Demonstration Class

So, the day of the demonstration class finally came. It started out with a normal class period with the third graders. They were up to their normal shenanigans, cracking jokes and having conversations with the teacher throughout class. I can usually tell when they're saying something funny, but I can't understand what it is. Which is a little maddening, given that I can tell they're interesting kids but can't join in their interactions.

After that we had the second graders. We would be having the demonstration class with them after lunch, so this period was a rehearsal. I passed out nametags for the kids to wear, and they seemed kind of entertained by them for one reason or another. We went through all the activities and Y-sensei timed everything down to the minute. It turned out that we moved more quickly than we had anticipated when making the lesson plan (maybe because she had made the kids practice the activities a billion times), so she had to think of some extra things to fill the class period. In any case, things went smoothly and the class seemed to be in a good mood. There was one thing we hadn't planned for, though; one of the kids was absent. So, during the partner activities, Y-sensei and I took turns filling her place. For me, this entailed memorizing a few lines of dialogue for the "giving directions" activity. Of course, since they were in English and since I was the one who had written them for the students, it wasn't too difficult.

Once class was over, I had fourth period to myself. I spent some of the time practicing my lines silently, and some of the time pretending to be productive. Lunch came and I ate my cold pizza. Since the beginning of the semester, I've opted not to buy school lunch because there is an expectation that you will eat all (or nearly all) of your food. I was concerned this wouldn't always be possible given that they provide a lot of food, and sometimes it would be things I did not want to eat. A side note: Japanese school lunches always seem to include a main dish, rice or bread (or both), pickled vegetables, lukewarm milk, and maybe some fruit. I have never seen fresh vegetables, and rarely cooked vegetables, but there are ALWAYS pickles. Occasionally there are other odd condiments such as a small pile of tiny fishes. A snack you can buy in the supermarkets: little bags of whole, dried fishes and sliced almonds.

Anyhow, lunch went by normally. At this school I'm always a little hazy on when periods start and end because I never received a written timetable. I've just been listening for the chimes and following Y-sensei when it's time to go. So today I knew that the demonstration class would be after lunch, but I wasn't sure exactly what time it would start. I noticed on the front board that there was something that would happen for fifteen minutes after lunch. I think it may have been cleaning time. Ten minutes after that, it looked like class would start.

Finally, it was showtime. We carried up our large and copious teaching materials and waited for the teachers to file in. It turned out that a lot of the people watching our class were actually teachers from the same school. That was kind of reassuring, because they're all very nice people. Once everyone was in place, we started the lesson.

First we had greetings. Y-sensei greeted the four students in the front row, and I greeted the three in the back. Greetings consist of "How are you?" and questions such as "How's the weather today?" or "What day is it?". Y-sensei still says "How weather is it today?", which kind of cracks me up.

After greetings, we introduced the target phrase, "Could you tell me the way to the _____?" We had the kids repeat the phrase after us, substituting in a number of different place names. We held up signs that would be placed on the desks during a later activity. I had a fun time making those, by the way.

Once we had warmed up on that, we moved on to the dialogue in the textbook. It's between a woman and Shin; the woman wants to know the way to the post office, and Shin gives her directions. Pretty straightforward. Y-sensei and I roleplayed that dialogue, then had the students repeat the lines after us. They were pretty familiar with the dialogue by this point, so it went smoothly. They also did shadowing for additional reading practice. In this type of shadowing, the students stand back to back. One student reads the lines from the textbook, and the other student repeats them without looking at the book. We hadn't actually done this in any of my classes with the students, but apparently it was a popular activity with the previous ALT, and Y-sensei wanted to include it in the lesson.

After that we had a map activity on the chalkboard. I had prepared a very large map with a variety of places on it. There was a hospital, a train station, a post office, a CD shop, a library (which you will be pleased to know I labeled as "Library!", after the Boise Public Library), a pet store, a takoyaki shop, Daimaru, KFC, McDonald's, and a florist. This map had taken several sessions to complete, and I was pretty proud of it. Anyhow, for the activity, students went up to the board in pairs. One student put a small doll (Doraemon, Chicken Little or Mickey Mouse) somewhere on the map and asked the other student for directions to another place on the map. This went smoothly, as it had previously. I filled in for the missing student on this activity.

Next came a maze activity. My original idea was for it to be an activity where a student was blindfolded and given directions through a maze so as not to run into things, but it morphed into a somewhat less exciting activity. Probably a more practical activity, as well. In this activity, we set up the desks (all eight of them) to form a small town. On each desk we placed a sign, such as "Takoyaki" or "Daimaru". In pairs, the students did little dialogues and gave directions from one place to another. Here's the dialogue that a student and I did. He's giving me directions from the school to Daimaru (a large and fancy department store).

Andrea: Class was difficult, wasn't it?
Student: Yes, it was. Are you going home?
A: No, I want to go shopping. I need a new coat. Could you tell me the way to Daimaru?
S: Sure. Turn left, then turn right at the first traffic light. You'll see it on your left.
A: Thank you!
S: You're welcome.

Originally, I had thought that making the students memorize dialogues would add to the burden, but it worked out well with this class. I think they were slightly stressed about memorizing their lines, but it also gave them a framework for giving the directions. They also had a little bit of fun with it. On the dialogue giving directions from the hospital to somewhere else, I had written for the student to say, "I broke my arm, but I'm okay now." Instead, the student asked to change it to, "I broke my arm and leg, but I'm okay now." When he was given directions, he limped through the maze. I was glad to see the students getting into it.

After that activity, we moved the desks back to their normal positions and did dictation. The students had practiced this as homework, so some of them actually had the lines memorized and wrote them down before we had read all of them out loud. When we had been practicing, I hadn't really known what speed to read my lines at for dictation, because some of the students are much faster than others. However, Y-sensei gave me cues when it was okay to move on, and I also figured out which student was the slowest and learned to follow his pace. One of the students does have a harder time with English than the others.

This was the point where we had planned to finish the lesson (according to the lesson plan), but we ended up with a bunch of extra time. Y-sensei had the students read the dialogue in two teams. My team started as Shin, then read the woman's part on the second round. Then we practiced giving directions using the map in the textbook. One team would ask for directions to a place, and the other team would give the answer in chorus. I was surprised at how well this worked, given that the students were doing it on the spot. Maybe they really have learned how to give directions. Following that, Y-sensei gave them some worksheets to do. They went through those fairly quickly, so she also had them do a page in their workbooks and compare answers with each other. Finally, the chime went off and class was over. I don't think Japanese schools use bells to signal the beginning and end of class; I've heard chimes at several schools, and bird noises at others.

After class, there was a short break while the observing teachers had a meeting to discuss the lesson. I took that opportunity to run to the bathroom and blow my nose several times. It's considered rude to blow your nose in front of people, but it's perfectly acceptable to sniffle and snort, which I find a little gross. Soon after that, Y-sensei grabbed me and we went to a meeting with the principal, two visiting teachers (I think), and my supervisor. I couldn't understand most of it, but sometimes my supervisor translated things for me. It turned out that they were very happy with the lesson and mostly discussed how well it had gone. At one point they asked me what makes our English class so different from English classes at other schools. Basically, why did things work so well. I really didn't know how to answer; I don't know why students at some schools are so much more willing to work than at other schools. In this case, it's most likely because the classes are so small and because the kids are from a small, rural town (as opposed to the inner-city kids, who are frustrating as hell). However, I don't think that's what they actually wanted to hear, so I had to come up with something else. I had heard them talking about Y-sensei's confidence, so I repeated that, which they liked. I also said it was because the teacher and students respect each other. While this is true, I don't think it was all that useful of a comment, because I really don't know what you can do to make disrespectful students start treating their teachers with respect. In my classes at the other junior high, the teachers are also confident and treat their students with respect. However, the students do not treat their teachers with respect, and I don't really know why. In any case, I was surprised (and a little honored) that they included me in the meeting and actually asked my opinion.

After that meeting, we went to a meeting where the other teachers presented the information they had discussed in their meeting. The female teachers had formed one group and made a chart with a bunch of Post-It notes all over it. I don't really know what it said. I wasn't sitting by my supervisor during this meeting, so I didn't get a whole lot of translation. Y-sensei translated a few things for me, but I didn't always understand her. The male teachers had taken a giant print out of the lesson plan and written comments and edits all over it. All in all, the mood of the meeting was very positive, and Y-sensei and I were given a lot of praise.

Finally, the meetings were over and it was time to go home. I called a taxi, and while I waited, one of the teachers gave me a cream puff. They had brought a few boxes of them for some reason. It was pretty tasty. The taxi came, and I rode home. All in all, it was much less stressful than I had anticipated. I did feel the adrenaline kicking in right before class, but I wasn't exactly nervous. I'm really proud of the students for working so hard. After class, I asked Y-sensei if they liked stickers. I wasn't too sure if they had outgrown that, but it sounds like they haven't. So, next week I intend to give them some stickers as a reward. And not the small ones, either; these are decent sized Suzy's Zoo stickers. I'm pretty stingy with those.

Something kind of funny: after about one period of the students wearing name tags, I was much more confident that I knew their names. Even when I couldn't see the tags I had an easier time remembering. Just having a few glances at each student with their name tag on made it much easier to connect their names to their faces. Suddenly it became easier to tell them apart. I don't have any trouble with the third graders any more, but the second and first graders are still difficult. I'm starting to think that if they had worn name tags or put signs on their desks at the beginning of the semester, I would probably know their names by now. Oh well, I feel like I'm one step closer to learning all of their names.