Bloody Kids...
Every Thursday I teach elementary, junior high, and high school lessons at a special school. I know I've mentioned that, but, it is special, so it needs constant reaffirmation right? Also every Thursday I wake up in a bit of a grump because I don't want to go to special school (bit of a re-run of my childhood actually. Without the special school of course, despite what my sister tells everyone). I’m grumpy because, dammit, I didn't sign up to teach elementary school or junior high school kids. Also, unfeeling of me as it is to say - I definitely didn't sign up to teach handicapped children. I have no training and - despite what I told the JET interview board - very little patience.
So every Thursday I get on the early bus for the 40 minute ride to the hospital that the school is attached to and sit down to glower at people. If they're lucky I might have a book to glower at instead. Then I trudge into the building, fall in my seat and silently pray that no-one will bother me. And then I get to my first class and I really have no choice but to be the very antithesis of 'morning Geoffrey'......and damn these kids if I don't leave Koshiyogo in a good mood, chipper even. They're just so bloody happy and enthusiastic all the time. They speak better English than their teachers and they're quick too. Sometimes I think they're better than my senior high school students.
There are probably myriad reasons for their genkiness compared to 'normal' kids. They're surrounded by people who really want to be here to teach them (except of course for me, at least for the first 20 minutes of the morning), they are constantly praised, and are in very safe and colourful surroundings and are taught either one-on-one or two-on-one. Also, lessons are actually fun.
This is almost the opposite of high school where the teachers often end up being assigned the subject they teach (apparently this is why some English teachers can barely speak English - it wasn't their idea...) and they have to be reminded constantly by the local education board to praise and encourage the students: 40 kids spend seven hours a day in the same dreary classroom taught by a conveyor belt of teachers, some of whom cant always remember their names.
This morning when I arrived a very interesting thing happened to me. I was walking from the bus to the 'special' building when a rather short smelly chap said to me, almost in passing “you come here everyday?”
I had to ask him to repeat it because it wasn’t in the normal stuttering vowel-laden English of most Japanese ("hello-oo-wa how-oo-oo are you-oo-oo..." and so on).
“Ah, no, every week,”
“So you are a teacher then?”
"Well yes I am"...and I had a rather odd, yet pleasantly frank, conversation with a 60-odd year old Japanese man –
“I am handicapped you know. In that building there are many handicapped men like me. No, we don’t exercise, we work for Toyota Motor Company.”
Apparently Toyota are making use of the unemployable sector by having them make electronics. In a hospital. Of course I don’t know the full story but I’ll certainly ask him next week when I hopefully see him.
You see! Damn this place; it’s making me positively interested!
On an unrelated note I see Tony Blair's plans for a police state were defeated in the House. Let's hope it turns out all 'John Major' for him: slapped about by the opposition and stabbed in the back by his own party...
So every Thursday I get on the early bus for the 40 minute ride to the hospital that the school is attached to and sit down to glower at people. If they're lucky I might have a book to glower at instead. Then I trudge into the building, fall in my seat and silently pray that no-one will bother me. And then I get to my first class and I really have no choice but to be the very antithesis of 'morning Geoffrey'......and damn these kids if I don't leave Koshiyogo in a good mood, chipper even. They're just so bloody happy and enthusiastic all the time. They speak better English than their teachers and they're quick too. Sometimes I think they're better than my senior high school students.
There are probably myriad reasons for their genkiness compared to 'normal' kids. They're surrounded by people who really want to be here to teach them (except of course for me, at least for the first 20 minutes of the morning), they are constantly praised, and are in very safe and colourful surroundings and are taught either one-on-one or two-on-one. Also, lessons are actually fun.
This is almost the opposite of high school where the teachers often end up being assigned the subject they teach (apparently this is why some English teachers can barely speak English - it wasn't their idea...) and they have to be reminded constantly by the local education board to praise and encourage the students: 40 kids spend seven hours a day in the same dreary classroom taught by a conveyor belt of teachers, some of whom cant always remember their names.
This morning when I arrived a very interesting thing happened to me. I was walking from the bus to the 'special' building when a rather short smelly chap said to me, almost in passing “you come here everyday?”
I had to ask him to repeat it because it wasn’t in the normal stuttering vowel-laden English of most Japanese ("hello-oo-wa how-oo-oo are you-oo-oo..." and so on).
“Ah, no, every week,”
“So you are a teacher then?”
"Well yes I am"...and I had a rather odd, yet pleasantly frank, conversation with a 60-odd year old Japanese man –
“I am handicapped you know. In that building there are many handicapped men like me. No, we don’t exercise, we work for Toyota Motor Company.”
Apparently Toyota are making use of the unemployable sector by having them make electronics. In a hospital. Of course I don’t know the full story but I’ll certainly ask him next week when I hopefully see him.
You see! Damn this place; it’s making me positively interested!
On an unrelated note I see Tony Blair's plans for a police state were defeated in the House. Let's hope it turns out all 'John Major' for him: slapped about by the opposition and stabbed in the back by his own party...
posted by Geoff at 12:50 AM
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