teaching English

I haven't yet talked much about teaching English on this blog. Which is shocking, considering that's what I'm being paid to do here, and what a lot of my time consists of doing.

I teach 5th and 6th graders in three different schools: Mitanda (Monday), Sano (Tues/Wed) and Koya (Thurs/Fri). Mitanda is small, only one class per grade. Sano is large, with about 4 or 5 classes per grade, so I teach 5 classes per day. Koya is in-between, with about 4 classes per grade, so my days there have at least two free periods, which is nice. Sano and Koya have me only working with the 5th and 6th graders, but Mitanda (since they're small) has me on a rotating schedule with the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders as well, which is awesome, because little Japanese ichinensei (1st graders) are friggin adorable.

I like teaching kids. I like the enthusiasm I get from them (usually), I like their willingness to go along with my weird personality, and planning lessons for the simplistic language curriculum is easier than it would be for advanced students, where you have to get more into situational uses for phrases and figuring out how to make them use multiple tenses, pronouns, etc.

On the flip side, teaching kids can get repetitive, 'cause it's the same simplistic routine five days a week, an average of 4 times a day. (Teaching the same lesson 5 times in a row, however, means that whichever class is last of the day gets a flawlessly executed lesson.)

I miss working with advanced students. My adult student in Taiwan, Amber, was a joy to work with. At first we were going to go through a phrase book or magazines, but then we realized we both liked books, so we chose a book (Twilight, her choice), to do a close reading. Each lesson, she would read the book, and we would discuss idioms, cultural references, word meanings (Twilight practically ate a Thesaurus so it was great for vocab), and work on pronunciation of words. She was an amazingly hard worker, and after a few weeks of practicing the "t" and "d" endings for past-tense words, she began doing it without thinking and sounded like a native reader. I was so proud. (In spoken English (in the US, at least), "wished" has a "t" ending because of the unvocalized "sh" sound, while "carried" has a hard "d" sound because of the vocalized "ee" sound at the end of the word.)

I really enjoy helping students tackle that kind of fine-tuning in their English learning, and I don't get that opportunity much at all working in Elementary schools. The kids are, of course, perfectly capable of grasping these distinctions. I'd have to be in the classroom more often, though, and be allowed to teach writing and reading as well as speaking, which is fine to do in small bits but not supposed to be the point of my lessons. It's astounding, honestly, considering my kids will have to learn to read, write, and produce English in JHS--which, for my 6th graders, is literally 7 months away. The most difficult part of this job has been figuring out my kids' English knowledge and how much I can teach them in the one-day-a-week I have.

I'm also trying to figure out how much is allowed, because the BOE (Board of Education) outline of the ALT (Assistant Language Teacher)'s role is to inspire an appreciation and enjoyment of communication and English--not, necessarily, teach them English. Which is a disservice to the kids, since in JHS they have to start learning enough English to pass intensive exams to get into high school.

Another weird thing is that Elementary lessons are supposed to be all fun and games, while most JHS ALTs I've spoken to tell stories of being allowed small chunks of time to teach pronunciation or drill phrases from a book, and then the rest of the time is a JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) instructing the kids via Japanese. This makes little sense to me, since my experience of second-language learning in the US was more focused on becoming competent in using the language. I started learning Spanish in JHS, but by my third year of HS, my teacher expected us all to speak only in Spanish during class. If we didn't know how to say it, we could ask how or find out ourselves. The only time English was used in class was if the grammar point was finicky and our teacher wanted to be sure we understood it. That was it.

My sisters and I spoke so much Spanish at home to practice that my mother picked up some of it.

I don't know what English learning is like in Japanese HS or college, but I think I'd like helping the students who would love access to a native speaker. I have this one 6th grader at Koya who has been studying English most of her life and is obviously so bored in class. She'll doodle on her book while I teach flashcards, and I've pretty much let her know that it's cool if she ignores the lessons 'cause, like, we both know she knows this stuff backwards and forwards. I wish I could do separate classes with her, as well as this other girl from a different school who obviously loves English class, she lights up when I walk in. But, being the ALT, my role isn't to provide special treatment of advanced or interested students, it's to give equal, basic English education to the students as a whole. I have no idea whether I'd be able to actually handle giving little extra attention to interested students during what limited free time I have, but my guess is that it wouldn't be encouraged if I tried. Equal treatment is important in Japanese society.

It's only the first year, so even if I do the elementary circuit again next year, things could change. I could get more comfortable (and more Japanese-literate) in my place here and branch out in my participation with community activities.

For now, though, I'm definitely becoming a better teacher, and I'm very, very glad I turned down the private school jobs I was offered before accepting a job with Interac. Working in public schools is different from working in a cram school, and interacting with the kids on a daily basis has given me a healthy respect for how hard they work and how much they have going on in their lives. It lets me see them three-dimensionally, which is good. My kids aren't little robots, they're their own people. It's very important to me that I remember that, and address them as individuals with their own wants and needs.

I have, like, 700 students, so it's no shock I haven't learned half their names yet, and still can't remember who is from which class half the time, much less which school. Still, I do my best every day to show them that I'm trying to listen to them individually, and respect them as people, and make their compulsory education in a language they may love or hate be, if not easy, then at least interesting. (Some days, we may as well call English class "Caitlin's English Comedy Hour.")

It's hard work and it exhausts me. But god help me, I'm gonna keep doing it, 'cause I believe in it way too much to give up.