Duck, Duck, Goose

Remember how I said I’d be working at 2 Junior High Schools and 5 Elementary Schools? Well, this is how my schedule works. I go to one school for two weeks and then switch to another school for two weeks. For the elementary schools I probably won’t go back. I’ll go to Joyo Junior High School twice for a total of four weeks and I’ll go to Minami (South) Joyo Junior High School 5 times for a total of ten weeks. As an Assistant English Teacher (AET) I don’t have my own classes, I team teach with Home Room Teachers (HRT) in Elementary Schools and Japanese Teachers of English (JTE) in Junior High Schools.

Generally Elementary Schools don’t teach English as a regular subject in Japan (but that might be changing), so there is no national curriculum like there is for most subjects. English is included under something called International Understanding. I don’t know what else they do with International Understanding, but in Joyo it includes 4 English lessons with an AET per school year. A few years ago the AETs here in Joyo together with a JTE created a curriculum for the Elementary School visits. The main purpose of these lessons is really encouraging the students to like English by making them fun. It’s good for them to hear a native English speaker’s pronunciation too, but I don’t think they see us enough for it to make much difference.

Now I am at Fukatani Elementary School. They have two classes in each grade. In two weeks I have two lessons with each class covering things like colors, animals, fruit, sports, “want,” “like,” and “favorite.” Later in the school year a different AET (I’m one of 3) will go to that school for lessons 3 and 4. I think the idea behind having different AETs go to the Elementary Schools is to expose them to more foreigners for International Understanding, and more styles of speech for better English comprehension in the future.

The kids are really cute and energetic! Many of them are excited to learn English and even more are interested in talking to me and playing with me during lunch or after school. They know very little English, so they tell me stories and ask me tons of questions in Japanese.

Most of them are well behaved, but it’s not like most people in the States would expect. Especially in the lower grades the students are encouraged to be energetic and the classroom can get really noisy. So far all of my lessons have included a short self-introduction, and in some of the classes they call out so many questions at once that I can’t hear any of them. They don’t get in trouble for talking too much, it seems like the teachers want to teach them to figure out when they can be noisy, when the should listen, and when they should participate. If they are still talking when it’s time to listen, the teacher generally doesn't single people out, but reminds the whole class to quiet down.

Of course kids are kids. Some are shy and some want lots of attention. Some listen and some don’t. There have been some tears and some scraped knees. One class was really energetic and it was hard to get them to listen or practice the words we were supposed to learn, but they loved playing “duck, duck, goose” with “short, short, tall” and “big, big, small!”