One of the results of the Halloween party was a whole bunch of cupcakes that need to be eaten by the 17th of this month. Nozaki sensei and I split them up and we’re doing our best to knock them out. I’ve got 23 cupcakes left to go. It’s going to be close.
I’m back in the classroom and I’ve been having a good time with my students this week so far. The kids are really comfortable with me now, and in most classes we’ve found the right balance of what I think is acceptable behavior and what they think is acceptable behavior. I let them get away with a lot – it’s the farthest thing from a Japanese style classroom that they’ve ever experienced, and it is easy for them to get carried away with the freedom of it all. I encourage the behavior to a point – we’re still trying to learn English here.
This is the time in their lives when the Japanese school system is trying to get them to conform with everyone else, get them to see other people as part of the group, and as the expression goes, “hammer down any nails that might still be sticking up”. Usually the students come to my class soon after finishing a day at school, and you can see the residual effects of all the rules that are laid on them all day. Seating position is critical, and unless I tell them to move somewhere they will stay in the same place week in and week out. There are right ways to write in Japanese and wrong ways, and any behavior of mine that seems different is cause for concern. Any time spent learning a new language is stressful for the students – lots of potential for embarrassment and mistakes, so any changes in routine can be pretty tough on them. I like to keep them on their toes, however, and try to get them a little more adaptive to changing situations. We’ll see if this pays off at the end of the year.
I continue to be a little frustrated with the teaching materials that I am using for my classes. I inherited them from the previous teacher, and she inherited them from Nozaki sensei. The problem is less with the materials themselves and more with the level of the students. They are across the board at a level too difficult for them, with the exception of perhaps three students out of seventy. I’ve probably complained about it before, but often the grammar point that I am supposed to teach is something like using the progressive form of a verb (He is running, Bryan is walking) in complex structures like “Bryan has been hiking for four hours”. However, my students can usually only say their name, where they live, and how old they are. After that, they have little confidence and are hesitant to attempt a sentence on their own. Each textbook builds on the ones before it, so students starting the class midway through the year are faced with piles of unknown verbs and grammar. It might be because the students are grouped into classes by age rather than by skill or experience.
I have other problems with the materials – the voice acting on the CDs is just adults trying to talk like kids resulting in weird pronunciations and awkward timing – but Kuniko has helped me put things into perspective and to just relax and teach as best I can. I worry that we’re not covering what needs to be covered, but realistically it can’t be covered properly because the kids are using texts well beyond their learning level. The parents are thrilled that their kids are learning from a native speaker, and the kids are having a good time and getting more comfortable with raw English flying around.
