I had my second adult English class tonight. It's an hour a week, and I don't get paid. I was asked by my vice-principal at one of the schools, and felt it would have been rude to say no.
"Hey, Cliff! Would you like to teach some of the teachers English?"
"No, not really."
I am going to try to get vacation hours out of it. 8 weeks would equal 1 day off work, or something like that. It turns out, though, that this class is really easy and fun. Right now, I'm also doing an extra kid's class that I AM getting paid for, and I'm coming to dislike it. I'm trying to teach them to read in between me saying, "Kaname, don't hit your brother.", "Kaname, stop climbing on my back.", and "Kaname, stop drawing pictures of poo on your English folder."
In my now-almost-one-year since I've come to Japan, I've discovered that I don't like teaching kids under 3rd grade. It seems that 3rd grade is the magic year that they begin to calm down. So it makes perfect since that my adult class is just awesome. Last week, the first class flew by, doing only half of the things I had planned.
The class consists of 3 teachers and 1 assistant teacher. In 2-3 years, Japan is making English a mandatory lesson for 5th and 6th grade, so these teachers are looking to brush up on their skills. I don't expect my class to turn them into great speakers as I highly doubt they will study on their own. To them, it's just a fun hour. But as long as it's fun for me too, I don't mind.
Sentence Diagramming
1 week ago
2 comments:
It's funny- my favorite classes are 3rd grade and younger.
I've also been teaching an adult class for free to a guy in my office. I'm going to teach him some good things to say to my successor.
It's good that the teachers are interested in taking an English class. Someone surely needs to train all these elementary school teachers. Otherwise they are going to struggle when they have to teach their own English classes!
Yea, I heard they're going to have to get training for when they start doing classes.
But I'm glad I won't be here when they start. I love my 5-6th grade classes. I had a 2nd year JH student come in this week as an intern. She sat in one of my classes and my kids swam circles around her. Only because they hadn't covered the stuff we do in my class.
I hope that when they do start this, that 1st year JH is the equivalent of 3rd year JH, and not just a primer.
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