Today was my first visit to Yogo Gakkou, a special education school in Kochi. I was asked to prepare a Christmas-themed lesson for the first year high school students. On one hand, I was excited because I was getting to teach a fun subject, and with the special education students you're generally just expected to do something the students will enjoy, as opposed to something with a clear educational purpose. But on the other hand, I was worried because I didn't know what kinds of disabilities the students had, or what their level of English was. There was the very real possibility that I would prepare something too difficult, and the students would be frustrated and have a bad experience.
I'm always a little worried that my activities will go much faster than planned and I'll end up standing at the front of the classroom with nothing left to do, so I prepared a ton of options for this lesson. My main two activities were Christmas Bingo and origami. I figured the Christmas Bingo would be fine because the bingo cards had pictures instead of words, so even if the students didn't understand the vocabulary, they could still play. As for the origami, I was kind of relying on the fact that there would be many teachers there to help the students in case they struggled. On top of those activities, I allowed for the options of singing We Wish You a Merry Christmas (the simplest Christmas song I could think of), playing hot potato to Christmas music, and doing a word search if it looked like the students could read in English. When I looked at the lesson request sheet again this morning, I was glad I had thought of a lot of things to do, because I discovered that the class period was longer than I was used to. I was thinking of elementary visits, so of course the high school students would have longer classes.
When I got to the school, I was fairly nervous. I really didn't know what to expect, and for me that's one of the worst situations. However, when I got to meet the teachers and some of the students before class started, I began to feel better. The students were friendly and seemed like they'd be able to do all of the activities I had planned. With some of them, it wasn't really clear what their disability was, but with others it was more obvious. There was one boy who occasionally would make loud, sudden noises, which startled me the first few times. But even he seemed to be in a good mood, so I wasn't too worried.
When class started, I gave my usual self introduction presentation, and the students were more participative than most of my junior high school students. They were interested in my pictures, they were impressed when I told them Spats was 19 years old, and they had questions to ask me afterward. Because they were friendly, I found it a lot easier to be energetic and positive. It's important not to be shy or reserved during a school visit, but sometimes it's hard. Today it was very easy. When I introduced the vocabulary for Christmas Bingo, it turned out that the students already knew a lot of the words. The most confusing one was "mistletoe"; this was the second time I've tried to explain what it is, and I'm not really sure I got the idea across. Anyhow, the bingo game went smoothly and the students seemed to enjoy it. After that we started on origami. I passed out instruction sheets and paper, and some of the students immediately set to work on their own. Others wanted to follow along as I demonstrated, and some needed help from the teachers or the students next to them. The pattern was fairly simple (a basic Christmas tree), so many of the students finished quickly. I passed out the next pattern and more paper to the students who had finished. Pretty soon, class time was up. We actually stayed a little into the lunch period so everyone could finish their projects.
In the end, there wasn't time for the third origami pattern, singing, hot potato, or the word search. I think any of those activities would have worked, though. I left the school feeling great about the lesson, and very happy that I got to meet those students. I've gotten so used to the junior high students at my big school that it was startling to meet students who were enthusiastic about class and interested in me. I don't know that we covered a lot of English, but we did have fun and we were able to communicate about things that interested the students.
Last night I spent a good chunk of time preparing for today's lesson; organizing photocopies, cutting the origami paper as needed, and making sure I had all my materials together. But what took the longest was finding Christmas music to put on a CD. It turned out that I wasn't able to use the CD today because the CD player wouldn't read it, but the process of gathering the music sparked a lot of memories.
From my perspective, the most important song was "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". That was the one the students would have the best chance of being able to sing, so I wanted to get the perfect version of it. In the end I found one that was a nice, slow pace. I'm used to singing it at a very fast tempo, so I was glad to find a version that the students probably could've kept up with.
For each song, I was trying to find the most iconic version. I wanted it to sound the way I always hear it in my head. As compared to how I remember the song, the best rendition of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" turned out to be the Gene Autry version. I bought a collection of 99 Christmas songs for $1.99, and while they were very good, some of them didn't quite live up to my expectations. The song I've had the hardest time finding is "Angels We Have Heard on High". There are probably thousands of versions of it, but none of them sound like what I remember. When I hear it in my head, I remember it playing (on the tape player? CD player?) in the living room while we decorated the tree and sang along at the top of our lungs. It's probably the most Christmas-y memory I have, more than writing letters to Santa (and putting cinnamon and sugar on the seal of the envelope) or opening the presents on Christmas morning. In my memory, nothing felt like Christmas as much as that moment did. And for all the samples I've listened to on iTunes and Amazon.com, I can't seem to find a version that sounds as joyful and exuberant as I remember it.
Another song I haven't been entirely satisfied with is "O Holy Night". I don't even remember hearing that particular song until I was in high school, but now nothing quite lives up to the memory of accompanying the Boise High School Choir as part of the Chamber Orchestra. We crowded our chairs and stands into the narrow arms of the auditorium balcony and played in the dark with only the lamps clipped onto our stands to see by. Now, if I hear a version without string accompaniment, it just doesn't sound complete to me. And though the choir couldn't possibly have sung as well as the recording artists, and though we weren't a professional orchestra, it made me want to cry when they sang "Fall on your knees!". I hope they still perform that at Boise High, because I want to hear it again when I come home.
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