NICK: Heh, I'm practically a 2 year old myself!
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2006
1
32
106
Trip End
Ongoing
Matsuyama,
Japan
Friday, April 14, 2006
Ashleigh and I have worked hard on buying and arranging things into a logical order to finally have some settled point. My mother referred to it as a "love nest." Which I guess it is..
for some reason that sounds dirty.
whatever.
Anyways, our love nest is finally complete. We've bought a desk, a printer, a laundry drying rack, knick-knacks, had our dresser repaired, and I'm currently stealing internet from my neighbor, who is also a co-worker (I asked, he says it's cool if we use it, so I guess it's not stealing). Now that that's mostly done, I'm going to concentrate on studying Japanese again.
Work is awesome. The kids are super cute, and unbelievably well disciplined for being 2-3 years old. It's surprising how much discipline they're pushed into and how super mature they act by the time they reach Ashleigh's student's level of 4-5 years old.
Aiko Kindergarten requires that the minimum age of students be at least 2 years old. For some reason, the way things are run at the school are super complicated. I'll give you a breakdown:
The youngest students start at the age of 2, and they wear green hats. They're then divided into Green A (Ga) and Green B (Gb). I teach Gb, so my students have green hats with white stripes on them. Students in Ga have solid green hats. I also teach Blue A (Ba) , who are the 3 year olds. However, the 3 year old students in Ba and Bb have dark blue hats or dark blue hats with white stripes. Their shorts can be an orange color or a blue color, where the orange colored shorts mean that they started last year and the blue colored shorts mean they started this year. You can't confuse the color of the shorts with the color of the hats, because they may not speak as much english as the kids with the orange shorts. The shorts also don't tell you what year they are. Now there's also kids with light blue hats (solid colored) and they are non-english 4 year olds (since not all parents want to pay for their kids to learn english). There are also bright pink hats for 2 year olds and light pink for 3 year olds who don't learn English as well. Next are the yellow hats, both solid and white striped to tell if they're 4 year olds and Yellow A and Yellow B. Their shorts are red. The next one is the red hats and red hats with white stripes, and those are 5 years old and they have green shorts.
Got it?
I don't think I have it completely right, but that's what I've deduced from being there for 3 days.
It's cool - I'm paid less, so I don't have to be there the whole time. The school doesn't have any other staff other than the accountants, teachers and bus drivers. The bus drivers pick the kids up from each cardinal direction from the school, and they pick up the kids at different times, so some of my classes have more kids than others. The teachers are all yard duties, cleaning staff, baby sitters and yes, teachers as well.
Ashleigh and all the other teachers clean out the rooms, mop the floors, wipe down the desks, etc. It's tough work, and I applaud all the regular teachers there, they also clean up pee in the younger kids classrooms.
I usually come in with Ashleigh, Rachel and Brian (the other English teachers) and copy Rachel's lesson plans (she's got this stuff down) and am basically a guest teacher for the kids. I teach them basic English commands (stand up, sit down, quiet, etc.) and we sing songs and play games. I start teaching them things like songs with the ABC's, hokey pokey, hello, how are you. My job is super fun. I dig dancing around and getting the kids excited.
For the 2 year olds (Gb), the two Japanese teachers basically are in charge of the behind-the-scenes stuff. They clean up the kids that have wet themselves, get the kids in their seats, help encourage them to parrot what I've said by repeating things I ask them to say. They also make sure the kids that are running around sit back down in their seat. This is handy since there are about 28 kids per class.
There's one kid in the 2s that is a real handful - he gets up EVERYTIME he's put back in his seat, and the other day he flung a block across the room. Didn't hit anyone, but he was dragged back to his seat and scolded pretty quickly and quietly.
It's really hard when my 2s are after lunch. They're not used to being in school for so long and they don't get naptime, so for my first few days half of them were passed out, and a quarter of them were crying for their mothers. The other quarter were staring at me with no clue of what I was saying. The next few days they started to get the idea that if they sang and danced with me, it could be fun!
I really dug when the kids started dancing with me. they're so friggin cute, try to imagine about 6-7 little Japanese kids doing "skidamarinkydinky dink" with me and trying their best to keep up. The new favorite is "Head, shoulders, knees and toes."
Rachel has done an awesome job of giving me exercises and tips for keeping the kids interested and teaching them English at the same time.
My 3's are the most awesome kids. They're super excited, have a grasp of what I'm talking about, know colors, days of the week, stand up, sit down, body parts, animals, etc. Well, most of them do. The ones who're new to Aiko will learn pretty quickly tho. I'm currently reviewing (not really reviewing, they don't have a summer vacation to forget everything, so it's not that hard) all the information that I have in my desk to see if everyone is up to speed.
I'm kind of jealous of Ashleigh and Brian - they teach the 4-5 year olds, but they get to do more complex games and things. My classes right now are memorization-regurgitation classes. The kids don't know how to use the information you give them, they just know that if I hold up a picture of a lion, that they shout "RYON," and I say "good." I guess Aiko wants them to teach the kids how to speak in conversations: How're you, my name is.. etc. That's a lot of work, but I think it could be fun. Ashleigh has some good ideas for getting the kids to practice this, and since they're 5 years old, they have better discipline than American 10 year olds. It's amazing to see them during assemblies, and she says classes are so well-behaved.
In other employment news, I spoke with my "future" boss from the English Academy. I have an interview with her on Tuesday to secure the job in June. She also wants to meet me face-to-face to talk about some other options regarding part-time work once I'm done with Aiko in May.
Wish me luck!
