20 Questions

During the mid-year conference one of my group members mentioned playing 20 questions as a warm up with his class. Today I used this game with my ni nen seis, but it took up almost the entire class. I was pretty impressed at how quickly they were able to pick up on the game and use the different kind of questions creatively. Anyway, here are some of the questions I got:

“Is it cute?”

“Is it made of tree?”

“Is it eaten on weekends?”

“Is it in your family?”

“Is it a beaver?”

“Is it smaller than Earth?”

“Is it smaller than Doitsu (Germany)?”

“Is it a robot?”

“Is it taller than a Drew sensei?”

More Solo Classes

So this is how you get more solo classes as an ALT. First, you have to write a blog post about your first solo class. Then you need to have your work computer completely freeze while a JTE is nearby. Then, when the JTE comes over to talk to you, she must read the post. Anyway, I had two more solo classes today. They were with the ni nen seis (who are basically two perfect classes), so everything went ok. Its so weird how I basically have to yell at the ichis, with Adachi also saying what I assume is something similar in Japanese, and they just keep talking, but with the nis all I have to say is “ok, listen” and everyone is silent. Tomorrow I have the whole Special Needs class, unsupervised as the teachers will all be taking part in some giant card game (at least that is my understanding of the situation). The bar isn’t set too high though, as my only instructions are “teach them something for 20-30min”.

The Next Four Months

Now that some things have been booked I have a pretty good idea of what the next four months look like. It’s gonna be pretty busy, but hopefully lots of fun:

Feb. 15-24: Colin visits

Feb. 16-20: Thailand

Mar. 20-23: South Korea

Apr. 5-12(?): Dad visits

Apr. 14-May 19: Marla visits

Sometime in late Apr. : Andrea visits

End of Apr./Beginning of May: Trip to somewhere (Vietnam?)

May 19-29: Mom and Mel visit

So I have a lot to look forward to. As you can see Marla leaves on the same day my Mom and Mel arrive, so I will have visitors for about a month and a half straight.

First Solo Class

So today I taught my first class alone. While I have pretty much taught classes alone before (Okuganaya  especially), this was the first time I was actually alone in the class. Even though I only had two students, they were special needs students and they were ichi and ni nen sei, so communication was an issue. I was able to get through the entire lesson plan, even though at one point I had to just guess what the worksheet meant, because the instructions were all in Japanese.

I’m really glad I have made an effort to learn Japanese, because I think I used just about everything I have learned today. Not being able to say “Look at this”, or “Please write here”, would have made things much more difficult.

Kobe Mid-Year Conference

On Thursday and Friday I was in Kobe for a prefecture wide conference on team-teaching. All the ALTs and most of their JTEs in Hyogo were there, so it was pretty big. While it was definitely better than both Tokyo Orientation and Yashiro Prison, I don’t know how valuable it actually was. It was organized by the senior highschool board, and the topics were slanted toward them pretty heavily. Also, the focus was on using English debate as a learning tool, which I think is impossible. There were lots of practice debates, but every time a JTE was involved it showed how you really need to know a lot of English to debate, as well as have a non-Japanese attitude toward conflict. I guess on Monday I will mention the idea to Nohmi sensei, but I would be really surprised if there is ever a debate in my class.

One really good thing about the conference was that I got to see all the far away ALTs, and enjoy free accommodations in Kobe. After the conference we partook in some nomihodai (all you can drink), at an izakaya and then a strangely empty club. The nomihodai made the later details a little less distinct in my memory, but it was definitely fun. The train ride home this morning was not quite so fun though…