New Eyes

This school week was very busy. It will take me a couple of minutes to get my bearings. We had no work on Monday. That’s right, we went to Costco and met a couple from Idaho. He works in the JET program as an English teacher in Kobe. She teaches English on the side. Now I know what happened this week.

Tuesday was a very busy day. I worked five of the six periods. For each of those five periods I was very busy. The teaching style changes with each teacher. For example, Katano, who coaches Kendo, is very formal and structured in his presentation. Before each class he gives me a page of how the class will run and what he expects me to do. In class, however, his cues for me are all in Japanese so I have to pay attention to everything. Okamoto is also very formal and structured, but I follow his cues more clearly. Tashiro teaches 9th grade, and she is laid back. She is young and speaks English well. She also expects her 9th grade students to follow my English so she lets me take the class over. She will just get an idea from me as to what I will do in class and assist when she needs to. Oyama does the same. However, Oyama will ask me what I will do in class that day minutes before class is to begin. She doesn’t give me much warning that she expects me to run the class.

The problem is stepping into a class without any lesson plan is what I do best. (Now I am cursed!) I don’t usually have a problem stepping into a class without anything in the plan book. All I do is use the students to find out where they are, what they expect and take it from there. It is easy to go into class without knowing what you are going to do, but you have to have a depth of knowledge and experience to guide the kids in a general direction.

Last week, my usual introduction lesson bombed in the first 9th grade class. I felt like a dentist in the days before Novocain. My second 9th grade class followed immediately. So I just dumped my entire lesson and had the class tell me what they wanted to know. I had them guide the class where they wanted me to go, they wrote their names on a piece of paper with one question for me. By the end of the class we had covered the material from my introduction but the kids and I both felt like we had accomplished something. One of the last questions requested that I say “marvelous with passion.” The task was simple; the rewards will carry me through for quite awhile. I wasn’t pulling teeth.

My real break through came Tuesday during lunch. I began noticing Kanji, Japanese characters, for the first time. Across the desk sat three young ladies. As part of their uniform they wear nametags. Most students have two characters, which form their names. All three girls had at least one character in common with the rest. The character they had in common looks like a tic-tac-toe game before you place the first x. I asked them their names again. They gave me their names and the sound for that particular Kanji.

For my prep period that day, I worked through the Kanji of the teachers. Yasuda, another teacher and football official, came over to my desk and helped me to translate the phonetics and meaning of the Kanji. The character that looks like a tic-tac-toe game makes the sound of ee and it means water well. By the end of the day, I had about 30% of the teacher’s names down in Kanji and about 10% of the students’ names.

Wednesday was blistering hot. As luck would have it, I taught only one class, but had to spend the entire day outside with the entire school. The students and teachers were rehearsing for our Sports Day, more on that later. I had forgotten my shorts, so I sat in the shade with several kids. Two girls, with sprained ankles, tutored me in Kanji while I coached them in English. One girl is named Ishiwakie, which means stone sided. The Kanji for sided is very complicated and detailed.

Thursday was the first day I put my new skills to work. In a 7th grade class, the students said that no one was absent during roll. At Kawaragi the teachers let the students report who is absent. There was an empty desk; obviously someone was not in class. On the front of the desk a kids name was written on a piece of masking tape. I asked where this student was as I read the name. The students were shocked.

As a teacher, it is absolutely important that you know kids names. When you step into a classroom and your lesson tanks, calling on a kid as an ally is very useful. Kids are very helpful if you know their name. Now that I am beginning to recognize Kanji it will be much easier for me to gain some allies. I have had a lot of lessons not make it off the ground. I need allies.