(no subject)
It’s been a while.
I teach English at five schools: Four elementary and one middle. Mon, Tues, and Wed, I’m at one of my elementary schools and on Thu and Fri I’m at my middle school.
Elementary is grades 1-6 and Middle 7-9. I teach them all, from 6 to 15 year olds.
I work with a variety of people. I’m always supposed to be doing ‘team teaching’, the idea is that there’s always one native English speaker to provide natural English and one native Japanese speaker to explain what’s going on (if need be).
I have 45 classes and 39 teachers I work with. My classes range from 9 students to 40, averaging at about 30 students per class. I have about 8 special needs kids that require special attention to make their way through English.
That’s the lowdown of what I do at work. Now I’ll break it down a little more into what it’s really like.
There is a large difference between the Elementary schools and the Middle School. In Elementary School you have the one homeroom teacher who teaches every subject. This means the teacher has to have a good amount of knowledge in Science, Math, Social Studies, Japanese, Morals, and Music. As of six years ago, they added ‘English’ to this list of ‘basic knowledge’, and many have yet to catch up. Some are very excited to have the chance to pick up English, and some could care less, it’s just a class they don’t have to teach because someone like me is around. This has given me days where I go to one class and a teacher will explain the importance of English as a universal language, helping me every step of the way, asking relevant, intelligent questions, and in the next class the teacher will take a nap while I dance for the kids.
All in all though, I love Elementary school. First we sing a song, then we yell simple words at each other, I teach them a simple sentence (usually I like ___, Do you like/know ____, Yes I do/No I don’t, Can you ____, etc) and then we play a game. The kids aren’t graded in English, so it’s not like they’re encouraged to study it ever. Instead, I have to run my show on “If they think this is boring, they will not pay attention”. I think I do an alright job.
And Elementary school is also awesome because I have recess. I can relax for half an hour, or go out and play tag, hide and seek, jump rope, etc. with all the kids and they have a blast. It also gives them a chance to ask why I’m blond, why my nose is so big, and what’s (look around, find nearest object, point to it) in English.
Middle School is a different matter. English is graded, and the teachers here actually have working English, though a little shaky in some areas (grammar, word choice). As English is a graded subject, and teachers expect too much from them, kids are a little more bitter about it, so I have to run my show on “If they think this is boring, they’ll hate my guts and not pay attention”. They seem to really enjoy when I come at least, though I can’t really say this energy is always used to learn English.
My teachers are really nice, but like I said, they expect too much. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked something like “If I asked you ‘How are you thinking in Nyuzen?’ could you respond with ‘I like Nyuzen’?” It’s always that on a test the question was “How are you thinking in Nyuzen?” and a student responded as they thought they should, and maybe how I might respond as I either think the grammar is wrong or that the teacher is using it improperly. In this case, I'm sure the teacher meant 'What do you think of Nyuzen?' It’s really hard, because I have to be like, sorry English teacher, you’re wrong, you should really let everyone on the test have that point, and they’ve got to be like “Screw that. They’re all failing”. I have yet to see an English test with an average higher than 60%.
I’ve had a lot of crazy and hilarious adventures at my job, but before I talked about any of them, I figured I’d explain a little about it.
Thursday, I was teaching my Middle School second year students. These kids love me, and I know it. Their teacher is really boring, so when I come and dance and play games it’s basically like I’m the fun uncle with tons of cool toys (and whiskey on his breath). So yesterday just so happened to be one of those days where she was handing back a test. The average was a 17/40. A 42.5% average. I think the highest was a 36/40, meaning that at least 4 were probably unanswerable. She then took about 30 of the 50 minutes explaining the common mistakes, but left the last 20 for me. Geez thanks. I see the kids for 50 minutes every other week. This week I got 20 minutes for 40 kids. On top of that, can you imagine how shitty it would be to get back a failing test, have to listen about how you fucked up for half an hour, and then have a foreigner stand in front of you and expect you to speak his ridiculous language? I’d like to get angry at some kids for not paying attention or not speaking in class, but I can too easily picture myself in their position, thinking, fuck off guy.
Anyway, now that there’s a little background as to what I’m doing, I’ll probably post more about my job.
I teach English at five schools: Four elementary and one middle. Mon, Tues, and Wed, I’m at one of my elementary schools and on Thu and Fri I’m at my middle school.
Elementary is grades 1-6 and Middle 7-9. I teach them all, from 6 to 15 year olds.
I work with a variety of people. I’m always supposed to be doing ‘team teaching’, the idea is that there’s always one native English speaker to provide natural English and one native Japanese speaker to explain what’s going on (if need be).
I have 45 classes and 39 teachers I work with. My classes range from 9 students to 40, averaging at about 30 students per class. I have about 8 special needs kids that require special attention to make their way through English.
That’s the lowdown of what I do at work. Now I’ll break it down a little more into what it’s really like.
There is a large difference between the Elementary schools and the Middle School. In Elementary School you have the one homeroom teacher who teaches every subject. This means the teacher has to have a good amount of knowledge in Science, Math, Social Studies, Japanese, Morals, and Music. As of six years ago, they added ‘English’ to this list of ‘basic knowledge’, and many have yet to catch up. Some are very excited to have the chance to pick up English, and some could care less, it’s just a class they don’t have to teach because someone like me is around. This has given me days where I go to one class and a teacher will explain the importance of English as a universal language, helping me every step of the way, asking relevant, intelligent questions, and in the next class the teacher will take a nap while I dance for the kids.
All in all though, I love Elementary school. First we sing a song, then we yell simple words at each other, I teach them a simple sentence (usually I like ___, Do you like/know ____, Yes I do/No I don’t, Can you ____, etc) and then we play a game. The kids aren’t graded in English, so it’s not like they’re encouraged to study it ever. Instead, I have to run my show on “If they think this is boring, they will not pay attention”. I think I do an alright job.
And Elementary school is also awesome because I have recess. I can relax for half an hour, or go out and play tag, hide and seek, jump rope, etc. with all the kids and they have a blast. It also gives them a chance to ask why I’m blond, why my nose is so big, and what’s (look around, find nearest object, point to it) in English.
Middle School is a different matter. English is graded, and the teachers here actually have working English, though a little shaky in some areas (grammar, word choice). As English is a graded subject, and teachers expect too much from them, kids are a little more bitter about it, so I have to run my show on “If they think this is boring, they’ll hate my guts and not pay attention”. They seem to really enjoy when I come at least, though I can’t really say this energy is always used to learn English.
My teachers are really nice, but like I said, they expect too much. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked something like “If I asked you ‘How are you thinking in Nyuzen?’ could you respond with ‘I like Nyuzen’?” It’s always that on a test the question was “How are you thinking in Nyuzen?” and a student responded as they thought they should, and maybe how I might respond as I either think the grammar is wrong or that the teacher is using it improperly. In this case, I'm sure the teacher meant 'What do you think of Nyuzen?' It’s really hard, because I have to be like, sorry English teacher, you’re wrong, you should really let everyone on the test have that point, and they’ve got to be like “Screw that. They’re all failing”. I have yet to see an English test with an average higher than 60%.
I’ve had a lot of crazy and hilarious adventures at my job, but before I talked about any of them, I figured I’d explain a little about it.
Thursday, I was teaching my Middle School second year students. These kids love me, and I know it. Their teacher is really boring, so when I come and dance and play games it’s basically like I’m the fun uncle with tons of cool toys (and whiskey on his breath). So yesterday just so happened to be one of those days where she was handing back a test. The average was a 17/40. A 42.5% average. I think the highest was a 36/40, meaning that at least 4 were probably unanswerable. She then took about 30 of the 50 minutes explaining the common mistakes, but left the last 20 for me. Geez thanks. I see the kids for 50 minutes every other week. This week I got 20 minutes for 40 kids. On top of that, can you imagine how shitty it would be to get back a failing test, have to listen about how you fucked up for half an hour, and then have a foreigner stand in front of you and expect you to speak his ridiculous language? I’d like to get angry at some kids for not paying attention or not speaking in class, but I can too easily picture myself in their position, thinking, fuck off guy.
Anyway, now that there’s a little background as to what I’m doing, I’ll probably post more about my job.