Rant Day Wednesday

The downside of being an NS: it’s in our contract that we’re not supposed to collaborate with the Japanese teacher. 

Ok, now put your blown mind back together and try to reason it out with me: how are we supposed to put together a cohesive and more importantly, beneficial lesson, if we can’t work with the teacher? It’s one thing to get a schedule that asks you to cover one section of a chapter, it’s another thing entirely to get that lesson through their precious little skulls in an interesting and understandable way. Every class in every school is at a different level of comprehension, so it doesn’t necessarily benefit anyone to have a go-to lesson plan for every chapter. That means having to the same grade, the same lesson, but make different activities and lessons for each one because one school might be a little more advanced than the others! Even that is do-able. I can do that.

It’s the showing up with what I think is a good activity and getting it torn to shreds by the teacher…after the first class!...that I can’t compute. I’ve ranted about this before: on days like that, the first class is screwed, the second class is a little better off, and by the third class, the lesson is bastardized completely, the class has a good time and the first class of the day is still sitting there scratching their heads. 

And there’s no fixing that! There’s no going back, trying again with them and helping them through it. The curriculum  moves on. Too bad, so sad. 

My beef this time is with the lesson I had to teach: the “when” clause.  Example:

         I called you last night.

                           When you called me, I was sleeping.

         What were you doing when your mother came home?

                              When she came home, I was cooking.

These are actual examples in the book. I made an activity where the students had to answer 

“What were you doing when I ….?”       

                                                with     

                                                        “ When you were …., I was….ing.”

There were boxes, a sample and lots of simplistic pictures. An ideal worksheet. This was based exactly on the samples in the text, and they could do that no problem. But they were less than genki when it came to starting the activity.

Side note: it took me way to freaking long to figure out that each school has a verbal cue or something to get the students to start an activity. For a while, I just asked “OK?” and got blank stares. They actually need permission sometimes to stop paying attention to the teacher and start working! 

So I gave this class the “Ok, start” they needed. First thing in the morning, they were sluggish getting to it. So I walked them through the first sample. Still, it was slow going. 

After class, I could just feel this foreboding. I like getting advice, but still, it’s…it’s nonsensical to work this way! I know, you’re thinking “Well, just make up a mock-worksheet the day before.” That’s cute. Sometimes I get my schedule coming off a weekend, so there’s no talking to the teacher beforehand. Sometimes, I don’t learn what I’m teaching until right before the teacher ducks out to a PTA meeting at the end of the day and won’t be out until 6pm. So yeah, hush. 

Anyway, we talked. Mostly it was him saying the activity is difficult. I disagreed but kept my Noh-face firmly in place while I mentally swallowed my own tongue. He asked if I could change the grammar. The grammar! I ended up with:

When I was cooking dinner, what were you doing?

When you were cooking dinner, I was watching TV.

Yeah…not only is it not like that in the book, it just doesn’t sound right, does it? That’s not the point of the “when” clause. It took me a minute to figure it out, but this is actually more suited to “while” instead of “when.” But, I just wanted to get them saying “When this, when that” so whatever. The ultimate goal was to have them say what they want to do when they’re 25. Easy as pie. 

“When I’m twenty-five years old, I’ll be a …”

So whatever. I changed the worksheet, made new copies, and did the next lesson. Still like pulling teeth, but at least this time, it was like the patient was strapped in: less resistance. And this time, the teacher consented that it’s a difficult lesson to teach. I agreed but kept my Noh-face firmly in place while I mentally did victory cartwheels. 

At the end of the day, I’ve conquered another stint at this school. I deal with quite the butt-load. The first years are ridonkulously hyperactive. It’s a great way to spend a morning, actually, running around a room, playing games with the little cuties. There are also special needs students in all the classes, but sometimes I forget which ones they are because the most common cases involve being non-verbal. So I’ll go to a student to demo a dialog and end up talking to a brick wall. Oops. But the most awkward turtle of all is this third year group of boys. 

Somewhere they learned the word “sexy” and now they abuse it on me. “Good afternoon, Sexy Marta.” “I am sexy, and you?” “Marta is sexy.” When I’m saying it to myself in the mirror at home, it’s empowering. At school, not so much. I ignore it and move on, hoping at this point if I don’t react, they’ll get tired of using it. It has nothing to do with how I dress. I dress like goddamn Angela Martin from “The Office,” so they need to just chill. 

Then there are the girls: they’re so sweet. A bevy of them make it a habit to attack me with hugs when they see me or screaming “I’m very very happy!” when I ask them how they are. I love it. It’s positive reinforcement regardless of how a lesson went or how I’m really feeling. The best part of my week by far was lunch with one third year class.

Don’t mistake me: the best part was not lunch. It wasn’t terrible, but it certainly wasn’t my favorite. This was my first time eating squid. Not calamari, the whole body. I’m pretty sure it was just boiled, no sauce, and just a hollow, purple triangle on your tray. Taste wise, it was like a mix between fish and pork as weird as that sounds. It had fishy taste, but the stringy texture of pork…which made it pull apart like string cheese! It doesn’t come off in “bites,” but ribbons! So while it was interesting, it’s not my favorite. 

No, the best part of lunch was after the meal. The girl sitting across from me noticed I didn’t have a cookie for dessert. I just had the almond and dried fish snack pack (probably the first thing I’ve eaten in Japan that I just can’t do. I tried to like it! I really did, but it wasn’t doing it for me. Something about the sweetness of the fish makes my stomach churn). I didn’t think anything of not having a cookie, but this girl actually opened her baggie, broke the cookie in half and gave me half! How sweet is that? Just to make it even better, I held up my half to hers and we said “kanpai” before eating. No matter what else happens, I have that to remember.

I’m also a happy girl for another reason: I’m not teaching tomorrow! Instead, I’m going to Morioka to watch the English Speech Competition. Two of my students from this school are going to give speeches. I’ve been working with them all week, staying an extra hour drilling pronunciation and intonation. I wish them the best tomorrow! I think they’ll do well: the boy reciting a story about a girl singing a lullaby to a boy under a tree in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing almost had me in tears. I’m going to be a hot mess tomorrow if I have to hear that story delivered with any more emotion than he gave. 

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts!