School #4 - Nampeidai

Today's school was a bus day, and once again, a completely different experience.

In the morning, an older Japanese gentleman came and introduced himself to me, and told me he would act as my interpreter. He had a very high level of English proficiency, although very strongly accented, and often in ways that differed to the normal Japanese accent, for example, "Hello" became "Haloo" instead of the usual "Harow". He was very friendly and incredibly enthusiastic. He's not an employee of the school, he has just taken it upon himself to help, and has been doing it for some time.

The first lesson was a bit difficult, as he enthusiastically translated everything I said, instead of letting the kids figure it out for themselves. As a result, I had about 20 minutes at the end, where I was scrounging around for activities to fill the time. The next lessons were a bit better though, as we worked out a bit of a routine. It will be interesting to see how things develop...

I also had a couple of obviously mentally handicapped kids in that class, so it will be interesting to see how things go with them. The attitude of Japanese teachers seems to be to just ignore them and get on with class...

The year sixes were on a field trip, so today I taught fours instead of sixes. On Tuesday, I said I felt a bit like a rock star. Well today, a few Yr 4 kids in each class approached me for a signature. As soon as one succeeded, I was mobbed. I signed baseball caps, notebooks, pencil cases, home ecc textbooks, and scraps of paper. I drew the line at a kid's jumper! I would have spent about 10 minutes at each class (what should have been my recovery time between lessons), signing a never ending stream of items that needed to be signed. My Japanese helper got to sign a number as well, so maybe it wasn't just the gaijin factor though.

Again, the teachers were lovely. The vice-principal sat down and had lunch with me. When I was finishing up, the principal personally escorted me to the bus stop. As it transpired, we just missed the bus by 2 minutes, and there was a 13 minute wait until the next one. He insisted on staying with me, even though I told him I was fine. From what I understood, he said something a along the lines of "there might be bad people, and how would I explain to your mother and father if anything happened to you". While I'm quite sure it was unnecessary, the gesture was very sweet, especially as principals here in Japan have a reputation for being extraordinarily busy people. So we sat at the bus stop, and chatted in a broken mixture of English and Japanese, and were mostly able to understand each other.

It will be interesting to see how the school goes next week, when I have 3 Yr. 6 classes. The Yr. 6s at this school have a reputation for being particularly unruly. Adam, who taught them last year has warned me. Their teachers this year told me that they were "very energetic, but also shy". I'm not sure what that means, except that "shy" might mean "un-co-operative". Also, the principal told me "I hope you will enjoy our students, but they are very energetic", with a somewhat concerned expression, and also, "If you have any troubles, talk to me an I will support you." This was a lovely sentiment, I only hope it's not because he expects me to have trouble! Dave assures me that classes can often change from year to year, especially as children are shuffled around between classes, so I am aiming to make a good impression next week, and hopefully keep them more or less in line for the rest of the year.