What do you want for Christmas?

I absolutely love creating my own lessons. And, although there have been some rough patches, my lessons are beginning to run smoothly.

But....first I must talk about aisatsu. there is always an aisatsu (or introduction). Awkward. Very awkward. The students are called to attention, bow, and say class is starting. Seems redundant, but it is necessary for the beginning of any class. They require the knowledge of a very specific and rehearsed dialog. This lack of crucial information leads to awkward silences, patient waiting until I start the class. And I try, I really do try. But, I guess sometimes my "good mornings" and "hellos" and "alrighties" and "um....so...." and "are we starting's?" don't always signal the beginning of class. What is the secret word? Please, please, let's start class. At least, for the beginning of class you can somewhat skip past the awkwardness when students don't repeat good morning or anything of that sort. "OK! Let's start!"
If possible, the end of class can be even worse. It took me for-freaking-ever to figure out that all I need to say is "Thank you, bye bye, see you!" This makes everyone happy. When I change the dialog slightly every falls into the dreaded awkward silence. Silence, waiting, the correct signal, the right words. And with my array of teachers accompanied by different teaching styles mean I can be directly told to do aisatsu, or I have to guess by the awkward silence it is my time to say "thank you! bye bye, see you!"
I say "see you" so much now that I can't even remember if I said it back home. Did I? Well, I do now. And I am afraid I am getting a Japanese twang "shii iyu".

Well, to get to the point of my post. I wanted to share something that happened in class. Something sad, but maybe mistranslated.

For Christmas I spared the usual, "This is what Christmas is about" speech (which they have heard from all other ALTs and instead I am focusing on Santa Claus in America. Something the students don't usually know is Santa strategically visits malls all across America in order to fulfill little children's Christmas wishes. They get super jealous that Santa comes to our malls, but not to worry! I am not trying to upset them, I tell them that not all kids visit Santa and the alternative is a letter. A clever way to get them to write English. They love writing letters to Santa, and I focus on the target "I want _____". For 4th grade and below they just have to fill in what they want in English or Japanese, but they have to write their name in the "from, _____" slot making them write some English characters (they usually can write their name and if not it is on their name cards). They love this and today the kids were so into it! They asked Santa for the most ridiculously creative things: submarines, islands, puppies, erasers, fighter jets, toys, helicopters, etc. So to finish the letter writing they give a presentation about what they want. And we went down the line, "I want a helicopter" "I want a DS!" and finally, "I want a father." "I want a father." I was so surprised, and sad. I didn't know how to respond but compliment her English. Nanoka-chan. She is such a darling, so spunky (she wears her hair in half a pony tail on the top of her head, making her hair stick straight up) and always smiling. It reminds me that these kids go through so much more outside of class that I don't see and that I don't understand. I wish that I could promise that Santa would bring her a father.

Teaching

What does an ALT do? Everything imaginable. Working at 9 different schools with…let’s see here… 7, 6, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2 for a total of 31 teachers, really shakes things up a bit. Not to mention that my classes range from 3 to 50 students. I would say, forming a routine has not exactly been an easy task. But, slowly I think that the cloud of chaos is settling into a comfortable state of continued confusion. I never know exactly what they expect, how good the kids are (they are really good at repeating, but not so good at producing random speech). Seriously, what is there motivation to learn English? And as a teacher I have gained a whole new perspective about being a pre-high school student.
I slept, talked loudly, passed notes, wrote on desks, didn’t try on my homework. Class was boring, notes fostered tighter friendship bonds, desks called out as huge creative spaces with limitless opportunities to complain or make someone laugh (and better yet they took a neat 3-dimensional twist once someone started to trace the same etch over and over), and homework was an after though completed only in the mornings or between commercial breaks. Of course, I didn’t always act out, there were some teachers I legitimately worked hard for, but it didn’t always mean my behavior was 100%. But, now I have crossed over to the other side. The teacher side, the side that has to put up with continually disrespect. And, I have to remind myself that students participating in “in-class recreation” aren’t directing it towards me. Now that I have crossed over I want a time machine. I want a time machine to go back and slap my silly disrespecting self. No teacher deserves disrespect even if they are horrible. I didn’t realize how easy it is to tell what everyone in the class is doing. On the student side it seems like your desk, the people in front of you, and the teachers attention will not be drawn to your distractions.
As a parrot for this lesson about travel, I took it upon myself to walk around the room when the teacher was explaining the grammar (so much for team teaching!).When I walked up to a student yesterday at Higashiura Elementary, I noticed (well I noticed before I walked to the desk) that she had masterfully drawn on a piece of paper a rendition of Japanese poop (it looks like the top of a soft serve ice cream cone). Right away when I walked up to her she covered it with her hand. I feel like I crossed the sacred boundary/shield students sitting toward the back of the room feel they are entitled to. She gave me a look like I violated her space. But, I didn’t take it away or tell the 6th grade teacher that she had been writing a note. My instinct to get angry at this girl mixed with sympathy. I remember in Spanish class when I innocently passed a note which the wide eyed Castellan teacher ripped from my desk (the last person that you want to read your letter). Her rage seemed out of control, it was just a note. Even worse, she threatened to read it in front of the class. She had violated my personal desk shield that my three rows back had entitled me. She even wanted to read the slander in the note to everyone in the class. The worst part out of it all was that my misplaced anger of her violation (nothing was my fault back then) rapidly deteriorated my own interest in Spanish. I took it personally.
Strangely I now understand her side. I felt the same passionate urge to take the poop note and ask if she liked poop in front of the class. I wanted to make her feel belittled so she wouldn’t do it again. Hypocritical. I feel like to be good teacher (assistant teacher), and one that the kids want to work for and respect, I cannot forget my own feelings as a student. As an assistant do I have more leeway to acknowledge that she was even writing a note? Did this make her upset that I saw her deviancy? Out of respect for possible controversy of notes, I let her keep it. As a warning I gave her a look to tell her not to let me catch her again. Maybe it is good that she learns to be more careful if she wants to step out of line. I want to teach these kids something that they will remember!
They are bored. So bored with English. Bored because the government makes the 5th and 6th graders use an English Notebook (eigo- nooto). Everything is chanting, presentation activities, and activities that foster bad English. The book teaches bad English. The philosophy is that some things in English are too hard for the kids to pick up, so we will teach them a Japanified version that they will understand.