It’s Me on a 2-second Delay
Yesterday was a good day, it was a great day! It was the first day, after six weeks of being here, that I was in the classroom teaching. I cannot begin to express how good it feels to be in there, working with the students, and doing my job!
This week I am teaching my self-introduction lesson to each one of my classes. That means, I have to do this lesson 17 times over the course of 5 days. I am on day two, and I can tell you that three more days of this is going to require some stamina. It is amazing how boring I feel after six of the lessons. Fortunately, the students don’t seem to be bored by me, in fact, it is quite the opposite. They seem very interested, and they LOVE the big pictures that I show on the projector.
Besides the students, it has been fun to be in the classroom working with the teachers that I will work with for the next year (or so). They all have very different, distinct personalities. The two women that I have taught with so far seem very quiet and laid back in the classroom, especially compared to me. I feel that I am actually so loud and excited that they tend to sit back and let me run the show.
Another teacher, a male, is just the opposite. He gets so wrapped up in my excitement and joins right in. It makes teaching with him really fun. The only strange thing about teaching with him is the 2-second delay.
When I am speaking, he stands to the side and mouths the words I am saying as I say them. Not only does he quietly repeat the words, he also does the same hand gestures as I am doing. So, while I am teaching, I see myself on a 2-second delay out of the corner of my eye. At first it was disorienting and annoying, but now I kind of like it. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?!
It is great to hear that the kids and teachers are excited by yur teaching. But If you are bored, why don’t you change the lesson and do something a little different? Did anyone say all 17 sessions of your self-introduction have to be the same? Why not vary your approaches and materials from class to class and see which work best?
Dad.
Unfortuately they want the lessons to be the same. The Japanese have this thing about sameness and fairness, giving different lessons to different groups would make them quite uneasy. Even though it would keep it fresher for me, it would also make it unfair for various teachers and students to receive different information and styles.
Also, I went through a lot of work to put together a slideshow presentation that I use during my introductory lesson. It would take a really long time to alter that for different classes/lessons.
Only four more left. . .
they teach the people who work at Disneyland how to deal with being asked the same questions over and over again eg. “Where are the bathrooms?” while the questioner is standing right below the sign that says bathrooms. They tell them to focus on the fact that although you have heard this 20 times in the last hour, for the questioner, it really is the first time and they really are confused and it is the Disneyland’s person’s job to put them at ease and make them comfortable. In short, if you see through the student’s eyes, you’ll see the material new each time.
[…] Tuesday, I had a class with 2-second-delay sensei. He had forgotten that we were team teaching, and his students were expecting an English test. I […]