One universal truth about sports day in Japan is that the day after all the students want to do is sleep, all day. They don’t want to learn, they don’t want to listen, and they certainly don’t want to explore the in’s and out’s of English conversation for hours on end.
It was into that situation that I walked on Thursday morning, with four classes in a row filled with sleepy students. The first class was nearly asleep within ten minutes, despite my most exciting stories of life in America and my side-splitting tales of cultural mistakes that I’ve made in Japan.
Luckily the second class I had went much better. I was teaching two nearly deaf students, and I went to their special classroom and really just hung out with them for an hour. They were the last two students in the school to officially meet me, and we had a good time looking at pictures and talking about their interests. The girl in the class is really good at sports, and she really tried hard to speak English. The boy didn’t want to be left behind, and so he tried really hard to get through to me. Their speech is tough to understand, but we were communicating, and that’s the goal of the class, I guess.
My third class was super-sleepy. The teacher in that class (who will remain unnamed to protect her identity) came up with a really boring, passive lesson plan, and so we had to just grind through it. I felt bad for the students – and I promised myself to work on this teacher a little bit in an effort to jazz things up a little bit.
The last class was pretty good. It has the highest level of English in the school, and the students did presentations today. They were all great, and some were excellent. I can’t get over how well some of the students speak, and they are still just in junior high.
Since I have some experience working as an interviewer on the English proficiency exam, I spent time working with one of the students today. She was really nervous, but I had Harada sensei with me, and together I think we made her feel comfortable. We’ve got to get her ready for the exam coming up in two weeks, so I’ll be helping out here and there after school.
After school I was sitting at my desk studying, and a student came in and looked distressed to find only me in the immediate area. He hesitated only a second, and then came up and asked me in English for some chalk for his classroom. I asked him what color, and he listed what colors and how many he needed of each. His English was perfect, and I think he kind of surprised himself how well he communicated. I jumped up to get the chalk. I don’t know if we’re even supposed to give the students chalk, but if he asked for the keys to my apartment in perfect English I would have handed them over. I wanted to show him that he communicated perfectly by instantly fulfilling his request. It’s times like this when I really enjoy doing what I’m doing.
The commute home was a piece of cake. Tonight we’re going to have kind of a “clean out the fridge” night. I’m going to make a salad, and we’ll just kind of snack. Tomorrow is already Friday – I can’t wait to catch up on sleep this weekend.
