undershot

Last Monday I taught my first kids’ lessons: two primary school lessons and one junior high. When I got to the school, a staff member showed me the room I’d be teaching in. It felt pretty cool to take my shoes off and step in. The kids’ classrooms are exciting: lots of colour, with posters all over the walls and heaps of props (soft toys, dice, balls, etc).
These lessons require a bit of preparation, so I was even more nervous than I was for free time (adult) lessons. My nerves turned out to be justified: it was an extremely stressful day.

I’d been told on the phone that I’d be teaching lesson 19, but I asked again at the school for confirmation. “Oh, no. They’re on lesson 18.” So I prepared lesson 18 for my two primary school levels (which took over an hour), neatly summarising the steps on the whiteboard. The staff had prepared my materials, but there were some things missing. I got a bit stressed about that, but there was no time to get more materials so I decided to wing it. The kids were really good and participated in the activites. Then, about ten minutes into the lesson, one of them pointed out that they’d done it before.
Ah. That’s why I thought the wrong materials had been gathered: I’d prepared the wrong lesson. Luckily I still had the lesson plan book in the room (which I wasn’t meant to), so I opened it up and read from the books. The poor kids looked so bored, but despite being small they paid attention most of the time.

The next lesson, with older kids, went almost as badly. They had done a test a week or two before, which is why their schedule was out of whack. They were on lesson 18, but by this time I was so confused that I needed to have the book open anyway. Two of the students decided to take their own lesson, and turned away from the circle to colour in their books. Perhaps they are normally difficult students. There was one really helpful girl. She even stayed behind to tidy up the room! Thinking back on it, I probably should have given her a sticker. Whoops :/
After that I had the junior high class. This was the easiest to prepare. The kids had already had a lesson with a Japanese teacher to learn the grammer and structures, and all I needed to do was play a series of games with them. Even so, it was tough. The two older girls completely dominated the class. They refused to be split up for games, were loud, and spoke lots of Japanese, which I think they used to insult me. The two younger students were quite repressed.
I was so relieved later in my shift when I could go back downstairs and do some free time lessons instead. I’m hoping that the kids’ lessons will similarly get easier :)

I finally found Electroplankton in Labi. I’ve been wanting to get this game for ages, and I think it’s only available in Japan. It’s a cool idea – you make music manipulating these plankton on the screen. But, Jodie wouldn’t let me get it because we haven’t been paid yet. Alas! The same goes for New Super Mario Bros.

With Damien’s help, I’ve ordered a new laptop from Dell. I can’t wait for it to arrive, so I don’t have to keep stealing Jodie’s laptop. It’ll be the first dual-processor computer I’ve owned. w00t! Actually I wanted to get a Latitude because they’re a nicer design, but this is a fair bit cheaper.

Jodie and I were lucky enough to get the same rest days, and consecutive days at that. I think they were nice to us because we opted to work on Sundays. As a bonus, we got last Sunday off just because the other trainees did too, and this weekend is another long weekend. We had all sorts of great plans to get out and do things, but most of them failed.

We thought it would be cool to get out of Osaka and see some mountains or other cities, but we ended up sleeping way too late on Thursday. Yesterday we went to Namba to hang out with Kaz and exchange our router for one that works with our DSes. The exchange went well (Labi GO!, as they say), but we had to come home early because I felt really sick again. Not nerves, this time. It felt like I hadn’t eaten in years, but eating didn’t seem to help much. I was swallowing a lot of foam, and I think my stomach didn’t like that. No idea where it was coming from. Maybe I was dehydrated. Anyway, when we got home I had a bath, and felt a lot better.

Today has been really good. We went down to one of the local bike shops (of which there are many) so we could look less out of place. Honestly, who walks these days? Well, some people, but I’d say close to 50% cycle around their neighbourhood instead. Bikes are really cheap here: we saw a gnarley mountain bike with front and rear suspension for 16,000円 ($160). We ended up getting single-speed, second-hand road bikes, because we don’t need to go too far. They also had bikes that fold in half and pack away very nicely, at the expense of needing to pedal faster. But we do need to go further than that.

We went and checked out the river for the first time. I’d seen it before from the train and didn’t think much of it: there aren’t many trees, and it looks like a boring, flat floodplain; but it’s actually quite nice up close. Going upstream for a while, we found a park with trees, play equipment and a [dry] pool. Being a holiday, there were heaps of people there playing around and having BBQs. There was even a rehersing marching band!

After that we rode across a trecharous (due to the cars, and spiral staircase at the end) bridge to Osaka. It actually seems really easy to get around this city on a bike. We stopped for lunch, and then came back over a safer bridge (from Umeda) to Juso.

I think we’ll have a lot of fun with these bikes. Already we’ve discovered a completely new section of one of the local malls, where bought some plants and looked longingly at some chinchillas, whetever they are. It’s amazing how many of them you can fit in a rockmelon-sized chinchilla house (2).

Training has finished, and we started work on Tuesday. It’s a great time to start because Moday and Saturday (today) of this week are national holidays. Not only does that mean it’s a short week, but it’s also an adjustment week at ECC. That means there are no regular lessons – just free time lessons – which means I only had to prepare for one lesson type. Even so I was really nervous about it, to the extent that I couldn’t eat before my shifts.

As I’ve heard many experienced teachers say, it’s not that bad. I came away from my first day feeling that it was OK, but I wasn’t sure if I could continue teaching for a whole year. I was flustered trying to remember the procedures. I lost one of my bookmarks (which are concise lesson plans), so I missed some steps, making it difficult to fill 40 minutes. The bookmarks can be embarrasing, though: my first student asked if it was my first lesson, because I had to keep referring to the plan.

The students are an amazing mix of people. We were warned beforehand, but it was still weird teaching a class of four people. In mine I had a middle-aged lady, a groovy uni student, a very quiet high school student, and a younger high school student. It was interesting that the youngest participated the most, despite it being his first lesson at ECC.

Day two was considerably better. If anything I was more nervous than the first day, but it went really well and now I fell quite confident. I taught a couple of higher-level classes, which seem to be easier because the students have good control of the language. I was surprised that I still needed to correct some pronunciation at those levels: I thought that all got ironed out earlier.

I’m working all over the place: until I get some shifts of my own, I’m a substitute teacher. During training we were told that some school directors are really tight, and don’t allow eating or drinking (!) during a shift. I haven’t had this problem yet – at both of the schools I taught at, the Japanese staff were really lovely. So are the native teachers that I’ve met. They’ve all been very helpful.

I’m happy now with free time lessons. There’s only one level that I haven’t taught yet, and I’m not too worried about that. At last I feel well enough to eat again (I’ve rediscovered fried sandwiches with egg and cheese – more about this later). At least until Monday, when I have to teach two new types of lessons: kids and jr high.

I keep forgetting to post, so I must now while I remember!

more to come in the morning.

:)