A Nice End to a Rough Week

After a pretty rough week (all those stress dreams about teaching to students who couldn't understand me or who couldn't produce an answer), I'm relieved to end it with a class in which the students regard communicating in English as a fun puzzle. What a joy!

With the help of the school manager, they wrote this message. :)

It was a "welcome" because even though i've been teaching for this company (which owns many schools throughout Saitama), it was my first time teaching these particular students. I was taking over an outgoing teacher's classes.

I thanked them for the message. They asked if it was ok, and I said, yes, my name was spelled correctly. And then I corrected their grammar, haha.

What else makes teaching them a joy so far?

1) There are two students in the class--one with stronger skills (Takashi) than the other (Hideaki), and the stronger student will always try to help the weaker one, eg. by translating my question for him when he says"Nani?" ("what?")

2) They try their best to answer my questions and will even draw on the board or use other ways to describe what they're saying if I don't understand.

3) They not only answer my questions, they volunteer information too. It helps improve their English and me to get to know them better. The better I know them, the more enjoyable the class is, and the easier it will be for me to give examples, etc.

4) They seem to really enjoy learning English. They asked if ad-libbing (the blanks in the new sentence structure) was ok. Today, they learned the following:

A: Can you ['go shopping' or some other verb] with me on [day of the week]?

B: Sorry, I can't. I have to ['do my homework' or some other verb].

So they came up with "Can you go skiing with me *for three months*?" and "Can you have dinner with me *every day*?" instead of plugging in the days of the week like any other (boring/bored) students would have done.

4) They teach me things too--Takashi said his birthday was May 15, the same day in 1947 when Okinawa became part of Japan. Before, it was part of the US (because of occupation).

5) They show a great curiosity by asking me questions too, like how tall I am, where my parents are from (because I look Asian but don't speak Japanese. Some upper elementary kids have been quite confused by this fact).

They also told me that the local soccer team, the Urawa Reds, was playing today, and that the stadium was near Urawa-Misono, the last stop on the Namboku line (which is the train closest to me).

I explained all the red t-shirt-clad people I saw on the way home afterward. I don't know if the team won, but everyone seemed to be in high spirits. It was almost as if I had gone to the game too. I definitely want to see the Reds now.