First day of school!

Well technically I've been going to school for the past 4 weeks, but today was my first day teaching. I taught only one class today thankfully. It was so stressful and if you thought that the stereotype of a Japanese student was true, including paying close attention in class, being respectful of their teachers, studying constantly, etc., let me shatter that impression forever. It's so not true!!! Not at my school and not at some of my friends' schools. The kids are just like American students, except that there doesn't seem to be a problem with violence here. Other than that their attitudes are the same, their behaviour is the same, and I could go on and on. And the class I had today was supposed to be pretty good...

I hope it gets better, but I have the feeling that some of my classes are going to be hard to control. Two of my classes have 31 boys each and the other female teachers have told me that they have problems controlling them at times. That means the students don't listen to them, etc and are therefore difficult to teach.

Here is a summary of my first class:

The kids remembered who I was as well as my name, which was good, but then it went downhill a bit. I began by telling them to listen carefully because I was going to tell them about myself. I said that twice. Blank stares both times. The Japanese teacher repeated what I said in Japanese. Stares not quite as blank, but there seemed to be little interest. I told the kids about myself using simple sentences, pictures, and objects. Blank looks most of the time. They seemed somewhat interested in the picture of me and my siblings making crazy faces. A few kids kept laughing and talking off and on. Couldn't tell if they were making fun of me, but I can probably assume that some of them were, since mimicking me was involved.

After I finished, really blank looks. I asked them if they understood, as did the Japanese teacher. Really blank looks from most of the kids, but one did answer yes. We played a gambling game with true/false questions based on what I had told the kids. The Japanese teacher asked them to get into groups, which took a bit of time. I wrote sentences on the board to help them answer the questions and tell me how much they wanted to bet like "I bet $40 the answer is true." They didn't like repeating the sentences as a class. It took several times to get them to repeat the sentences audibly and somewhat clearly.

The actual game went better and they seemed to get into winning money. One kid told me "Give me money! Give me more money!" But the game took so much longer than I had expected. I had come up with 9 true/false questions and we only got through 2. Maybe 3. Can't remember. And I ran out of money (photocopies of a $20 bill) because the kids were really into betting as much money as they had. It was mostly the boys who were betting as much money as they could. If the kids won their bet, the money doubled, so on the last question the boys were betting $200 - $400. Maybe the kids understood more than I thought because most of them got the answers right, although cheating may have played a part. Japanese students also cheat! Not true you say? Wrong!!!!

Next I asked the kids to make name cards to help me remember their names. The girls really got into it and included patterns and many different colors. Most of the boys just wrote their names in plain pencil. You can definitely tell whether the card belongs to a boy or girl by the style. (I will take a picture because some of the cards are great.)

Those two activities took up the entire class. I had a third thing planned—a handout so the kids could tell me about themselves—but there was no time. So that was it. The Japanese teacher said that I did well, but I kind of disagree. So does my head, which aches. Tomorrow I have two classes. Hopefully they will run a bit smoother since I have some idea of what to expect now and have revised my lesson plan a bit.

I'm sure I will have more teaching stories very soon...