July 19: Training Week

Well, that past few days, actually, the last week has been a whirlwind! A couple of days ago I arrived safely back at home in Ayashi, after a fun-filled week of learning how to be an English teacher. Arnie and Bonita Noraas took me under their wing last week, where I was able to learn a lot about Japan, the struggles of churches and Christianity, how to teach English, and were able share some of Japans beautiful countryside.

Bonita wrote her masters thesis on how to teach untrained teachers to teach English in northern Japan, so it appears I have the perfect person teaching me. She did such a great job at getting me through all the material in just four days. She described it as a shinkansen training week. (Bullet train training week). Every day started with breakfast at 8:00am, and then we started working at 9:00. We worked hard till noon, then they would take me out for lunch, either to an authentic Japanese restaurant, or we would pack a lunch and take me to some beautiful scenic place. After lunch we would work hard till dinnertime. On Wednesday and Thursday, Bonita had three classes each evening, so I was able to observe, which was very important. On Thursday, she let me teach a section of one of her classes. It was good she let me do it, cause it started off pretty rough, so those first few min I learned a lot of what I shouldn’t do.

It was during this training week that I realized how hard and stretching teaching will be. Mainly referring to the children’s classes. Imagine how you can maintain control over a class where you cannot communicate with language, only gestures, tone of voice and facial expressions. And once you have control, how are you going to keep them interested in what you are trying to teach them. Every instruction needs to be broken down into its simplest way possible, and transitions between each activity need to be seamless, so that you don’t loose your students. These were the thoughts that started running through my mind.

Since those first bits of anxiety, I’ve calmed down a bunch! The class sizes are not those of a regular public school. These English conversation classes are an after school program at our church as a form of outreach, so each class has between four to six students, and they want to learn. That is not to say that each kid will be an angel, and I won’t have to worry about control over my class, I’ll still have to be on top of lesson preps, and explaining everything in simple terms. I think that going through all the material and different curriculums with Bonita prepared me pretty good for the first week of classes. This coming week will teach me a lot, and I’ll have time to tweak and adjust how I move through the material.

July 20th is my first day of teaching, each class is an hour long, and they are only once a week. But I have thirteen different classes, all different ages, grades, or skill in English. So it should be another exciting week.