I should start off with saying that I've been an English teacher at an International school since March and it has been one of the most challenging things I've done so far. In some ways, it's even more challenging than moving to Japan and being here for a year!
I found the job by a friend named Lucas. I met him at my favorite bar (well, the only bar that I go to because I love it so much) Orange County. Turns out he was leaving the school to pursue his glass art career and told me to go have an interview. I did, and they hired me!
This job is the best job I've had so far. It's fun, extremely challenging, and I'm learning a lot about myself and of course about kids. I started off teaching the advanced and basic classes, and now I'm also teaching kindergarten, pre-kindergarten, and the baby class. When I get home, I'm exhausted. But it's awesome :)
So today, I came into work and greeted everyone. I think some of the teachers were a little out of it for not having to go to work for a week, including me. Tomo and Michiko, the managers, are always on their game though. They're really sweet ladies.
Anyway, we always start the day by gathering all of the kids by doing an assembly. One main teacher sits on the stage and we start by singing the sunshine song.
"You are my sunshine,
My only sunshine.
You make me happy
When skies are grey.
You'll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don't take my sunshine away"
Of course that's accompanied with cute hand gestures and loud 5 year old voices, haha.
And after that we do the weather.
Teacher, "Is it cold today?"
Students, "NOOOOO!!!"
Teacher, "Is it hot today?"
Students, "YESSSSSS!!!"
Followed by show and tell, laughter, etc.
After that we split the group into sections, I usually take the pre-kindergarten class, which is usually five 3-year olds.
I'm still trying to get the hang of things so I try to have what I'm supposed to do and when written down. But today, I didn't have time to do that. I played everything by ear. I knew that we started at 11am and ended at 12:30, so whatever we do has to fit into that time block.
First we did a whale craft. I gave each student two cut-outs of a whale on white printing paper. They were connected, so if you folded it, it would look like one whale. Anyway, they colored the whales on both sides and after they were done, I taped the two sides together, enclosing a wooden chopstick.
After everyone was done, they were able to hold the whale by the chopstick and make it swim in the air. It was really cute. They played with that for a while and then we played with playdough.
Kids are great, but it's difficult trying to get them to listen.
Especially the boys! Why is that?? Two of the boys are so rowdy. But one of the boys is extremely sweet and obedient. I guess it depends on the personality. But I never have the same type of trouble with girls.
Anyway, two of the rowdy boys kept speaking Japanese to each other and I repeatedly had to say, "ah-ah ahhh, no Ja-pa-nese"
They looked at me, stopped, and started up again. So whenever they said something in Japanese, I would just translate whatever they said and told them to say it in English. They said it in English, so that was good. I figure most of what they're doing isn't necessarily out of spite... it's just that they don't know how to say it in English yet.
But one of the boys DID look me straight in the eye and told me "NO!" after I asked him to clean up the dominoes. Haha... oh man.
After we had snack time and I read them The Three Little Pigs, I let them play with dominoes. The boy who told me "NO!"... let's call him Charlie. As this is a Japanese boy, that's obviously not his real name.
Charlie has always been a little disruptive, but he definitely has his good days too. Today... he was in the middle. It started when we were playing with the playdough. Everything was fine until all of the sudden he literally fell sideways on the floor, right out of his chair!
I was so alarmed. I didn't make a big deal out of it because I didn't want to scare the kids but I said, "Charlie, don't be so silly" and I walked over to him to make sure he was okay. I seriously thought he fainted or something. He looked at me with this groggy look on his face and sloppily sat back in his chair. I called Michiko over because I wasn't sure if he was pulling my leg or not. I wanted to be safe and say something, rather than blow it off and it turns out he has a serious condition that I'm unaware of.
Well, it turns out he was just pulling my leg. Michiko came over and said, "Yea...he does that. You're okay, right Charlie? He's just tired."
Yea... and effing dramatic!! Don't scare me like that!!
That's what I wanted to say.
So back to the dominoes. We were all playing and having fun. We stacked them high and the kids LOVE to knock them down.
"Let's make a crash!!" they said, over and over.
Somehow, I think I said "It's raaaaiiinning dominoes" and they all repeated after me. But instead of letting the dominoes fall close to the ground, the kids of course threw the dominoes into the air and let fall hard on top of their heads.
"Oh god," I thought. "Not good. What were you thinking?"
Surprisingly, this game didn't end with poked out eyes and bumps on their foreheads! But it almost did when Charlie started literally THROWING them at everyone.
"NO Charlie! boo-boop"
["boo-boop" is a Japanese onomatopoeic expression for "wrong" or "bad" or "だめ (dame)"]
Charlie didn't listen.
"Charlie! Three...two... o-"
That did the trick.
The rest of the kids still wanted to play raining dominoes the right way so I put my chest to the floor and let them "rain dominoes" on my afro and back. (Haha, I have to save the "kids love my afro" story for later.)
Finally, it was time to clean up. Everyone else but Charlie was doing the right thing and putting the dominoes in the brown sack. But when I said "Okay, Charlie, let's clean up" he promptly looked at me and shouted "NO!"
I was shocked because no child at that school has said "no" to me like that.
The only thing I said was, "Excuse me?" in a very mother-like "oh-no-he-didn't" tone.
I think he got the message because he started cleaning up.. while moping albeit... but hey, it's better than him thinking he can step all over me.
Haha.. I think there are a lot of reasons why he obeyed me at that moment. My surprised facial expression, my "oh-no-you-didn't" tone of voice. I think that in combination with the fact that he's probably never heard annnyyyooonne say that before in that manner haha. Not his parents, not anyone at that school.
Sure, he's heard of "Excuse me.. let me through" but never "Excuse me? Did you really use that tone of voice with me?"
I'm happy to pass it along :)
More later. This post getting cho long!
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