A Good Day at School

Today turned out to be a busy and good day. I had an elementary visit instead of going to my base school, so there was extra planning to do over the weekend, but only one of the two lessons I would be teaching required much of a lesson plan. I had four classes today; two classes of second graders and two of third graders. The second graders were working on animals, which is a lesson I have done before. It's usually pretty fun, as well. For the third graders... I got to teach dance!

I was a little concerned that the third graders might think they were too cool to dance in class, but they turned out to have very good attitudes. I taught them the Hokey Pokey, the Chicken Dance, the Macarena, the YMCA, and the Bunny Hop. There was a lot of giggling, especially whenever the dance called for moving your hips. Some of the dances were a little hard for them because the music is rather fast. If you haven't grown up doing the Chicken Dance, it can actually be quite challenging to keep up. I think it's something that all Americans (and Canadians, according to another ALT) learn from childhood, but it doesn't seem to be well known in Japan. I guess it wouldn't be, since it's a polka.

For one reason or another, the YMCA seemed to be everyone's favorite. Some of the kids knew the song already and started singing the tune (without lyrics) as soon as I mentioned the name. They all enjoyed the arm movements and a lot of them sang along whenever it came to the word "YMCA". I had a hard time keeping myself from singing the entire song, but I really had to since I still have a cough and needed to save my breath for calling out the steps. As a cultural note, I briefly attempted to explain what the YMCA was, but I'm not sure I made a lot of sense.

What made me really happy was how enthusiastic the teachers were. They didn't seem irritated that we had to move all of the desks out of the way, and in both classes, the teachers danced the whole time. They even went around and showed the steps to the kids that were struggling. It might've been harder to convince the students to get into it if they had seen the teachers hanging back and not doing anything. So far I've only had very helpful teachers, but I know that at some schools, the teachers will disengage and grade papers or something while you attempt to manage the class.

All in all, I really enjoyed today. It was pretty tiring but a lot of fun. I don't think a lot of schools request dance lessons, so I was lucky to get these classes. It's unlikely that I'll get to teach that lesson again. However, it was pretty satisfying to see the kids still humming the songs to themselves or working on the steps even as I was leaving. And I learned a few things, too, such as how to call the steps to the Bunny Hop in Japanese. It goes:

Migi, migi
Hidari, hidari
Migi, hidari
Ushiro! Mae! Mae!