Reflections at the End of the First Semester of Teaching

It is two o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and I am sitting at Starbucks with a massive iced coffee working on my blog and that can only mean one of a couple things, but for today, it means… summer vacation time! Whoot! It is also the end of July which means in a little less than two weeks’ time I will have been in Japan for nine months. Nine months! I cannot believe it. It still feels like I arrived yesterday.

Nine months is a reflection in and of itself, but I shall hold off for that crazy post until my official one year anniversary in Japan. Today however, I would like to talk about my first official three months of teaching. I feel funny talking about that now, since just two months have passed since my first post introducing you to Kyushu Gakuin, but it has been the end of my first semester and I survived, so that means reflection on HOW exactly I survived. Often a bit of a mystery.

First of all, just like I wrote two months ago, I love Kyushu Gakuin. The people here, from students, to fellow teachers, to administrators, are absolutely amazing. I love the feeling of being in a family like KyuGaku. It has its downsides of course (what family doesn’t?), but I do love it so very much.

One of the funniest and frustrating bits is that I am treated so well that it often makes me want to scream and laugh simultaneously. Me: “Can I help grade tests?” “Do you need me to make a worksheet?” “Shall I talk to so-and-so about that?” Other teachers (more often than not): “No, no it’s fine. I can do that.” “Only if you have time. Do not exert yourself.” “Oh, no, just rest. Here’s some ice cream. It’s hot.” The last is one of the teachers I work with and he is wonderful. He gives me lots of ice cream.

Honestly, the reason behind the above is that I truly have a load of classes. Seventeen classes in one week is no joke. Also, since I am only in each class once a week, while my partner teacher has that same class four times a week, I am often more of an ALT, or an Assistant Language Teacher, than an actual co-teacher. It’s just practical that they make the lesson plans and do the grading, because otherwise it would be chaos. It is far easier for them to fit me into their plans than to have me plan.

So my days are often, run-run-run, then sit and twiddle my thumbs for fifty minutes, then run-run-run some more. During my off hours I try to stay busy with the following:

·         Reading the newspaper; they get the Japan Times in English just for us foreign teachers! I’m a lucky girl.

·         Practicing Japanese; this is fun because I am surrounded by Japanese teachers who enjoy helping me, though sometimes what I learn from them conflicts with what I learn in class.

·         Blogging and journaling

·         Writing chapel speeches

·         Googling how to be a better ALT

Of course I NEVER use school hours to go on Facebook… or Pinterest…

The system can get me down if I let it, and I struggled with my first three and a half months. I have devoted my summer to discovering how I can make the best of this situation. The tricky thing is, if even one teacher changes the system and asks me to do more planning and grading, I’ll be in over my head. Also tricky, is that most of my plans for rectifying the situation so far involve things that would have to be after school. Doing more at church for example, or setting up language exchange partners. This doesn’t help my off class hours. I hate the feeling of sitting there while everyone else is frantically working, but so far I haven’t been able to do much about that.

The upside of all of this lies with the students. It is sad that they only have a native speaker in their English classes once a week, but, as a missionary, it works out well, as far as my interactions with students. They see me more as a random person who comes in to play games in English once a week than an actual teacher. I am still something of a novelty to them, and my popularity outside of class is high, or so it would seem. This is rather entertaining. I’m in their classroom for fifty minutes and they are sleeping or talking to friends. I step into the hall and suddenly it’s all “CAROLINE-SENSEI!! Let’s talk English!” To which outwardly I reply, “Hello! How are you?” and on the inside I’m thinking, “You just had me for fifty minutes speaking English to you and you SLEPT through it!” But I suppose having the foreigner tell you that yes, she does like One Direction, and yes it is true that she likes Korean dramas just like you, and no, she doesn’t have a boyfriend, is far more entertaining than conjunctions and prepositional phrases.

Speaking of the students, I run into them everywhere. It makes me very cautious about what I do in public. They always see me before I see them and it is even worse now that it is break because they are out of uniform. I wave and greet them when they are looking, or if they greet me first, but sometimes they are embarrassed to be greeted by a teacher so then I leave them alone. They have seen me out running on numerous occasions and like to announce that to the rest of the class the next time I am there. Apparently, seeing your English teacher out for a run is headline news. I sometimes feel like I need my own newspaper; “Caroline-sensei seen buying bananas!” “Caroline-sensei drinking coffee!” “Caroline-sensei running!” They are totally sweet about it though, and I’m impressed by what seems a good deal like courage, for them to come tell me they saw me as such and such place, because of course they say it in English. This is usually the girls, the boys (with the exception of my first years) couldn’t care less.

I have had a couple of evangelism moments in school, but not many. They language barrier tends to hinder that a bit. I had a very interesting talk with a few of my girls a couple of weeks ago. They asked about a ring that I wear every day that has the alpha and omega symbols with the fish in the middle. They wanted to know what it meant. I certainly don’t have the language to explain concept in Japanese and they don’t have the language to understand it fully in English. I told them that the alpha symbol meant the strongest and the best and the omega symbol meant the weakest. So far so good, that they understood, but I wanted them to understand what it really meant. So I told them that God loves the best and the strongest and he also loves the weakest. They understood that too, and then they asked what about me. I think what they were actually asking was if I was a strong or a weak Christian, so I told them I was both and then they got confused. The conversation started to get out of control so I stopped trying to explain and stopped trying to answer questions that I didn’t fully understand, and said that the point of the ring was really quite simple. My ring reminded me that God loves everyone. Everyone? They asked. Everyone, I said. They “oohhed” and I was rather proud of myself, thinking I had done a good job, until they then pointed to my self-pedicure and said they liked that too and I had to laugh. They are young women, who saw shiny jewelry that they liked and, in response, I spoke to them with too much English and confused them instead of the requisite, “Thank you! I like your bag. It is so cute!” But maybe, just maybe, they understood what I was trying to say, and maybe, just maybe, I made an impression.

I am always impressed with how intelligent some of my students are and how hard they try at English. I coached my first students for a regional English recitation contest. My first year students (there were three of them) scored first, second, and third in their category! I was so happy! They worked so hard on those recitations. My second year student had to do a modernized version of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. It was a very difficult piece for her, and we practiced for an hour every night after school. I thought, as coaches do, that she was the best of the second years, though she didn’t score. I was so proud of all of them! I can’t wait for the fall contest; they have to write their own speeches!

For their final, my second year students had to give a speech in English about their plans for summer vacation. They got extra points for being creative and adding their own sentences (we gave them an outline and basically they just had to fill in the blanks and then memorize it). Some of them were brilliant and I think they enjoyed writing the speeches, though they were very unhappy about having to actually give the speeches in front of the class. I loved listening to them. All of the karate girls were brilliant and had some really funny and really thoughtful speeches. I think they worked on them together at practice. Then there was one boy, a rugby player, and he walked up with total confidence and delivered his speech fully memorized (only a handful of students were able to go completely by memory). He was going to America and he was going to eat hamburgers and go to my house. Was it generic? Yes. Did he also do an awesome job? Yes! I gave Snickers to all the students who got 100% in hopes that it would prompt some better scores next time… yes, I am not above bribing my students. Anyway, when I called his name he was absolutely shocked and so was the rest of the class. I was really happy to give him that Snickers.

Anyway, that’s life so far at KyuGaku! I am loving it, even with the weird schedule. I am now looking at another four weeks of no school, for a total of six weeks of summer vacation. Laura and I are headed back to Tokyo to see friends for a few days and then off to the mountains of central Honshu. As excited as I am to be out for the summer, I am also eager to see what fall at KyuGaku brings. Till next time!

Below are a few pictures of recent happenings... 

A stray cat had kittens and they live under the bike shed! Here they are under my sweet ride. They don't want to me to go to the gym. So cute!

Fourth of July in Japan! Thanks for the shirts Mom! We were a hit at the yaki-niku place, the closest thing to BBQ here in Japan. No Fourth of July is complete without grilled meat!

Apparently in Japan you can buy fireworks whenever and, almost, wherever. No Fourth is complete without sparklers!

My 25th birthday! I went with friends to a steak place. It was awesome! And they gave me more sparklers on my cake!

At the restaurant. Notice the chopsticks... only time I have ever eaten steak with chopsticks. It was flat out delicious.

Purikura photo booths. The addiction is complete. Crazy photoshop that makes your eyes huge, and eyelinered, and makes your skin way paler than it already is! Don't you love the random English?

Can't have a birthday in Japan without karaoke!