A Day in the Life

So it occurs to me that some people might like a closer look at how my typical day goes at school. So here is a basic outline of my day today, which was pretty good. Apologies ahead of times for the length of this entry. I’m sure I included way too many details that are interesting only to me. If you don't want to read it all, at least skip down to the part about the first and second grade class which was awesome!

I get up and get ready, and ride my bike to the ferry. It’s Tuesday, so I’m on the other island. I get to school about 7:30. Today I had to prepare some materials for my elementary classes. My fifth and sixth grade class is taught from the newly created textbook, but if I teach any of the younger kids it’s up to me to craft a lesson plan. They give me a topic, but the actual lesson is up to me. Today was my first class of the year with the first and second graders. They were apparently really excited. And I was too, because tiny children are awesome.

My class today was pretty simple. The beginning would be my self introduction. I had to try to do my best not to bore the second graders who had heard all of this a year ago. And then, to change things up I decided to do a basic English sentence and game to go with it. Since introductions were the topic of the day our target English would be “My name is _____.” Normally I’d throw the question in there too, but since this was the very first English class half of them had ever had I decided to keep it really simple.

For my self introduction I already had my materials. I’ve done that lesson at least 14 times during my time here. I have money and pictures and my high school yearbook. But I had to prepare game cards for the Name Game. This was the first time in a while that I actually made my own materials. I usually use the fantastic site MES-English because they have a ton of free flashcards and great materials. But the Name Game is a little different and so I had to make my own.

I actually made then Monday night. Whenever I have to make my own materials I try to prepare them the night before so that I can easily print them once I get to school. Sometimes I don’t have a lot of time to prepare before classes, so it helps to have everything ready. These cards were really simple. I just needed cards that had pictures of various characters or people that first or second graders would know. I went ahead and gave them backings that said “What’s your name?” I’ve found that the kids work better when the cards have backs because its harder to see through them. If it’s just a single sheet of paper they try to see through, but with a back there is an extra layer of paper there. You still can see through them, but it’s not as noticeable. The only issue I had with making these was trying to figure out how to flip the text over so that when I folded the cards they would right side up. I apparently can’t flip word art and a few other things I tried didn’t work. I finally ended up entering the text in paint and saving it as a jpeg image, then inserting it into the document. I can flip those just fine. So it all worked out, and the cards looked pretty nice.

At school I only had one class to prepare. I had a junior high class second period and my elementary classes were third and fourth period. My teacher at that school is really nice and if we have a lot of classes before my elementary classes he will let me skip a class if I need the time to prepare. But one period was more than enough.

I printed the cards on the color printer, because colors are fun and keep the kids interested longer. I tried using the paper cutter to make this go faster, but I think the edge is dull because it wasn’t cutting as close as I wanted. So instead I used my trusty scissors to cut out all the cards. Then I folded them all and used a little glue to keep them shut. I can skip this step, but I’ve found they laminate easier if I do it. Next I laminated them and then had to cut them all out of the laminate. Laminating is necessary if I wish the cards to survive more than a single class. And even then some of them come out with a lot of wear and tear. All in all it probably took about 30-45 minutes to make 12 small game cards. It’s a time consuming process, but they usually end up looking really good and I do repeat a lot of lessons, so it’s worth it in the long run to have the materials set.

Making flashcards is easier than game cards as I just have to print and laminate them. With flashcards I also tend to add these little sticker magnet strips to the back so that I can stick them on the blackboard easily. In too many classes we wasted a lot of time trying to find enough magnets for all my cards, and it was never easy to move them around on the board. The little magnet strips are precut and apply just like stickers, so it’s really fast and easy to add them and well worth the time it saves in class. I’ll leave all the things I’ve made behind for my successor, so hopefully they will continue to be useful long after I’m gone.

With preparations complete I went to my junior high class. We only have a week left of school before summer vacation, so class was pretty laid back. We did a listening activity with an English song called Vacation. The first time through they listened and tried to fill in the blanks on the lyrics. Then they looked at the English and tried to fill in the blanks on the Japanese translation. Then we listened again now that they had a better understanding of the meaning. And lastly we listened to a Japanese version of the song. The song had lots of strange English words I had to try to explain like jukebox, jalopy, drive-in movie, and the mash-potato (as in the dance). But the song spells out the word vacation, so hopefully everyone will be able to remember how to spell it. Then we gave out their summer homework, and that was it. Here is the song for your enjoyment.



My fifth and sixth grade class at elementary school was introducing English names for subjects. The teacher had written all of the subjects the kids study on the board and he went through them with the kids asking what he could draw a picture of to represent that subject. This was all so that I would understand the Japanese, and was a really good idea. Once they finished he had the kids ask me, “How do you say _____ in English?” We had twelve subjects to practice: Japanese, social studies, math, science, music, arts and crafts, home economics, P.E., English, calligraphy, and two that were really hard for me to figure out. The first had a picture of a heart and they showed me the textbook for it. It just had a lot of stories in it for the kids to read and at first I thought it could be a reading book. I finally remembered that the kids have classes in moral studies and figured that was what it had to be. The last one had two pictures of kids saying “I think…” The teacher tried to act out the class by showing that there were two choices like yes or no or A or B and that the kids said what they thought. I don’t think we have an equivalent of this class in America. It just sounds like an entire class devoted to sharing your opinions and we do that in almost all classes at some point. Maybe not math… But anyway, the closest word I could think of was debate. I don’t really like that because it doesn’t really seem like making an argument or trying to persuade the other side. It just sounds more like being able to express your opinion. Maybe “discussion class” would have been a better fit. But the teacher recognized the word debate and was able to tell the kids what it meant in Japanese and he accepted it as a close fit.

So we practiced that for a while and then did the listening activity in the book. This is one of the few activities that had horrible directions and was really confusing. I tried to explain it to the kids, but I didn’t really get what they were trying to do at first either and just went with the book’s really lame instructions of “write the number in the square.” After the first one confused everyone we went over the directions again and were finally able to make sense of them. I really love this teacher, because even when we were clarifying rules he was using English. His English isn’t always 100% correct, but it really makes a difference that he makes the effort to use it with the kids. He keeps it really simple, and between the two of us we are always able to help the kids understand.

After we finished that activity it was time for a game. We played karuta, which is a type of Japanese card game. They made pairs and spread out little cards of textbooks between them. I would call out a subject in English and they had to smack the right card. Whoever hit the card first got to take it. The kid with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner. When we have 3 or so cards left the game gets really intense, and to make it even more challenging sometimes I will call out a subject of a card that is no longer in play. This keeps everyone on their toes because if anyone smacks a card you know they weren’t really listening. We played 4 or 5 rounds and to keep it from getting boring we had the winners switch groups after every game. Even though a lot of the same kids kept winning, they were all playing with new people so it was still fun. The kids play karuta a lot and it works for almost any topic. It’s also nice to play a game that the kids already know the rules of. And then class was over.

On to the main event and the whole reason I wrote this entry! As I mentioned, this was the first class all year (meaning since April) with the first and second graders. I think I only had the second graders once or twice last year so they were all really excited to see me. The first bit of adorableness was that one girl had written the first 8 letters of the alphabet on the board to show me. She either learned this from a parent, an older sibling, or at a cram school because we are told not to teach writing to the elementary students (one of the few things that really annoys me since I think the alphabet is pretty important). But it was really really cute and made me really happy.

They all know how to say good morning, mostly because I say it to every kid I see on my bike ride to school and the older kids helped the little ones so they could greet me too. I only pass about half of the kids, but that’s enough for them to all share information with each other. I always start my elementary classes with a full body warm up to get the kids moving and get rid of some excess energy so they can focus on the lesson. Plus it helps waste a little time on days where I don’t think I have enough material to fill class time. Since this was their first English class ever I kept it simple and introduced 5 different actions to the kids: stand up, sit down, jump, spin, and bow. Stand up and sit down are just really useful for the kids to learn right away. The game works by me saying an action, and the kids doing the action while repeating the word. Really simple. My older class can string lots of things together now such as, “Girls, 5 big jumps!” It’s a great listening activity and the kids really seem to enjoy it.

After that I did my self intro. I loaned Eric some of my self intro material a few months ago and now I can’t find them. So I had to improvise a little. I didn’t have my map of the US, so I just drew on the board. I drew America and then added Texas and then San Antonio. The teacher in this class is great! She is new to the school so I have never worked with her before, but she speaks really good English. As I spoke in English she would translate for the kids. Normally I end up doing this myself and it can get tiring having to keep switching between the two. With her helping I was able to just focus on the English. I also forgot my photo album at the junior high, so I drew a picture of my family and a soccer ball and a penguin to show the kids what I liked. Then I showed them some things from my yearbook, which is always a big hit. I showed them some pictures of an American elementary school that my cousin sent me and the kids were fascinated. They were in shock that the school had a female principal. When I showed them the picture of the janitor one of the girls said that he looked more like a principal. As you might guess female principals are very rare here. The janitor concept was also a little hard for them to understand since in Japan the kids clean the school every day (even over summer, they come in during the break to clean the school) and they don’t have a need for a janitor. Finally I showed them some American money. Money is always a winner, you just can’t go wrong with introducing foreign money. They were blown away by the idea that a quarter is 25 cents. In Japan coins are 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, and 500 yen (from about one cent to $5).

Moving on, I taught the kids how to say, “My name is _____.” We repeated a few times with the kids practicing. I don’t worry too much about their pronunciation at this age. I mostly just want them to have fun while learning English. After I felt they were pretty confident I went down the line and had each kid say it. Some were pretty shy, but they all did really well.

Next it was time for the best part of the lesson! The Name Game! I learned this game at one of my Orientations during my first year, but had never had a chance to use it. I went through the cards and confirmed that I did have a basic understanding of Japanese pop culture icons that children will be familiar with. It was important that everyone knew the characters on sight (as I mentioned they can’t read English). They were mostly cartoon characters with two sports stars thrown in for variety. The kids were really excited to see all these fun characters. First the teacher and I demonstrated the game. We each took a card and introduced ourselves with the name on the card. And we shook hands because in America we don’t bow, we shake hands. Easy enough. The kids each took a card and I had exactly enough for the teacher and myself to play along too. On the very first round one of the boys picked out the Mao Asada card. She is a very popular Japanese figure skater. He thought it was hilarious that his name was now Mao Asada. I think he was the most excited to tell people what his name was.

I was pleased that a lot of the kids came up to me to practice. The hand shake part kinda got lost in the shuffle, but that wasn’t the point of the lesson so it was fine. We ran around for a while telling people our new names and once they seemed to have run out of people to talk to I sat them all down, collected the cards and started over again. We did three rounds in total. I think every round was a bit shorter than the last one and the kids started to get a little rowdy. They were running around the room a bit, but even then I still heard “My name is Pikachu!” so I feel they were still practicing. After the last round we all repeated the target sentence again. The kids were upset because they thought we were ending class early. The teacher had to tell them class time was over and time just seems to go faster when you are having a good time. That made me feel really good.

I had lunch with my second (8th) grade class back at junior high. After lunch was cleaning time and then my last class of the day. It was my third (9th) graders and was the same listening activity lesson as we had done with the first (7th) graders earlier in the day. Granted it was much easier for the third graders than it had been for the first graders. I had a free period after that and a little time after school in which I studied Japanese and started this blog entry. Then after the kids had homeroom I worked with the first graders who will be taking part in the English Recitation Contest in the fall until 5 when I had to leave to catch my ferry home.

It was a good day. Long and tiring but still good. This may be the longest blog entry yet, and I just hope that it was somewhat interesting.