing. When they don’t know, or even if they do know and don’t feel like talking, they just look down and pretend they can’t hear you. Maybe it’s rude in Japanese culture too, I wouldn’t know, but as someone from the States I think that’s horribly rude. At least smile submissively and shrug, or say, “I don’t know.” Say “I don’t know” in Japanese! Shake your head! Anything! Not to mention, sometimes I just want to look at them and be like, “Just say something, this is the easiest question in the world. There’s no way you don’t know it.” We’re talking, “how old are you,” here, guys. You don’t need to be able to speak English to answer that question. I’m sure most of you reading this can answer in at least one language, if not more, whether you’ve taken 3 years of classes in that language or not. And clearly, the prevalence of English is a different ball game altogether because most people in the world know at least a few words in English just from exposure. These kids could count in English for as long as they could count in Japanese. And this is coming from the sympathetic Japanese language learner who studied teaching and linguistics. Can you imagine how the other ALTs feel?

I think today’s lesson went pretty well though and the teachers are glad to see that I’m a real teacher. I’m not sure what they expected of me. Really, most ALTs are totally unqualified to be real teachers, so they’re a little justified no matter what they expected. Maybe the best way to describe it is that it felt like they expected me to be a professional teacher but didn’t actually anticipate that I could do it? Hard to pin down. Anyway, the strictest of the teachers seem to like my work, so it *should* be all downhill from here.

Additionally, I ended up pumping out pretty decent lessons for my last two adult conversation groups, the international club, and English Day at the other big high school in town. I’m kind of proud of myself that it came to me so quickly. Especially the international club lesson. After my run-in with the delinquent who hurt my feelings during our last meeting, I was kind of unmotivated. In fact, when the club president came up to me yesterday for his perfunctory, “what will we do in club tomorrow?” my attitude was kind of like, “Why are you asking me? You decided on a boring topic already. I have no idea what you want from me.” But then I sat down with it, generated some good discussion questions and pulled up some conversation games like a “would you rather” based on the theme and a game where you pass around two pens until the music stops and the person holding the red pen asks a question to the person holding the blue pen. In the process, I also stumbled across a bunch of really cool drinking games I’ll try to work into class (and probably also into my parties! Lol)

9/14
The next morning I made us fried cheese filled onigiri and we went to the Elementary school. The Canadian wore a track suit, which is an acceptable uniform for an elementary school teacher (and often times also for higher level teachers on casual days) but I wore my all-out work dress clothes. The day began with an assembly, where they played a true or false quiz game, and it was the most adorable thing ever. The teamwork element between the students of a Japanese primary school really is evident, like everyone says. The kids monitor and regulate each other’s behavior while teachers are more like role models than disciplinarians or even instructors sometimes. Not a lot of the teachers spoke English and of course the kids only had pieces and couldn’t really communicate much, so my Japanese really paid off.

I’d spent a lot of time making our lessons in advance because I was so excited about them, but in the end we were at a bit of a loss for the 4th graders because we were teaching them movement verbs and they know almost no English (actual English classes don’t begin until 7th grade) and the school didn’t give us much to go on. While we plotted our plots, a teacher brought us grapes from the neighboring city. They were great big green grapes and they tasted quite different from the ones I’m used to eating. They were a lot sweeter and a lot more sour, and the inside membrane was kind of slimy and thick, not watery and crunchy. An interesting experience. The Canadian was drawing a bus to complete our flashcard set but something went horribly, horribly wrong and it ended up looking more like a piece of cheese, so I yelled Cheese Bus in Japanese, “chiizu baasu!” and he turned it into a legit cheese bus with holes and yellow and all its cheesey glory. I had a hunch and told him to bring it to class anyway.

We went to the fourth graders first and reviewed the basic verbs like walk, run, bow, stand, sit, etc. This meant a lot of fun Simon says stuff (though they always won because they were so hesitant and watchful of others that no one ever made a mistake) and then we let them call the motions. Then we taught them the transportation verbs and some nouns to use with them and made a few sample sentences. That went very quickly though, especially because they didn’t know sentence structure or verb conjugation. We found ourselves with a lot of extra time, so I suggested that we act out the transportation verbs too, “Sensei says, ride a bicycle! Sensei says drive a car!” At that point, the cheese bus was a HUGE hit, as kids pretended to be mice and held their noses yelling, “ewww stinky!” Kids will be kids :) Though, it was a little much for me when everyone pretended to be seasick and was “throwing up” all over the place during, “Sensei says ride a boat.”

In the 2nd grade class we taught them the body vocabulary words, which was difficult because in Japanese they don’t discriminate between leg and foot, it’s all “ashi.” I sang the Hokey Pokey and we all danced, which they LOVED. The Canadian pretended not to know the song well enough…Right. Like you don’t know the Hokey Pokey. Baby.

After that I whipped out my robots. At first it was a little disorganized and crazy, but we put all the pieces in the middle and instructed the students one by one to choose certain pieces to make their robots and then they returned them one by one when we told them to. CR had had fun making his own robot using ALL the pieces the night before, which shows I would have found a use for them had I taken them home with me again, but I knew the kids would have more fun being able to use them again and so I left them with the Canadian, seeing as I have no elementary schoolers to teach. They even named their robots, it was so cute :) It was also really cool because I had to teach the class in Japanese, which I’d never come close to doing before.

For lunch we went back to the fourth years to eat with them in the classroom. In Japanese Elementary schools, they all eat lunch in their classrooms. They bring around big pots and carts of food and the kids are assigned certain days to do the serving. They put on little aprons and hats and the like and make sure everyone gets food. If there are leftovers, they usually janken for them (rock, paper, scissors). Of course, the grape jello is always more popular than the milk and rice, but I did see a little boy pack away 3 platefuls of curry, so that was pretty amazing. In addition to those things, we had fried shrimp croquette and cabbage. I sat at a tiny little desk and smiled attentively as the kids told me in Japan what they did last weekend and what their favorite colors were. The boys didn’t have much to say, but some of the girls went on and on like a bunch of washer women talking about the matsuri and how they don’t like milk. I asked the kids if they liked curry, and they were all like, “Eh, futsuu desu.” (Meh, it’s normal.) I, for one, like curry. It was a little hot (though not really at all) so the kids made a big show of going “ahhh karai!” so we taught them that in English, karai is “spicy!” Maybe someday in English class they’ll remember the day in Elementary school when that the visiting teacher taught them “spicy.”

After lunch, we had the basic verbs class with the third graders, so we knew we needed to generate some new material, since we’d taught that entire lesson and then some to the fourth graders and still barely filled the time. We concocted a game similar to “No Walking, No Talking, No Showing Your Teeth,” that we’d be allowed to use the gym for. We kicked our Simon Says up to the next level as well, with the Canadian running out the door for “to run,” and getting the whole class to bust a move for “to dance.” On a whim I grabbed the flashcards off the board and held them behind his head so the kids had to shout the instructions to him on my prompting. We let a few kids take a turn at this too, while we sat in their desks pretending to be them (they loved that, of course!). The game went well, though it kind of broke down into a game session than an ENGLISH game session. Still, we all had a good time, though at the very end they took awkward to a whole new level when they switched from constantly ASKING the Canadian and me if we were a couple to TELLING the male teacher that he and I should be a couple. They *really* liked this idea and kept going on and on about how they thought it would be really good for us. Fortunately I didn’t have to look the teacher in the eye again after that because I needed to catch the bus back to Sapporo.

I had to go alone, since The Canadian wasn’t allowed to leave school. I was a little worried for a bit because the bus was about 10 minutes late, but it got there and I got to Sapporo without incident. The view on the drive was beautiful, though I spent most of my time sleeping. When I arrived in Sapporo, the bus was very late, so I figured I could wait an hour and a half and take a very expensive train back or I could wait 2 hours and take a cheap bus back. I ended up spending less than half on my return ticket in one direction than I did on my arrival ticket. If I go again, I’ll be sure to take the bus! It really doesn’t take that much longer and it’s not that much less comfortable.

So I had some time to kill in the city, which I wish I had anticipated because I’d been meaning to go shopping in Sapporo for a while (there are some things I can’t find in the City by the Sea), but there I was carrying a crap ton of stuff and completely disorganized. I walked around a bit outside through the , though I ended up buying nothing. Then I got the bright idea of checking out the station? They HAD to have western sized clothing, right? Or something I could buy?

Underneath the station is literally a city of shops. Several districts in fact. I’d been down there before, but I got so disoriented I couldn’t find anything and I didn’t want to go into any of the clothing stores, no matter how cute it all was, because I was so self conscious that the Japanese women were judging me, thinking, “You will never find anything your size here. Ever. What are you doing?” This was all in my head, but I couldn’t help it :( I ended up just buying some dinner, a Chinese shrimp rice dish, and 300 grams of dried mango for $25 (fruit here is so expensive! >,<) I don’t know why I did it, I just did. I could’ve gotten the same tiny portion from Trader Joe’s for $6. Saaaad.

Got on my bus, slept the whole way home. The City by the Sea was just as I’d left it, except now my Japanese was worse having spent so much time with English speakers. Still, I needed the reprieve from 100% immersion Japanese life.