Week 1

The end of my first week back teaching has come and it hasn’t been without some lessons for me either. God, that’s tortured. That’s what happens when I try to use ‘I’ less in my writing. Suffice to say, I had a few classes, learnt some stuff and am looking forward to week 2.

The new Maeda-sensei is… interesting. In so many ways I find myself reacting negatively to what he does despite the fact that it’s hardly unreasonable. In the classes that we’ve had together he has gone to extraordinary lengths (given the standards of Ichiko) to keep classes disciplined. And I’m reacting to this negatively? I guess I must have become more accustomed to Ichiko than I realised. As much as I refuse to give up on students and try to get them interested in English I don’t harbour any illusions about their ability. These are kids with short attention spans who are not particularly gifted when it comes to study. I’ve seen students who are not poor students be unable to complete what I would consider a rather basic task. This isn’t meant to put them down. I was absolutely crap at design and technology at high school and I’m sure these kids would clean the floor with my ass if we ever had to build a bookshelf. What I am saying, though, is that when you get into a standard classroom environment with these students you can’t expect them to act in the way that ideally they should.

The most interesting thing for me about my reaction to Maeda-sensei has been the fact that when I first got to Ichiko his actions are exactly what I wanted the other teachers to do. I couldn’t understand why Kussu-sensei didn’t tell the girls in interior design to stop putting on makeup or the boys in machinery to stop walking around the classroom. Humans are nothing if not adaptable and for better or worse I got used to how things work at Ichiko. I try and engage the students and do my bit to enforce the discipline I think they’ll respond to (the main reason I’ve tried to learn the names of all 600+ students) but at the end of the day so long as they don’t get physically violent in class I’m pretty laid back.

Not so with Maeda-sensei. Our first lesson with the new 2–Interior class was spent initially lambasting the students for their poor behaviour. And I don’t mean lambasting in the way I’ve seen some teachers get annoyed at students – I mean old skool, shouting at students and putting them on detention. Putting them on detention?! I know, I couldn’t believe it either! I actually don’t know for sure if a student was given a detention; I think she was told to report to the English staffroom at some point in the day (it was all said too quickly for me to fully comprehend). But still, the very idea that a student would be told to do something outside of class because of their behaviour in class: I was staggered. Maeda-sensei is adamant that it’s in these early classes that the rest of the tone for the semester is set and I find myself almost agreeing with him in spite of myself. Isn’t that what I was trying to tell the other teachers when I came to Ichiko? Is that what all teachers say when they get to Ichiko?

I haven’t had any classes with the other new teacher (Matsumura-sensei is his name). He came into school the first few days wearing a suit but on Friday came in dressed incredibly casually. I am going to guess that he is not going to yell at the students. We shall see how that prediction bears out.

Apart from that I love teaching first year students! MJ, my predecessor at Ichiko, was absolutely correct when he said they have no idea the licence they have to misbehave. I only had one first year class this week – and they were 1–Architecture – but I almost couldn’t believe it. I don’t think anyone spoke during the entire lesson except when they were called on to answer questions. It was awesome.

Being able to teach my early lessons over again is also terrific. I realise now something else I’m missing out on by not moving to different schools. Because I see the same students for the entire year I continually have to create new lessons. When other ALTs rotate to other schools they can simply draw on an arsenal of classes they’ve already taught. Not only that but they can tweak and improve them. My self-introduction lesson is so much better now than it was initially. I can’t help but wonder, presuming Maeda-sensei’s hypothesis is true, how much better my other classes would have gone if I could have started off this strongly.

I’m probably getting a little ahead of myself, though. Architecture classes are always the best behaved so we’ll see how it goes next week when I get my first taste of the Material classes. Due to assemblies and opening ceremonies I managed to avoid all Material classes last week. I’m not going to be that fortunate in week 2.