Teaching is Fun Again

I wrote up this entry on paper first but I can’t get it to sound right so I’m just going to blurt it out and put it up for you all to read. Don’t say I don’t care.

So my time on the JET Programme is over but I’m still working to improve the English language abilities of Japanese everywhere. Or at least in Takatsuki. That’s where I work now as part of the Kohgakusha PEG division. Takatsuki is much closer to my house than Sakai was but unfortunately because of the way the train connects it still takes about an hour to get here. Still an hour is better than an hour and a half. More importantly the earliest I have to come in is 10.00 which means no more 5.30 am starts! Hooray!

I haven’t had much work so far because there’s been a bunch of holidays that have disrupted the usual teaching schedule. Most of our students are children so if there’s a big bunch of holidays there’s generally not much point holding classes. What classes I have taught, though, have been excellent.

It’s not really fair to call them classes since there’s not really any comparison to the ‘classes’ I taught back at Ichiko. There I was trying to get 35–40 students to try to speak English. Here I’m usually working with about 3. Yes, that’s not a typo. That’s three. As in one more than two. One less than four. In fact sometimes it is four. Or two. The classes can vary a bit in size with the ‘biggest’ (and I use the word advisedly) class being about seven.

Let me repeat that. About seven.

As you can probably tell, I’m somewhat happy about this change. The enthusiasm of the students is also a great improvement over what I was used to. It’s almost like the children here want to learn. And since most are aged between 2 and 10 they have an energy that was almost impossible to marshal in all but the most hyperactive senior high school student. This really makes a huge difference when you’re trying to do fun activities and although it also means you have more work to do in preparation the whole thing has such a greater feeling of purpose than running my head into a brick wall—sorry teaching—ever did.

In amongst all the positive feelings is the huge weight of study. I had forgotten how much time it consumes. I’m doing a graduate diploma by correspondence and although I’m on top of it at all it’s not without great cost to just about everything else in my life at the moment. All I can say is that I’m glad this will be over by November. I have no idea how I put up with this for six years.