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.