First Day of Teaching

This is the real reason why I am starting a blog; I wanted to be able to remember the best and probably worst parts of teaching English, so that by the end of this trip I can have some fun memories to share with everyone. This is what I will count as my first day of teaching, because even though I taught before, this was the first day I had lunch with the students and got a real full work day. My first school has been Nisshin Junior High School; it has around 380 students which makes it one of the biggest middle schools in Shinjo. Japanese schools are divided by grade and then by kumi, which is just how many classes there are in each grade. Nisshin Junior High School has 4 kumis for level 1 (7^th graders), 5 kumis for level 2 (8^th graders), and 4 kumis for level 3 (9^th graders). The school day is broken up into 6 periods that are each 50 minutes long, and the students only leave the room for special classes like home ec, gym, and science. On top of that they have lunch time after 4^th period which takes place in their classroom from 12:45-1:15. In this time the students prepare their own food for their class, and must finish all of it within the given time. After lunch they have cleaning, where each class not only cleans their own classroom, but a random part of the school as well. Finally the students have a lunch break from 1:35 until 1:50 before starting their last two classes.

For my first day I was to work with Takahashi sensei and Yatsuyanagi sensei. Takahashi sensei is the second grade English teacher and I had her for first, second, and fifth period teaching classes 2C, 2B, and 2D. Yatsuyanagi sensei is the first grade teacher and I taught fourth and sixth period with classes 1A and 1B. Since these were going to be my first lessons to the classes I was scheduled to give an introduction speech and then work on the student’s English introductions. My introduction has gotten better since the first time I gave it, but I think it will need serious re-working for each school I go to. I start out by saying who I am, then I move on to my siblings. I think my favorite part of this is showing them the pictures of Ariella and Jacob and then having them guess who they are. No one ever believes that Ariella is my twin, and so far I have had one second year say that she is my wife, and one first year say that she is my mother. As for Jacob people find him a bit more believable, although I have had a first year from a different class mistake him for my father, which was equally as weird. From there I move on to a somewhat amusing map of America and I show the students where Colorado is, where I went to college, and where Ariella, Jacob, and Brianna live. The best part of this lesson is telling the students that it takes over a week to drive from Washington to New York, something that they can’t believe. The next slide was a little boring to them, and it was when I showed them a map of Colorado and told them some facts about it. Luckily by the third class I found a way to make this one of the student’s favorite slides. I had just told the class that I drove to my part time job every day in high school, and the students shouted out, “You can drive in high school?” I did not realize that there was a difference, and I simply said, “Yes you can start driving at 15.” This blew the student’s minds, so I decided to take it a step further and show them a picture of Wyoming, and tell them that you can drive at 14 over there. This is one of the few things that made my students want to come to America, and it is much better than their favorite fact which I will describe later.

From here I show them some of America’s sports, and I usually get a good reaction when I show pictures of baseball, soccer, and basketball. Students do know what football is, but it is not as exciting to them, since none of them play it. Of course if a class is quiet up until this point I can always get them to perk up when they see a picture of Ichiro, the Japanese baseball player for the Seattle Mariners. I was surprised to find out that they actually had a pretty good knowledge of American athletes, once you get them talking. It is odd, because in America kids would always want to say they knew sports players to look cool, but since doing this admits you know more about America than the rest, most kids keep quiet. I say this only because after class the kids like to talk to me in Japanese and they tell me all about their favorite players and teams, while in class they say nothing. I actually was very lucky by picking Darek Jeetar as my second picture, because I knew him and so did the Japanese students. After this comes another one of my favorite sections, the animal comparison slide. Before this class I had planned to make a huge slide full of pictures showing deers and hawks in America and Japan and comparing them, but in truth I only had time for 2 deer pictures and a buffalo. The students never believe me when I say that buffalo are taller than me, it kinda blows their minds. I thought that they would like to compare the small Japanese deer to the American deer, but that one is kind of a hit or miss. This could be of course my fault because I don’t know if deer in Shinjo are the same as deer in Nara, which are very small, so they might actually be used to big deer.

The slides that I might have to get rid of are the ones about college and what America is and is not. I think that a comparison between Japanese and American schools is interesting to them, but college is so far away that it is a little boring to these students. Furthermore, even though telling them that America is not lazy and fat and that every America does not own a gun is important, but not interesting enough. Even after I give my speech and say that most American’s don’t own guns, they just mutter under their breath, “Well the cops sure have a lot of guns,” or, “I am pretty sure they still do.” I want to replace this with a slide about American food. I got this idea when a kid asked me the odd question of, “Do I like food?” When these kinds of questions come up I have the urge to say something like, “No, I am a natural anorexic.” But I cannot because that is rude, and the sight of a foreigner muttering random words than laughing to himself might be a little too odd for the students. Anyways, after I gave them that answer another kid became brave enough to ask me, “Is Japanese food small?” I know that the natural answer would seem to be yes, but really most of Japan’s food has larger proportions than American foods, especially when it comes to rice and noodles. So when I answered, “The drinks are small.” The teacher asked me to compare the McDonald’s drinks in Japan and America. I told her that a small in America is like a Large in Japan, and all of the kids in my class screamed, “Ehhhh” (This is a very impolite way to say what). From there we began to talk about the differences between French Fries and hamburgers, and then the price differences between America and Japan. I don’t think I could have gotten a better reaction from them if I told them America was made of gold. These kids barely ever eat hamburgers, and later some admitted that the only good thing about McDonalds was the French Fries, but they were hanging off of my every word. Now the problem with having made his discovery so late is I cannot change my introduction in this school. All of my teachers know this intro, and they do not want to have to relearn everything just because I found something to catch the student’s attention for 10 seconds. So all it means is that in the next 5 schools I will have an incredibly interesting presentation, and hopefully I can learn another cool fact to teach them there. As a P.S. to this section I wanted to add that hand gestures are very helpful, but if you don’t do them right, or if you use them too much, the student’s will mock you after class for them.

So now I come to the best part of the blog, the student’s self-introductions to me…in English. I both love and hate this because it is incredibly amusing, and I have had to laugh at a few students which makes me feel awful afterwards. These introductions are incredibly basic, the student says ‘Hello’ than ‘My name is ___’ followed by, ‘I am from ___’ and finally, ‘I like ___.’ After my speech I go around and watch them prepare this and even though the teacher explains everything in Japanese, they don’t always understand. One of the best mistakes that I heard was with a student I tried to help 3 times. Each time I passed by his desk I saw that he wasn’t writing anything down, and I would bend down and give him some answers to his own introduction, yet he continued to ignore me. So when it was his turn to stand up in front of the class and speak English he was in a lot of trouble. He stood up by his desk, stared up at me and said, ‘Herrroo’ in one of the most questioning tones I have heard, and I had to crack a smile there. Then he continued by saying, “My name is Shinjo…I am from…Ryuiji Taka…EHHHH.” It was by this point, where he already said his name was the town he was from and that he was from half of himself that he realized what he was doing and screamed in embarrassment. Again I am glad to say I was not laughing just yet, but I could not help but laugh when I turned around to the other students and saw them all covering their mouths with their hands, as if they were wanting him to continue saying it wrong to the very end.

My second favorite mistake came during the lunch period. It was decided at this school that I would have lunch with every class in the school starting from 1A, and working my way up to 3D. During lunch I am allowed to speak Japanese and I get to ask the students as many questions as I want. One of the questions I just happened to ask was ‘What is your favorite Disney movie?’ Now I do not know the name of this student but he was truly a good student because he tried to answer back in English by saying, “I…like…Fighting Nemo.” Again I am glad I can suppress a smile as I pretended that he had said it right to encourage the kid to speak more. Unfortunatly for him his friend was not as kind and shouted back, “Tatakau Nemoka” (literally translating it to Fighting Nemo). This caused the kid to turn bright red as all the boys surrounding him jumped up and started smacking him while calling out “Fighting Nemo.” I honestly think that this one memory will make me laugh for at least a month, and I still can’t hide my smile while I am writing about it.

All the mistakes that day were not on the student’s end; in fact I had one of my more embarrassing mistakes as well. During class the teacher asked me, “What are you going to do this weekend?” It was on the spot, and not wanting to seem boring to my new students I told them what I did two weekends ago, and answered back, “I am going to Fukushima.” This caused the kids to gasp and mutter ‘Dangerous’ under their breath until the teacher quieted them down. I thought this was the end of it, until lunch time when one student asked me in Japanese, “Why are you going to Fukushima.” I replied back, “Tomodachiha, Fukushima ni shindeiru” instead of the appropriate, “Tomodachiha, Fukushima ni sundeiru.” So for those who don’t speak Japanese let me explain the difference between shinu and sumu. Sumu means to live, so if you want to say I live somewhere you say “___ni sundeiru.” Shinu is the opposite, and so a rude way to say someone is dead is to say, “___ni shindeiru.” So in other words, in front of a group that thought I was fluent in Japanese I responded to the question, ‘Why are you going to Fukushima’ by saying, ‘My friend is dead in Fukushima.’ I turned beat red when they corrected me, and refused to say anything in Japanese for a few minutes, reminding myself how embarrassing speaking a second language can really be.

I have also had the pleasure to have some pretty peculiar students so far in this school. One of the things you have to get used to when you are a foreigner in Japan is for little kids to be weirded out by you. This generally involves walking down the hall in between classes and being spotted by a student who does not know you are coming. At this point they usually yell “Ehhh” and point at you, or if they are a little more used to foreigners they will start shouting “Hey” and “Good morning” which is a little less off putting. Another unexplainable phenomenon is something that only retains to girls. Basically whenever I enter a room for the first time there is usually a group of girls who scream out and then huddle up to talk about me. I believe this is because all of the students at my school believe me to look like Harry Potter because I am also white with glasses. So once you get over that initial shock it usually gets better. Nevertheless, when it comes time to talk to the girls individually they all get bright red whenever I talk, and usually half way through their self-introduction they have to turn to their friends for help finishing up. One girl in particular was incredibly weird, I have had her for 2 classes up until this point, and my first lunch was scheduled to be in her class. As the homeroom teacher led me into their class with my lunch tray, the girl took one look at me, screamed and curled up in a ball to hide her face between her knees. I have no idea what that was or why it happened, and I did feel bad because I was put in the seat right next to hers and she had to deal with me all during lunch.

I also already have two stalkers in this school; one is a boy from the third year B class who admitted half way through my speech that he was a stalker. I did not improve my own situation by telling him what apartments that I live in and my apartment number. I have already have had 2 students show up at my apartment just because they wanted to meet a foreigner, so who knows if this is going to become a regular occurrence. My second stalker is in the first year B class as well, and this kid has not said if he wants to go to my apartment, but after hearing my speech he started following me around everywhere in the halls and asking all sorts of random questions. This one