Kris Sensei

Last week was my first week where I was in front of students, teaching English. It was really good, but not in the sense that I did such a great job. It was really good because I finally was able to see what level all of my students were at. Also, it was the first week of many weeks where I can start ironing out all of the wrinkles in how I present material, move from one activity to the next, and most importantly, feeling comfortable with the students, and having them feel comfortable with me.

Before I get too far into this post, let me quickly paint a picture of what my class looks like, because it may not be what you imagine. First off, although I may be a teacher, the setting is more or less like a tutoring session. I am not standing in front of a classroom with 25 kids sitting there, passing notes around, chatting with their neighbor or anything like that. We all sit around a large table, where I have from 2 students—6 students, depending on the class.

I have 5 different classes that are in Elementary school. There are 4 different levels of the “Lets Go” curriculum that I use with them; each class is at a different level. Two of my classes are in Jr. High where I use a more age appropriate book called Get Real. One high school class, they use the 2nd book of Get Real. One young adult class, their ages range from 18-30, we use the same material as high school. Then I have 3 adult classes, two of these classes are advanced, so I come up with my own material. One of the ladies classes is beginner, so there is an age appropriate textbook I use with them. Those are all of my classes right now, but in three weeks we will be adding another adult class on Saturday nights, bumping my class count to 13 a week.

Its not a bad schedule at all, in fact, now that I’m in the second week, I feel much more comfortable, and can manage my time a bit better. Right now lesson planning takes up a good chunk of time because I need to plan about 10 different lessons a week, and each class is a little different. Luckily, there are lots of different activities I can do with the kids to keep the hr long class interesting. My finding is that it is easier to plan the children’s classes then the adult classes. But when it comes to teaching, time goes by so much faster in the adult classes, which is probably because they understand more of what I am saying. In the beginner classes, I get a lot of blank looks, like they don’t understand…which is the worst! It really challenges me to simplify what I am doing, a lot of the time, simpler then I know how right now.

The first week, Junko came to all of my classes which relived a lot of the pressure. It allowed the mothers observing the class to have a language buffer, someone they could talk to and ask questions. It also was less intimidating for the student, knowing that they weren’t stuck in a room with a foreigner who doesn’t speak their language. I tried to break the ice and suck up by writing, “My name is Kris” on the board in Japanese, it actually worked pretty good (Watashi no namae wa kurisu desu. I can even write it in hiragana…so, bonus points).

Last week ended well, and so far this week has picked up right where I left off, so I’m thankful for that. There is still lots to learn, but what I have learned thus far has been a lot of fun!