First week

Lets use this baby sonic as a metaphor for my teaching now. In the future maybe Ill be a legend in my own right.

Ok, yes, I know I havent posted for a little while, but people, Im not going to have regular internet for a good two weeks. The place I am at right now is pretty awesome, they give you your own little private cubby so you can have some privacy. The place also lets you play video games and rent dvds and watch them in a mini-theater type deal, its pretty nifty. Yes, I just said nifty.

Ok, so lets back up to last week. As you may or may not know my school week goes from Tuesday-Saturday, so for those of you who still dont understand, that means my weekend days are Sunday and Monday. I know, very strange, but hey thats the way the cookie crumbles.

Last Tuesday I spent all day getting information overload while shadowing the guy Im replacing, his name is Brady. I learned how to clock in, clock out, do student evalutions, do attendance, learned about changes to my schedule, learned where all the lesson plans, materials, and props were. I learned about how to organize, how not to organize, and pretty much everything else they couldnt have taught me at initial training because I wasnt at my branch school yet.

Well on Wednesday I taught my first lesson. BOOOOO!! I did horrible. I went through my lesson and I look up at the clock and I still had 20 minutes left. Granted I had two cute kids who were adorable (I believe they were 7 and 8) but still, I was nervous, I wasnt going through the lesson the way I was supposed to and I almost totally didnt teach part of the lesson, needless to say I was unprepared (even though I thought I was). Bring in the next two classes, a parent class and a 14 year old student (two separate classes with the parent class coming first). That one I did well in, and the 14 year old student class I did well in. Heres the thing, I barely planned for those lessons (because of the type of lessons they were, not just because I was lazy) and they went the best. Go figure.

Everyday after that got lots better. By the end of the week I was really liking my students and really excited to be on my own teaching (because even though I was teaching last week, Brady was sitting in on every lesson).

STORY TIME!!! Ok so I have a few good stories about my first week and teaching and/or observing classes. If you dont laugh at these, please go to the fun doctor and ask him to prescribe you some awesomeness with a dash of humor. Thank you.

Lets start with the ever infamous Ryo (pronounced Rio, not Ryu like the street fighter character).

OH SPEAKING OF STREET FIGHTER!! I got to play Tekken 6 yesterday at an ARCADE!! OMG BATMAN! Its not out in the states yet!! It was SO AWESOME!! AHHH, so awesome!!! Ok now back to our regularly scheduled story.

So Rio is a cute little kid. Hes kind of shy, but hes got a good vibe for a three year old. As I am going through my lesson plan, doing the hello song, asking him how he feels with my Mario emotion cards and what not, hes sitting there not responding. Just looking at me with this look of `dude..I seriously dont care what you are doing right now so Im just going to look at you and try to figure out how the heck your skin turned brown`. I seriously was coaxing him to talk for a good 10 minutes. Finally, I got him interested in the review lesson with a little squeaky hammer and the review cards of animals he had went over last week. So I asked him `Rio, whats this? Hit frog` and he started to respond. YAY! I would try to give him a high five and instead he just hit my hand with the hammer. Then we moved into our colors and I had him tell me what the colors were. He wasnt to interested in this either, and at one point I got to brown and he didnt care to point to or tap the card so I tried to make it interesting and I pointed at my skin. Still no dice. Then I had him crumple up the colors so we could play trashketball. This game involves you finding a color on the ground, crumpling it up and throwing it in the trash. Well he LOVED this and he was telling me the colors and at one point I asked him what a certain color was and Brady told me he said `fruit`...yeah thats not a color, crazy kid. I gotta learn Japanese so I can hear what these kids say cause sometimes they are OFF THE WALL. Hilarity in a child. But anyway, we move on to a song called 10 Green Bottles, and I knock them off the wall when one `accidentally falls` and then we have 9. Well we go through this song twice and he is literally just chillin on the palms of his hands leaning back NOT interested. After that song I try to get him to do some other stuff and this boy literally had his head rocking backwards and his eyes popped open when he jerked himself back awake. At one point during the lesson I asked him something and the room was quiet, then from the adjacent room on the comptuers you could hear the sound of crickets. I kid you not people, truth is always funnier than fiction. Oh irony.

Then I had another class, and poor boy, bless his heart, he started crying during the lesson. Not because I was scary or he didnt like me, but he didnt want Brady to leave. It made me think about my own kids back in NC how they didnt want me to leave either so I totally understood. He cried for a good 15 minutes and Brady had to take over and teach him the lesson. I hope he does ok with me this week.

Another group of kids we had, I think they were all three. They were all over the place. One kid was climbing on my back, another was dive bombing into the carpet and another was just standing their quietly not really doing much. This class is going to be fun. I also had a class that I taught where I tought the emotion for surprised and this one kid made an `O` with his mouth but then like made his eyes go into the back of his head. Talk about dramatics. He was also dive bombing, and rolling on the floor during the lesson.

One girl I had would not stop jumping up and down. Check that, I was shadowing this lesson, but she was jumping everywhere. She actually resembled a girl that I had back at the daycare. But the girl back at the daycare was not NEARLY as hyper at ALL!

There was one class I sat in on Saturday which was the last class of the day. It was with four high school students. Their English level is pretty low, but after the class I managed to talk with three of them (who were all girls, the boy had left right after class) and we started talking about Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Ryokushen (relax bear) Hello Kitty, Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh, Japanese Baseball, I told them a little about football and anything else we could talk about so that when they see me next we`ll both be comfortable. They are cool kids.

And lastly, the cutest kid of all time, well at least at my school. Her name is Saki, and its pronounced the same way we pronounce the drink, but apparently we pronounce the drink wrong so NO, she is not named after the famous eastern alcohol. She is really cool because shes so stinkin cute. There is another boy in class with her and they go to school together, so they are a joy to teach. When I did my high fives with her, instead of her high fiving me back with her hand she just took one finger and touched the middle of my palm. I dont really have a crazy story with her, but Im sure in time there will be at least one more.

Oh I almost forgot, I teach this one kid who is really smart, but he is very...oh whats the word...particular. When I had the CD player plugged in for use later in the lesson, he said (in japanese) `Stop wasting electricity` and he gets up in the middle of the lesson and goes to unplug the CD player. Hahaha, that was great!

But yes, I am excited about teaching all my students. Keeping up with everything that I got in the information overload the past two weeks, thats another story. But in time I know Ill be able to do very well with everything if not master it.

One last funny story. When I went to this dance club I met these girls, who came up to me and started talking. I really need to learn Japanese because just TALKING to them was a chore, it was fun, but it was not easy. Me and this one girl both slowed our speach down as if that was going to make a difference. If we dont know the words it doesnt matter if you say it fast or slow, haha, we still wont understand each other. But I did manage to get a few things across, charades and pictionary work when you arent playing the game as well, haha. But whats funny is at a couple points in the night I would ask her something and then she would say, `YES WE CAN` or if she said `America?` I would say `yes` and then she would say `YES WE CAN`. Great times.

Ok, I know that was a lot, but I dont have regular internet yet. Be cool everyone.

-Jeremy aka The guy who really needs to learn Japanese...or at least a couple of pick up lines.