Teaching Fun and the Japanese Language

In my junior high classes this week I'm teaching the question "Do you like...?" After we've gone over the question, answers structure and some examples, I go around the class to ask each kid a different question.

I like to tease the boys a bit, and will choose one confident kid, stand over him looking menacing (not that I do that so well apparently), and ask "Do you like me?" It gets a laugh every time.

On Thursday, I did this, but rather than answering straight away, the boy asked "Can I ask a question?"

"OK..." I answered.

He then rattled something off in Japanese that I didn't understand. I told him that I didn't. So he asked the question again, this time slower and with gestures. It went something like this;

"Do you mean "like" as in (gestures a handshake), or do you mean "like" as in (gestures hugging and kissing)?"

I laughed "I mean like, as in a friend."

"Well, OK then, Yes I do!" he replied. He certainly didn't want any confusion there.

On another topic, I chickened out of going to the doctor yesterday, but may have to today. In preparation, I've had to translate my symptoms into Japanese. No matter how scared I am, I think I'm going to have trouble not giggling when telling the doctor that I have "Piripiri, mukamuka, kurakura and girigiri."

How to have a bad day and How to make it a little better...

How to have a bad day

• Be in February - When my friend Joan lived in the UK, she used to call this month "Slit-your-wrists-February". After a couple of months of the cold and not being outside much, now I've hit February I'm so over it and know that I still have weeks until it's going to start getting warmer.
• Be a Tuesday - I have my least favourite high school class on Tuesdays. By half-way through the lesson, I feel the need to check their pulse, by the end, I feel the need to check mine. While on Mondays I have my least favourite junior high school class, I have my best high school one the same day, so they even out. On Tuesdays, they are all kind of duds.
• Be a rainy day - not only is it cold, grey and dreary but it also means you can't ride your bike to work, so have to leave early to walk there in time.
• Be tired due to not enough sleep and nightmares the night before due to stress.
• Start your day writing tests.
• Start your first class breaking up a play fight just in time to stop a kid's head being split open. This is after you've already yelled at them to stop. Yell at them again and hurt your throat.
• Notice that the curtains in your classrooms and teachers room are the same colour as what you imagine what body odor would be if it had a colour.
• Have a series of high school presentations that are so bad you feel your very life essence being sucked out of you. The worst, going for ten minutes and you realise at the end, you have no idea what they were talking about.
• Resist the temptation to slap a kid across the head for laughing at a student during his good presentation.
• Be cold despite the fact that you're wearing your mountain-climbing long thermal underwear under your jeans, two pairs of long woolen socks, disposable, stick-on "sock warmers", a thermal under-shirt, a long-sleeved turtle neck shirt, a vest and a lined woolen coat. AND you're in your teacher's room.
• Record two listening tests and be so cold in the recording room you can no longer feel the tip of your nose or your fingers despite the fact that you're wearing the above plus a down-filled jacket.
• Have a pile of marking sitting in front of you that you know you should be doing even though all you really want to do is curl up and go to sleep.

How to make your bad day a little better

• Use your brand new, thermal lunch box for the first time and have a yummy warm lunch at work.
• Get handmade cookies and chocolates as an early Valentine's Day present from a student.
• Have a student give an inspiring presentation about his time at the World Scout Jamboree and how meeting other non-native English speakers who didn't care about the mistakes they made with the language made him feel more confident in speaking.
• Know that you have a Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Brownie Mix at home that a friend brought back from Guam for you. Plan to make them tonight and surprise your husband when he gets home.

How's your day going?

The Temperature Today...

.... in the female teacher's bathroom at school....

2 degrees Celsius

I told you it was cold!

Domestic Violence

I've renamed my "Help Me Help Me" class to the "Domestic Violence" class. I think it's a name I've stolen from Badaunt, sorry Badaunt, but it's a name that fits so well with this group. A lot of punching goes on, but it's all between friends and strangely, they seem to enjoy it, both the hitter and the hit-ee.

I feel like I probably should get mad at them, but I don't feel angry at all. They make me laugh.

A lesson with them can go something like this;

Student, pointing to his friend; "He's M, he's M"

I look at him confused, ""M", what do you mean "M"? I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You know, "M", he's "M"!" The student then punches his friend really hard in the shoulder and explaines, "See, he's "M", I'm "S" and he's "M"".

I just shake my head, laugh and walk away.

Snow

It's now officially really cold, I saw snow this morning! Admittedly, the snow was capping a mountain in the distance, but it was snow none-the-less. I swear I saw three snowflakes yesterday swirling in the air, but Wayne thinks I was imagining it.

I was hoping some semblance of warmth would hold out for a few more days. We plan to re-arrange the apartment this coming long weekend and was hoping to wait until then to pull out the heaters and winter clothes. Yesterday, I wore a blanket around the apartment but still my fingertips were frozen and made it hard to type.

Last night I gave in and dug out a couple of heaters. And a dig it was. If you've ever lived in a Japanese apartment, you know how precious space is, our heaters were buried in the back of a cupboard under suitcases and backpacks. I haven't gotten out winter clothes yet but have been wearing what I like to think of a bohemian style of layers to survive. I did have to go to the 100yen shop to buy some gloves for the bike ride to school as my fingers couldn't wait.

You would think that once I got to school, I would be warm, but the opposite is true. The floor in the staffroom is freezing and with the Japanese culture of having to wear slippers inside, I can't wear my lovely warm boots during the day. I have a lap blanket I use and have been known to wear a down jacket and scarf at my desk to stop asthma attacks from the low temperature. Adrianne is already wearing her down jacket in the staff room today.

Our school is undergoing major construction at the moment and in the process, we lost one of our classrooms. Most of the time it's OK as one teacher will conduct the class in the student's homeroom. During interview tests however, we need both. What has happened this testing period is that one teacher has to sit outside in the cold, sunless, windy corridor. Thank goodness it's Sam and not me! Poor Gareth has three hours of interview tests to do there today! To make things scarier - it's cold now, but our next tests are in February when we'll be in the depths of winter and our new building won't be up then. And then don't even get me started on the female teachers toilets that are outside.....

On a happier note, I have to say, my husband is wonderful. He knows how much I hate this weather and so on cold nights, he goes to bed before I do, lies on my side and warms it up for me. How sweet is that! He even, admittedly not so happily, allows me to warm up my cold hands on his warm body parts. It's like having a living, breathing, large sized water bottle. Last night, he braved the low temperature and got me chocolate that I was craving and then this morning, he let me stay in while he went out and did the recycling by himself. Isn't he great! I'm not sure what I did to deserve him, but don't tell him that.

Interview Test Time

I never did get around to writing up the rest of my teaching days. It's been a busy week. On Monday and Wednesday, I had extra classes scheduled in and on Tuesday I had a recording session for the junior high practice and listening tests. On top of that I've been catching up on marking and been attacked by hordes of students every day before school, after school and at lunch times as they want their interview test preparations checked.

This testing period has gone so fast! We've started interview tests today! Our students are graded in three different area; their classwork, an interview test and a listening test. Each is worth a third of their final score. We conduct interview tests a week before their listening test.

This interview test is pretty cruisey for the junior high kids as long as they have prepared. They just have to tell us a little about someone from their family, half of it being in past tense. The previous two tests they had 16 questions to answer in 2 minutes, so the process was quite manic.

After the interview tests and listening tests are finished we still have a couple of weeks left of school. The junior high classes will be doing grade-free Christmas based lessons and games, so it's a lovely festive end to the year. And then... holidays! Yah! Wayne and I aren't going anywhere to far these holidays in a bid to save money. I'm really looking forward to it though as I have so many craft and design projects planned.

Bring on the holidays!

Fridays

I enjoy Fridays, and not just because it's the last day before the weekend. The last day for us native teachers that is, the Japanese teachers and students often have school on Saturday. I like Fridays because I have two junior high classes that are a ball to teach.


My first one, the first period of the day are really smart, attentive and energetic. There are no personalities that really shine out more than the others, but they are all sweet. One girl is tiny, about the size of a small seven year old. What she lacks in size she makes up in energy and has an infectious smile. Today in class, the students were doing an exercise where they had to interview many of their classmates. One boy came to tell me that he was finished, he had filled the paper. I told him that was great and asked if he could go and help some other students. He happily said yes and then I got a series of bows from him as he walked backward to the other students and said thank you many times. I can't imagine getting that from a twelve year old Australian student.


My second junior high class is in the last period of the day. It's my favourite junior high class of the week. It's funny really, I start, first thing Monday morning with my least favourite class and finish, last thing Friday afternoon with the best. The dynamics in this class are great. I put it down to the fact that the alpha male lived in America for a number of years and has excellent English. All the other boys want to be just like him, so they work their butt off and compete to do better than him. It really makes my job easy. One boy, H, is a little strange, but keeps us all amused with his antics. The girls in the class are a delight and we often laugh at how crazy the boys are.

In between the two, I have a high school class. They are mostly great except for one girl that gets on my nerves a bit. She talks the whole way through the class.

I'm tired by the end of the day though as my last two classes are back-to-back and are on opposite sides on the campus, so I always have to dash to make it in time.

Adrianne teaches one of my students from last year. I remember him fondly for just how truly dense he could be. In an interview test he produced "My mother.... my mother.... my mother cooks eat me" to the question "What club do you belong to". At the time he was so proud of himself for getting out the reply. Well today, Adrianne showed me a piece he had written about medicinal foods.

"I would like to try ginger. Because, I want to do a lot of poop and I want to make my poop a good shape."

Ummm... thanks for that information......

Thursdays

I've been meaning to write about my classes for a while now, so here goes, day-by-day.

I work at a private secondary school. It's difficult to get entry into, co-ed and contains both junior and senior high schools. I teach the first grade of each. It's a good combination actually, as the junior high kids are so genki, they're fresh, their excited and excitable. The high school kids are old enough and have enough English to be able to talk to about things and to joke with, so their lessons can get interesting.

At our school, they do three types of English each week, I teach the third component, communicative English. In junior high I concentrate on phonics and am a pronunciation Nazi. But to their credit, my students now know the difference between a (l) and (r), a (b) and (v), can produce a good (th), exercise the muscles in the face, mouth and tongue to get the right sound and are now starting to lip-read. I'm so proud!

So, Thursdays. I have three classes, first, third and fifth periods.

My day starts with a high school class. They are a little different to most of my other high school classes, as all the students are new-comers to the school. They haven't been formed into this school's mould yet and I have to remind myself at times, that they haven't been doing this style of class for three years previously like the other classes have. A number of the students in that class have lived overseas. One in Singapore, one in France and another recently returned from a year's home stay and studying in America. The class has a high level of English as long as I don't ask them to volunteer an answer. Then I'm only greeted with the tops of every one's heads while they stare at their desks, and silence. I think it's because the kids who have come back from other countries are self conscious that they might make a mistake and the others are too embarrassed to speak in front of them. Other than that, they are mostly a good class. The girl that lived in France loves to talk to me and is a great student and one boy really makes me laugh. One day I told him that our next class was going to be a fun games class. He asked if we could have a party and have cake. I told him that sure, if he wanted to bring cake, I'd be very happy. He then told me, in very careful English "No, I would like to be treated to some cake". Cute!

My second class of the day is a junior high lesson. The kids in this class are so polite, they are just adorable. They laugh at my silly jokes (and really, what teacher doesn't like that?), try really hard and when completing a worksheet will raise their hands and say in very enunciated English (very rounded and proper), "Excuse me Melanie, how do you spell....." There are lots of "please"s and "thank you"s during that lesson. In today's class we were covering vowel digraphs so they delighted in being able to yell out "oi" and "oy". Every now and then, we broke out into a "Oi, noisy boy!" and their faces just lit up.

My last lesson of the day I have nick-named my "Help me, help me" class, as that's what a number of the boys yell out all lesson. They're not a "good" class, but they are a lot of fun to teach. One of the boys always makes me laugh. Let's call him "T". T has a lot of energy in class, though I can't say it's alway focussed where it should be. He sometimes talks in class, but if I turn to glare at him, he whacks, hard, his friend that he was talking to, tells him to "shut up" and then turns to me with a butter-won't-melt-in-my-mouth smile and tells me "He's a bad boy." I should get angry, but I just can't help smiling. The girls are a delight, as they are in most of my classes. One girl, Y, is a great student and came to me with a piece of writing she'd done, all marked out with pauses and inflections just in case she needed to present it to class. Another boy doesn't always do a lot of the classwork, but always stops me in the halls for a short chat in English whenever he sees me. His English is good and he will usually come up with something smart and funny to say.

Today, now classes are over for the day, I'm busily trying to finish writing a test and catch up on my marking. It's been a good day.

Camera Club Clique

This year at school, I joined the Camera Club and these are some of my camera club girls.