The life of an english teacher (part 2)

This is the second and final in an enlightening (says the author) and interesting series about teaching in Japan.

The second component of the teaching experience is teaching kids. Like everything else in life it has it's ups and downs. It can be joy or it can be a trial depending on what kind of class you have. I usually teach at least two kids classes a day, but often three and sometimes four. The kids are divided up into three categories: kinder, junior and senior. Kinders range from 4-6 years old, juniors 7-8 and seniors 9-12 years old. The classes can be from just one student up to eight students. Usually each school has a couple of kids rooms for the classes.

Classes are 40 minutes like every other class and each kid has a textbook and workbook that they work out of. Language is usually introduced on cards (ie card with a lady on it and "Mom" underneath. "It's my Mom!" Who is it? Kid: "It's my mom.") In between the activities we play transition games to keep the kids focused and to keep their attention from wandering.

I've come to realize now that I'm a bit of a fair-weather teacher. When the kids are good I have a lot of fun with them and am a pretty good teacher. When they're brats they just get me upset and I can't control them. I'm not a discipliner. At least not of the kind that the parents would approve of anyways. In my opinion what some kids really need is a good slap in the back of the head but I'm not sure that that's something the school condones and I'm not about to find out. I've decided that it isn't worth the stress. These kids' futures are not going to be dependent on whether or not they learned the word Mom at six years old. The only time I am concerned is when they start dragging the good kids down with them.

Usually the kids are pretty good though. They don't always succeed at the lesson but at least they try and they have fun. All the girls are usually super cute even when they're bad (speaking of which I don't teach Minami anymore. Someone finally clued into the fact that she got 1's when she was taught by male teachers and 4's and 5's when she was taught by female teachers.) It's a lot of fun to watch them play games with each other.

Saturday is my bad day. Actually bad is too mild of a term. I'm usually at the point of nervous breakdown by the time the 3rd class rolls around. I have two kids classes in the morning and they're both awful. The first class is a group of kinders. I basically have no control whatsoever from the moment they walk into the room. I've finally learned my lesson and I go into the class ahead of time and "kid-proof" it before they arrive. Last month was my first time teaching those horrible five. I thought it couldn't possibly be worse this month but it is-those horrible five turned into horrible seven. My second tour of duty is half over and this one is my last-someone else can teach them next month.

My second class is almost as bad. Three junior boys. They wrestle with each other and yell and basically ignore me. One of them has a Tamagochi (i can understand why teachers were always so much against them when they were popular in Canada) and plays with it while I'm trying to teach them. Usually I come out of those two classes very tired, hoarse from shouting and with a bit of a headache-and I still have to teach the rest of the day. One of the teachers actually asked me last Saturday what the heck was going on in that class. She couldn't believe it when I told her there was only two kids in there.

There doesn't seem to be much I can do. The simple fact of the matter is that I have no experience when it comes to handling and discipling kids. We received one day of training to teach kids classes and 90% of that training covered actual teaching of the lesson plans and activities with almost no time spent on classroom management. And I can't even really kick the kids out of class. This is a business not a school after all. All these kids represent money. And the Japanese simply cannot confront problems head on. Their idea of a solution would be to break the class up and split them into seperate classes. That would be fine for most kids except for the antagonists who will just spread their poison in another class and drag that class down with them. Very frustrating.

Anyways kids aren't as bad as I'm making it sound. Those two classes probably represent about 10-15% of my total kids classes in one week. All the other ones are a lot of fun. I just did my Chibico training the other week, which was better than a kick in the head with an iron boot. Chibico is for 2-3 year olds and the parents are in the class with the kids. It's sort of the same but it's even more simple and there's a lot of ridiculous singing and stuff like that. Fortunately there are almost no chibico classes at my school right now (who in their right mind takes their 2-3 year old to school?) and I'm hoping that I don't have to do one. I think I would quite honestly rather teach my Saturday kids-at least the parents aren't in the room with us.

let me get to sleep