Teaching

so I am in the full swing of teaching...and it looks like some weeks might be busier than last year. This week is maneageable, but I'm amazed at the extra side work I have to do because so many of the teachers don't understand the concept of 'Team Teaching'. The JET program is based on the idea that we ALT's are not teachers, but assistants who put a real life native speaker in the classroom to support the trained original Japanese teachers. It is meant to be a dynamic team effort in the classroom full of dialogue, and my role should be to make English more fun for the kids by speaking with them, telling them about my country, making friends with them and making English real for them. However, with some of my teachers, it is more like I am the main teacher and they are the assistant...except they don't participate AT ALL. Today at Nakajo Junior High I taught two classes of 2nd year kids (7th grade back home). Normally you are supposed to meet ahead of time and the teacher will help you decide the activities and timing for the class...but today, as usual with Ms. Hiroi, I was asked to create all activities for the class and teach the grammar too (difficult to do without a little help, since I can't translate much). So, since today isn't too busy I was able to brew up a kick-butt lesson full with dialogue, Doraemon cartoon cut-outs, a bingo quiz, a plastic squeaky hammer to smack the noisy kids with, and a writing exercise along with a lively grammar intro. I tried to spur the teacher on to help make it a team effort so the kids would get the most they could out of the lesson, but all she did was make copies for me and then stand in the back of class and look scared. Meanwhile I had to figure out how to explain past tense grammar to a bunch of 13 year olds who only understand maybe half of what I'm saying, and that's when I speak very, very slow and stick to basic English. But most of them were OK and tried hard, and a few cracked me up with some random questions like "you many muscles?" and "very tall! yes, isn't? OK, OK, yay!"

Some teachers really embrace the Team Teaching method, and really have an idea of how the class should go and where the ALT should fit in...but those who don't, about half of them, really wear out my week not only by the extra demands but just by frustrating me with the fact that they don't understand or respond to my explanations and expectations of how it's supposed to be and why I'm here.

Anyway, other than that, I met up with Annie last night at the Sabbath restaurant, but my allergies have me so wacked out I could hardly hold a conversation. Oh, and at the store, mangoes are in season now...for $16 dollars a piece. So I bought a $2 apple instead. And I found a store that sells real Skippy peanut butter.

Finally, in very happy news, a fantastic little sushi bar named Matsumizushi opened up down the street from my apartment. It really helps my boring little neighborhood, which only has one tiny old-guy bar, one so-s0 ramen shop, one liquor store and one vegetable place. It is high-class quality sushi, not the cheap kind on the roundy-train things...I went Friday night and it was the best fish I've had in a while. I'll look forward to having that within a two minute walk ( but I'll be spending a LOT of money there in the future).