Saturday, May 30, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
No, I Don't Know What I'm Doing
Today, I met with one of my JTEs to plan the lesson for a 9th grade class that I teach once or twice per month. First, she explained the rules of today's warm-up activity, with which I was familiar. With the students all standing, the JTE and I take turns asking questions, gradually increasing the difficulty with each question. The student who answers correctly sits down and then chooses either tate or yoko, very loosely translated to column and row, respectively. With tate, those standing in front of or behind the student have to sit down. Yoko causes the people to the left and right to sit. The object of the game is to narrow the field down to one or two people, who are then forced to watch Japanese television answer a question.
After discussing the rules, we came across a slight stumbling block. Here's what happened, more or less:
Me: Is there a list from which we pick the questions?
JTE: No, just ask appropriate questions.
Me: Ok, so what have they learned so far? What's an appropriate question?
JTE: Well, they're third years, so anything that they learned in the first or second year is fair game.
Me: What did they learn in the first or second year?
JTE: The same thing that all first and second year students learn.
Me: What do first and second year students learn?
JTE: [blank stare]
…
Me: Let me clarify. Before working here, I worked at a school with only one junior high student who never came to class. I almost never got to teach him.
JTE: Wait, so you're telling me that you have no previous experience teaching junior high?
Me: Pretty much, yeah.
JTE: [blank stare]
[scene]
This type of interaction is not good for my self–esteem. I swear I'm not a moron.
When we come to Japan, we ALTs get no help, no training, no lesson manuals and no teaching materials. The people who "manage" us go to great lengths to avoid having to deal with us, to the point that their "actions" are surrounded by "scare quotes".
On one hand, it's easy to see where they're coming from--and even sympathize. Most of them don't speak or understand English outside of a smattering of phrases that they most likely learned when they, as kids, were forced to take English classes. Assuming--usually correctly--that we ALTs speak no Japanese, they just want to avoid socially awkward situations in which they are obligated help us, yet have no way of truly communicating. So, rather than helping us have some idea of what's expected of us, they leave us to figure it out alone.
On the other hand, it's their job.
For someone who was thrown into the fray without any explanations or directions, I feel like I do a pretty good job. The kids generally get excited to have me there, and I've figured out ways to make learning enjoyable. I see the kids once or twice a month, have no idea what they've learned up to that point, and have no idea what kids their age are supposed to learn. It'll take some experience reading the textbooks and teaching lessons before I automatically know which questions are appropriate for each grade.
Before class, the teacher gave me a second year textbook so that I could study the grammar patterns. I went through the textbook and familiarized myself with everything, making a list of example questions along the way. Then class started, and the teacher decided to skip the tate-yoko game. Of course.
But it's okay, because in that class I got to chuckle when the kids and teacher all pronounced earthquake as arsequake.
After discussing the rules, we came across a slight stumbling block. Here's what happened, more or less:
Me: Is there a list from which we pick the questions?
JTE: No, just ask appropriate questions.
Me: Ok, so what have they learned so far? What's an appropriate question?
JTE: Well, they're third years, so anything that they learned in the first or second year is fair game.
Me: What did they learn in the first or second year?
JTE: The same thing that all first and second year students learn.
Me: What do first and second year students learn?
JTE: [blank stare]
…
Me: Let me clarify. Before working here, I worked at a school with only one junior high student who never came to class. I almost never got to teach him.
JTE: Wait, so you're telling me that you have no previous experience teaching junior high?
Me: Pretty much, yeah.
JTE: [blank stare]
[scene]
This type of interaction is not good for my self–esteem. I swear I'm not a moron.
When we come to Japan, we ALTs get no help, no training, no lesson manuals and no teaching materials. The people who "manage" us go to great lengths to avoid having to deal with us, to the point that their "actions" are surrounded by "scare quotes".
On one hand, it's easy to see where they're coming from--and even sympathize. Most of them don't speak or understand English outside of a smattering of phrases that they most likely learned when they, as kids, were forced to take English classes. Assuming--usually correctly--that we ALTs speak no Japanese, they just want to avoid socially awkward situations in which they are obligated help us, yet have no way of truly communicating. So, rather than helping us have some idea of what's expected of us, they leave us to figure it out alone.
On the other hand, it's their job.
For someone who was thrown into the fray without any explanations or directions, I feel like I do a pretty good job. The kids generally get excited to have me there, and I've figured out ways to make learning enjoyable. I see the kids once or twice a month, have no idea what they've learned up to that point, and have no idea what kids their age are supposed to learn. It'll take some experience reading the textbooks and teaching lessons before I automatically know which questions are appropriate for each grade.
Before class, the teacher gave me a second year textbook so that I could study the grammar patterns. I went through the textbook and familiarized myself with everything, making a list of example questions along the way. Then class started, and the teacher decided to skip the tate-yoko game. Of course.
But it's okay, because in that class I got to chuckle when the kids and teacher all pronounced earthquake as arsequake.
Monday, May 25, 2009
I'm still hungry
Lunch was pretty good today. It's a shame that my portions were less than half the size of those of kids less than half my size.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Experience vs. Expectation
It's funny how much our actual experiences can differ from our expectations. When I got to Uoshima, I got to spend two days with Ethan, my predecessor. Between packing and paperwork, Ethan could unfortunately only offer me a couple of hours to pick his brain and establish realistic expectations for my stay on fish island.
In the time we did spend together, I got to walk around with him and meet some of the people that he was leaving behind. Even though he hadn't studied Japanese at all before coming, two years alone on the island with no English speakers really strengthened his Japanese. Given that I came to Japan to study the language, I loved the thought of being fluent after two years. I couldn't have been in a better position.
Ethan was in fantastic shape when he left. I believe he was a runner before coming to Japan, but he spent the copious free time in the afternoons and evenings running up and down the hills of the circular island road, training for a marathon. Having been out of shape since the age of six, I looked forward to simultaneously slimming down and exploring the island. I would even join the baseball club and hone those skills.
Attached to Uoshima by a stacked stone foot bridge is a little island called Kojima (Japanese for "little island"), where Ethan would go in the evening to read. I envisioned myself composing music on the cool, rough rocks with the sun slipping below the horizon. Afterward, I could hop in the sea for a nice evening swim.
Life would be nice and slow. We'd learn to be self-sufficient with a vegetable garden. Kimiko Azuma, one of two people on the island who spoke English, worked out a deal with an old lady to get us a plot of land. I wrote a few months ago:
We brought all sorts of seeds and bought a book about utilizing space in the garden. We were ready to go; we just needed to wait until planting season.
Before Ethan left, he wrote farewell cards to all the people he had gotten to know on the island. When it was time to board the ferry to leave, a bunch of people gathered around to say goodbye. I wrote a little about this:
Obviously, I looked forward to the day when my heart strings would snap, and I'd be reduced to a sobbing and babbling fool. Actually, I just hoped to build the friendships that would make it so difficult to leave.
So, I obviously had some grandiose visions of life on Uoshima. But what really happened?
First off, most of my long-term expectations became moot the moment I moved to Imabari. But right from the start, my expectations were off. Coming to the island, I was excited to meet the members of my new community. Here's what I wrote:
As for the language, Uoshima forced me to study Japanese enough to communicate, and I had plenty of free time at work. The teachers on Uoshima were amiable, but they rarely spoke to me in Japanese. Even though I had made it clear that I came to Japan to study the language, they instead tried to practice their English. I didn't really grow until Mia came in the middle of the night.
Dealing with the doctors at the hospital in Japanese forced me to learn how to communicate better. I'm not fluent yet, but I also haven't even reached the 10-month mark. My vocabulary is exploding and each day I get a little better at conversing. I understand almost everything I hear (except TV comedy shows--I'm often clueless to the slang). In Imabari, all my schools have at least one person with whom I can converse. Now I have less time to study, but more opportunities to practice Japanese. I can't draw any conclusions yet, but so far I feel that being in Uoshima was necessary at first, but being in Imabari is better for my Japanese in the long run.
Fitness was also a bit of a disappointment. I dropped from 245 pounds to 220 pounds, thanks mostly to the exercise festival and not having a wife at home for two months. While I lost a good chunk of weight, I'm still not happy with my physique. I never got to play real baseball on Uoshima. The weather was much too cold for me to run around the island. So, yeah, my once-tight pants are now baggy. But I never got to explore the island, and I still need to lose a few.
I went out to the little island a couple times, but never with the intent to compose. I figured I'd always have a chance later. Nope. I only went swimming three or four times, but looked forward to next year's summer, when we'd surely go swimming as a family every few days. False. We'd never get the chance.
Though life actually was slow like I'd hoped, we never got the chance to cultivate the garden. We're glad that we didn't, since we would've had to leave it all behind. Here in Imabari, Stef has some planters full of fruits and vegetables that are in various states of health. The first strawberries are almost ready. The cucumbers (or is it the eggplant?) are dead. Stef's having fun, and it's much less work to maintain planters than a whole forty-by-eighty foot garden. While it's not quite what we expected, things are good on the garden front.
I don't believe I've blogged about my teary departure from Uoshima. That's because it never happened.
I spent most of the last day filling out forms at the town hall office. They told me that the boat would leave at about 9:50, and so I should load my stuff onto the boat at 9:30 or so. At 9:10, they told me that I had to load my luggage. I threw my stuff on the boat, and the other teachers, who had been saying good bye to the townsfolk for the previous fifteen minutes, all got on. They handed us each a ribbon or two and the crowd of people held on to the other end of the ribbons. The boat was off at 9:12. I didn't even get to say a personal good bye to the people I got to know. Typically, ALTs on Uoshima get their own send off. But since I was leaving with other teachers, I was just one of many who were leaving. There was no time for tears.
The boat pulled away, tightening my ribbon until it snapped, severing my ties with the island. I guess it doesn't really matter that I never got to say good bye, because I never got to know anyone on the island (outside of the doctor, the band members, and Azuma-san). Imabari is a great place to live, but I'll always look back with fondness at my time on Uoshima. The saddest part about leaving fish island is losing the memories of experiences I never got to have.
In the time we did spend together, I got to walk around with him and meet some of the people that he was leaving behind. Even though he hadn't studied Japanese at all before coming, two years alone on the island with no English speakers really strengthened his Japanese. Given that I came to Japan to study the language, I loved the thought of being fluent after two years. I couldn't have been in a better position.
Ethan was in fantastic shape when he left. I believe he was a runner before coming to Japan, but he spent the copious free time in the afternoons and evenings running up and down the hills of the circular island road, training for a marathon. Having been out of shape since the age of six, I looked forward to simultaneously slimming down and exploring the island. I would even join the baseball club and hone those skills.
Attached to Uoshima by a stacked stone foot bridge is a little island called Kojima (Japanese for "little island"), where Ethan would go in the evening to read. I envisioned myself composing music on the cool, rough rocks with the sun slipping below the horizon. Afterward, I could hop in the sea for a nice evening swim.
Life would be nice and slow. We'd learn to be self-sufficient with a vegetable garden. Kimiko Azuma, one of two people on the island who spoke English, worked out a deal with an old lady to get us a plot of land. I wrote a few months ago:
We have a plot of land that's been set aside as our garden. It's actually already a garden, but the owner of the land is hurt and won't be able to cultivate it any longer. It's right by the new house, so that's another factor to consider. It's a pretty big plot, about 40 feet by 80 feet.
We brought all sorts of seeds and bought a book about utilizing space in the garden. We were ready to go; we just needed to wait until planting season.
Before Ethan left, he wrote farewell cards to all the people he had gotten to know on the island. When it was time to board the ferry to leave, a bunch of people gathered around to say goodbye. I wrote a little about this:
His send off was touching. Dozens of villagers met him and the docks to see him off. They all held streamers that were on a spool, giving the ends to Ethan and Sarah (his girlfriend) to hold on to as the boat drove away. They remained "connected" to him even as he rode away on the boat (or at least until the streamers broke). It was hard to watch. I hope that I have as big a connection with these people by the time I leave.
Obviously, I looked forward to the day when my heart strings would snap, and I'd be reduced to a sobbing and babbling fool. Actually, I just hoped to build the friendships that would make it so difficult to leave.
So, I obviously had some grandiose visions of life on Uoshima. But what really happened?
First off, most of my long-term expectations became moot the moment I moved to Imabari. But right from the start, my expectations were off. Coming to the island, I was excited to meet the members of my new community. Here's what I wrote:
The ferry ride was beautiful. I was a little motion sick from all the travel, but it was neat to ride on the top of the little ferry and look down at the thousands of harmless jellyfish in the sea. Ethan said that I should be expecting a big welcome when I got home, but that didn't really happen. Ethan's girlfriend and one lady were running up to the docks when we got there with a sign that said "Welcome Mr. Stout to Uoshima!" Ethan seemed miffed that they didn't have more people there...
As for the language, Uoshima forced me to study Japanese enough to communicate, and I had plenty of free time at work. The teachers on Uoshima were amiable, but they rarely spoke to me in Japanese. Even though I had made it clear that I came to Japan to study the language, they instead tried to practice their English. I didn't really grow until Mia came in the middle of the night.
Dealing with the doctors at the hospital in Japanese forced me to learn how to communicate better. I'm not fluent yet, but I also haven't even reached the 10-month mark. My vocabulary is exploding and each day I get a little better at conversing. I understand almost everything I hear (except TV comedy shows--I'm often clueless to the slang). In Imabari, all my schools have at least one person with whom I can converse. Now I have less time to study, but more opportunities to practice Japanese. I can't draw any conclusions yet, but so far I feel that being in Uoshima was necessary at first, but being in Imabari is better for my Japanese in the long run.
Fitness was also a bit of a disappointment. I dropped from 245 pounds to 220 pounds, thanks mostly to the exercise festival and not having a wife at home for two months. While I lost a good chunk of weight, I'm still not happy with my physique. I never got to play real baseball on Uoshima. The weather was much too cold for me to run around the island. So, yeah, my once-tight pants are now baggy. But I never got to explore the island, and I still need to lose a few.
I went out to the little island a couple times, but never with the intent to compose. I figured I'd always have a chance later. Nope. I only went swimming three or four times, but looked forward to next year's summer, when we'd surely go swimming as a family every few days. False. We'd never get the chance.
Though life actually was slow like I'd hoped, we never got the chance to cultivate the garden. We're glad that we didn't, since we would've had to leave it all behind. Here in Imabari, Stef has some planters full of fruits and vegetables that are in various states of health. The first strawberries are almost ready. The cucumbers (or is it the eggplant?) are dead. Stef's having fun, and it's much less work to maintain planters than a whole forty-by-eighty foot garden. While it's not quite what we expected, things are good on the garden front.
I don't believe I've blogged about my teary departure from Uoshima. That's because it never happened.
I spent most of the last day filling out forms at the town hall office. They told me that the boat would leave at about 9:50, and so I should load my stuff onto the boat at 9:30 or so. At 9:10, they told me that I had to load my luggage. I threw my stuff on the boat, and the other teachers, who had been saying good bye to the townsfolk for the previous fifteen minutes, all got on. They handed us each a ribbon or two and the crowd of people held on to the other end of the ribbons. The boat was off at 9:12. I didn't even get to say a personal good bye to the people I got to know. Typically, ALTs on Uoshima get their own send off. But since I was leaving with other teachers, I was just one of many who were leaving. There was no time for tears.
The boat pulled away, tightening my ribbon until it snapped, severing my ties with the island. I guess it doesn't really matter that I never got to say good bye, because I never got to know anyone on the island (outside of the doctor, the band members, and Azuma-san). Imabari is a great place to live, but I'll always look back with fondness at my time on Uoshima. The saddest part about leaving fish island is losing the memories of experiences I never got to have.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Next Time Won’t You Not Desecrate the Classics
Why can’t people just leave the classics alone? Today in class, we sang the alphabet song. You know, “Ah, vous dirai-je, maman”, the one that shares the same melody as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”, and probably dozens of other children’s songs. We all know it as something pretty close to the following:
A-B-C-D-E-F-Gee (rest)
H-I-J-K-LMNOPee (rest)
Q-R-esS (eh sound) (rest)
T-U-Vee (rest)
W-eX (eh sound) (rest)
Y and Zee. (rest)
Now I know my ABCs. (rest)
Next time, won’t you sing/play with me? (end)
The Canadian version is the same, except for the ending:
…
Y and Zed (rest)
Now I know my As to Zeds-- (rest)
Let’s all go and wet our beds. (wet bed)
Crazy Canucks aside, we can all pretty much agree on the structure of the song. Well, apparently not all of us. Whoever put this horrific Eigo Nooto (English Notebook) program together 1) doesn’t speak English natively and 2) decided that it was too hard for the kids in Japan to learn how to say “LMNOPee.” So, here’s the new version of the song:
A-B-C-D-E-F-Gee (rest)
H-I-J-K-L-M-eN (rest)
O-P-Q-R-S-T-yU (rest)
V-W and X-Y-Zee (rest)
Happy, happy. I’m ha-PPY. (rest)
I can sing my ABC. (shoot self)
Since there’s almost no communication between team-teachers about lessons, I was ill-prepared for this travesty come class time. The teacher hit “play” on the CD player and asked me to direct the singing. I loathingly shook my head when the vocalist strayed from the normal, accepted, canonized version of the ABC song. It's one thing to change a word or two, but another to change the entire structure of a song.
But let’s look at the real problem behind this version of the song: it sucks. No attempt whatsoever was made to preserve the meter of the original. The final sounds of stanzas are nowhere close to being related. And the virtual/hermaphrodite/wrenched stress/weakened/anisobaric rhyme of ha-PPY would have been bad enough if it wasn’t paired with the ungrammatical, highly Japanese-sounding “I can sing my ABC.”
I made a point of enunciating the nonexistent “s” each of the twelve times I was forced to sing this disgraceful rubbish, but I don’t know if they noticed. The lyrics are written (just as sung) in the textbooks. When a teacher asked me for clarification on the pronunciation of this horrible song, I did my best to explain that this was not the normal version.
What will happen when these Japanese kids sing their “ABC” out in the English-speaking real world? Oh, the ignominy! The shame! The Ministry of Education is sending these poor children on a collision course with awkward embarrassment. I know it’s a difficult task, but I will voluntarily bear the massive burden of cleansing their English. Hey, somebody’s got to do it.
A-B-C-D-E-F-Gee (rest)
H-I-J-K-LMNOPee (rest)
Q-R-esS (eh sound) (rest)
T-U-Vee (rest)
W-eX (eh sound) (rest)
Y and Zee. (rest)
Now I know my ABCs. (rest)
Next time, won’t you sing/play with me? (end)
The Canadian version is the same, except for the ending:
…
Y and Zed (rest)
Now I know my As to Zeds-- (rest)
Let’s all go and wet our beds. (wet bed)
Crazy Canucks aside, we can all pretty much agree on the structure of the song. Well, apparently not all of us. Whoever put this horrific Eigo Nooto (English Notebook) program together 1) doesn’t speak English natively and 2) decided that it was too hard for the kids in Japan to learn how to say “LMNOPee.” So, here’s the new version of the song:
A-B-C-D-E-F-Gee (rest)
H-I-J-K-L-M-eN (rest)
O-P-Q-R-S-T-yU (rest)
V-W and X-Y-Zee (rest)
Happy, happy. I’m ha-PPY. (rest)
I can sing my ABC. (shoot self)
Since there’s almost no communication between team-teachers about lessons, I was ill-prepared for this travesty come class time. The teacher hit “play” on the CD player and asked me to direct the singing. I loathingly shook my head when the vocalist strayed from the normal, accepted, canonized version of the ABC song. It's one thing to change a word or two, but another to change the entire structure of a song.
But let’s look at the real problem behind this version of the song: it sucks. No attempt whatsoever was made to preserve the meter of the original. The final sounds of stanzas are nowhere close to being related. And the virtual/hermaphrodite/wrenched stress/weakened/anisobaric rhyme of ha-PPY would have been bad enough if it wasn’t paired with the ungrammatical, highly Japanese-sounding “I can sing my ABC.”
I made a point of enunciating the nonexistent “s” each of the twelve times I was forced to sing this disgraceful rubbish, but I don’t know if they noticed. The lyrics are written (just as sung) in the textbooks. When a teacher asked me for clarification on the pronunciation of this horrible song, I did my best to explain that this was not the normal version.
What will happen when these Japanese kids sing their “ABC” out in the English-speaking real world? Oh, the ignominy! The shame! The Ministry of Education is sending these poor children on a collision course with awkward embarrassment. I know it’s a difficult task, but I will voluntarily bear the massive burden of cleansing their English. Hey, somebody’s got to do it.
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