Students make it all worth it

I realized that I am horrible about giving specific details and that these blogs have taken on the tone of simple, generic updates. Let’s try to remedy that!

My students are adorable, and I know I have said that several times. Allow me to finally elaborate.

At Iwatsuki, I teach a class called News English. It’s not necessarily about news, but we try to incorporate the media industry into it one way or another. For example, the final exam covered topics like advertising, censorship, fact and opinion.

Anyway, as this is a semi-advanced elective English class, the students have a slightly better grasp on the language. One student, however, approached me because she wants to improve. She has little confidence in speaking, although she listens attentively and is aware of the topics. Her strength lies in writing, so she came up with the idea of writing a daily English diary to me. It’s not overly complicated, but it’s daily reinforcement and I really enjoy making corrections and writing her little notes back at the bottom of each page. It has also cracked the barrier that lay between us. She has asked me questions about things I have written back to her, and then expanded the topic further in her journal.

There is also a pair of students that I like to call the ‘Society Girls’. Embarrassing as it is, I don’t know their names: I don’t teach their class (Sabina does) and I have 510 students total so cut me some slack. They earned their name because they asked me to translate the word 社会 into English one morning while walking to school, and it means ‘society’. Now, whenever they see me they shout out ‘Society!’.

Except… I had a cold when I said the word, so it came out sounding more like ‘Socie-tay’, ala Eric Cartman’s ‘authori-tay’. Of course the girls memorized my butchered pronunciation. I get a kick out of it every time.

Today, in fact, the girls bounded into the Staff Room, shouted ‘Socie-tay!’, then raced out and down the hallway shrieking ‘Teeeeeeigan!’, ‘Sabiiiiiina!’.

It’s a good thing the people around my and Sabina’s desk already think we are nuts, because we collapsed into giggles.

Hisashiburi!

Holy cow!

Last I checked I could have sworn it was still September! Where is my life going?

I am so backlogged on little snippets, stories and experiences that this might feel rather rushed. I guess I will just trim the fat off most of what went on last month.

During the month of November all the Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) had their ‘Mid Year Skills Development’ conference, which took place at the bureaucratic center of Urawa, just a few train stations away from Iwatsuki.

While it was great seeing everyone’s faces again, particularly those who have been flung way out into the boonies of Saitama-prefecture, I rather felt that the entire 2 day affair was a waste of time. Not because the lectures weren’t interesting, and not because the skills and lesson plans highlighted weren’t relevant.

No, the thing that bothered me most was that every single ALT except for me was able to bring a Japanese Teacher of English co-worker with them to the first day of the conference. The conference was supposed to be a time for JTEs and ALTs to have open communication together about teaching, the classroom, and learning/teaching aims.

One teacher from my base school DID come, but she was technically assigned to my co-worker, who works there fulltime. I don’t even work with this particular JTE.

Had I been able to, I would have hauled in one (or several) of my JTEs from my visit schools. At least then there would have been some form of communication between us. As it was, the entire lecture was how to better ‘team teach’. Unfortunately, the whole concept of ‘team teaching’ doesn’t really apply to me either.

I am either a glorified tape-recorder and I just read from a textbook and have students occasionally repeat after me, or I make up lesson plans entirely from scratch and am more or less a bona fide teacher and not an assistant, OR the JTEs ignore me 90% of the time and then expect me to teach ‘as I like’.

Yeah, that is the one incredibly frustrating thing about this job. I almost wish I didn’t have any visit schools, but then I stop and realize that the students at each of my schools keep me going. Even if their abilities vary, even if some of them would rather sleep, there’s always ONE wide-eyed kid who keeps me motivated.

Ah, I feel like the above is a bad representation. I really do enjoy my job. I do, I do, I do! That was just a tiny rant that needed venting but….*deep breath* All good now!

Anyway, after the conference, work switched into high gear. It’s now final exam time, so the past several weeks consisted of trying to jam as much as possible into the unwilling brains of the pupils. I also had to help write the exams, which isn’t difficult, but rather time consuming.

However, none of that really mattered because I was looking forward to a huge bright spot in the month of November: my friend Krista was coming to visit!

Bless her little chinchilla heart, she flew out to the Land of the Rising Sun for 10 days and willingly put up with Tour Guide Teigan for her adventure.

Om nom nom sushi!

We managed to accomplish quite a lot in the time that she was here. I didn’t want to exhaust her so our itinerary wasn’t TOO packed but…

I took a few days off work , stacked together with a national holiday, and we went to both Nikko and Kyoto.
Nikko is a famous area in Tochigi-prefecture, affectionately referred to as Shogun Country in my guidebook. I had been there before, back when I was studying abroad at Waseda, but I was still impressed with the place.

We visited Toshogu Shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the final resting place of the Tokugawa Ieyasu. The shrine complex itself is a wonder of architectural effort and is absolutely beautiful. Too bad the day started out sunny (and my hair straight and manageable) and ended up getting snow-forecast cold (with poofy ridiculous hair).

 

Thanksgiving was spent at my friends Kelly and Clint’s house. I didn’t have the oven space to go to Costco and get a real turkey, but I baked up some chicken instead. There was a small gathering of Americans, non-Americans and Japanese people at their house. The Japanese in particular seemed horrified and fascinated that the English speakers were being willing gluttons on this day only.

That night, Krista and I took a night bus down to Kyoto. All in all, it was quite comfy and I was able to sleep better than I thought. We toured the city of Kyoto that day, saw some famous shrines and temples at a leisurely pace, then checked into our hostel before heading to Osaka for some dinner with my friends Erin and Evie.

Allow me to interject here that we went to a Host Club after dinner. I won’t get into the particulars of what exactly a Host Club is, but suffice to say, you pay for drinks and chatting with a (sometimes) cute and (sometimes) interesting young man. I had no expectations, and poor Krista had even less since she doesn’t speak a word of Japanese. Yet, we had a blast! Or at least I did….I definitely got my 500 yen drink set worth.

We made it home by 1 am, after making a mad dash through the train station to catch our last train back to Kyoto (silly boys were distracting!) and had a decent night of sleep.

Fushimi Inari and Nara were both next on the list. Again, I had already been to both, but that made it easier to slip back into my Tour Guide Teigan person! Just gimme a Dark Mocha Chip Frappucino and I will launch into a history spiel for ya!

Nara was overrun by deer which demanded to be fed deer crackers (sometimes impolitely), but Krista and I enjoyed the time spent there. Finally, it got to cold and too dark for us to deal with it anymore, and we headed back to Kyoto.

The next morning, we made it to the central station bright and early to catch the bullet train back to Tokyo. Man, the shinkansen (bullet train) is amazing and comfortable, although too expensive for regular use. I would love to tell you more, but, uh, I crashed and slept most of the way back.

Monday Krista returned home and I was a sad little American without her red-blooded pal.

But the memories will remain forever! So in a nutshell, that’s what I have been up to the past month. And now that it’s December it’s time to start focusing on Malaysia and India!

Passport Stamps: Gotta Catch ‘Em All!