July 1, 2003 - 11:22 PM
Wes Ehrlichman

At the moment I am thoroughly engulfed in the 5th Harry Potter book, and putting it down to write this journal took an act of bravery large enough to put me in the Gryffindor house... and writing down that last sentence was an act of geekiness large enough to put me in Revenge of the Nerds V. I made a vow to do a weekly journal last week though and I don't want to break my vow on the first week! Before I attempt to stop talking about Harry Potter I would like to say that in the latest book of the series Harry's would-be girlfriend Cho reminds me tremendously of Scott's ex-girlfriend Deb. That's a little bit of a double inside joke that might only be funny to me.

Very photogenic

Thus begins today's journal entry. The topic? An average school day for yours truly. What follows will be a typical day for me at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; I mean uh, Kedouin Junior High and Elementary Schools. I'll try to spare throwing in Harry Potter references from here on out, but I will probably go off on a few, as well as some unfounded tangents about the Japanese school system! We'll see though. School is a lot of fun sometimes and really boring at others, but my days of teaching will be over soon so I thought I might at least try to give all you people at home an impression of what the average day is like before I leave.

This student gave me an amazing Final Fantasy X-2 toy. I will pay her back by giving her an A+ (I would if I had that power I mean)

At about 7:00 in the morning my alarm clock goes off. Maybe "goes off" isn't the right phrase. At 7:00 my alarm clock detonates in an enormously loud ringing sound that's not unlike having telephones ringing on either side of my head with both of the ringers set on deafening (and that's at its lowest setting). I forgot to bring an alarm clock from America and when I first arrived I didn't know the area well enough to know where to buy one so I was given one by the wonderful ladies of the Kedouin Board of Education. They got me one that causes a war next to my head every morning, but at least it gets me up. Err - actually it doesn't, and I usually push snooze once or twice every day. When I finally do manage to make my way out of the covers, I usually hop on the computer and check my e-mail, then go to a few daily websites including The Official SuperWes Forums (plug plug). I get in the shower at around 7:45 and take the fastest shower that I can, then hop out of the shower, put my clothes on, and pop my contacts in. By the time all of this is done it's usually around 8:00, at which point I will either shave or play around on the computer a bit more before I head to school. Mondays and Thursdays are trash days, so on these days I have to pick up the trash from around my house and in my refrigerator and take it to the dumpster on the way.

I swear every girl at school acts like this all the time.

I try to leave my house at exactly 8:10. The school is either 2 or 3 minutes away depending on whether I ride my bike or walk. Sometimes, if I have to shave I'll end up a few minutes late, which results in me getting the evil eye from the vice principal for the first few minutes of the morning meeting. Speaking of the morning meeting - this meeting starts at 8:15 on Monday and 8:20 every other day of the week. These daily morning meetings usually involve me sitting at my desk twiddling my thumbs trying to grasp a word here or there. The most I ever get out of it is the names of a few sick teachers or that there is a PTA meeting coming up that I need to pretend that I don't know anything about. If something sounds important I'll ask Mr. Eto what happened. I can get all of the juicy stuff this way.

The meeting usually ends at around 8:30, and classes begin at 8:45. During this period between the morning meeting and the start of classes I will usually check the schedule and ask Mr. Eto what the plan is for the day's classes. After this I try to keep myself busy until class starts. There was a brief period where I studied Kanji, but now I usually go around and bug the other teachers or go grab a cup of coffee and try to wake myself up.

Harro!

When we finally get to class we begin with some sort of game then we read passages from the textbook. Sometimes Mr. Eto goes over a grammar point then we do some sort of activity to practice the grammar point. Whenever we're done with a chapter we spend an entire day in class doing a practice test and at the end of the class period Mr. Eto hands out the answers to this practice test. Just prior to entrance examinations, the entire 3rd year spends every day for over a month doing almost nothing but worksheets. In general our classes range from fun to absolutely dreary, but in all cases I try to keep things lively by making an idiot of myself whenever possible.

Get a Money

One positive thing about my class when compared to what I hear about other JET's English classes is that we don't have a problem of students sleeping in class. There was a bit of sleeping when I first got here though. Mostly from one third year student. After a few days of this I began setting all of his books on top of his head, sticking kick me signs (in English) on his back, or licking my pinky and sticking it into his ear to wake him up. It sounds a bit harsh, but as long as you know what kids you can and can't mess with everything is OK. The kid took it pretty well and he even started staying awake eventually.

If I don't have a class during one of the periods I will usually prepare something for either my English conversation club or for my post-lunch elementary school classes, both of which I plan everything for myself. If I've got all of that done I will either study some Japanese or read a book. I think it makes some of the teachers kind of jealous, but if I'm not given something to do I'm not going to pretend to be busy.

Duuuuuuude

It's a bit late, but I suppose I should probably mention the structure of my days. The days for me are split between pre and post-lunch times. There are 4 class periods in the pre-lunch periods, and I usually go to around 3 of them. This varies from week to week though, and sometimes I'll end up having classes during all 4 periods or even having almost the entire morning free. When these first four periods are done it's around 12:30, which is lunch time. It's probably interesting to note that Japanese kids eat lunch in their classrooms instead of in the cafeteria. They even put on little masks and smocks and serve the lunch themselves. Most teachers alternate between eating in the kids' rooms and eating in the staff room, but because I'm a vegetarian and they have to prepare a special meal for me every day I am forced to eat in the teachers' room every day.

The Nimbus 2000!

When lunch is done, the students have a bit of free time, which they spend playing sports, talking to friends, or smacking around the smaller students (and I spend reading Harry Potter). After this is cleaning time. Instead of hiring a cleaning crew like American Schools, the students are actually expected to clean the schools themselves, and spend about 15 or 20 minutes of every day keeping their school clean. The school plays happy marching music over the intercom and all of the kids grab a broom or a washcloth. There are a couple of interesting things about cleaning time. First of all, they don't use mops to wet down the floor, they use wet washcloths. The smaller kids put the washcloth on the ground and hold it in two hands, they then stick their butt up in the air and run as fast as they can across the room with the washcloth pressed firmly to the ground, wiping down the floor. The other strange absence is that they don't use window cleaner to clean the windows. They use crumpled up newspaper. The students crumple up the newspaper then rub it all around both sides of the windows until all of the little black dots and the streaks are wiped clean. It works surprisingly well actually. It also takes an amazing amount of time, and whenever I end up working on a window I spend nearly the entire 20 minutes on just one or two panes.

Just call me Hermionie

After cleaning time there are two more class periods, which I usually spend at one of Kedouin's four elementary schools. I'm not allowed to drive, so on elementary school days I am forced to wait around for one of the office ladies from the elementary school to pick me up.

The elementary school classes are a lot of hard work, and usually end up being either an amazing amount of fun or being incredibly ill conceived. I'm convinced that this has less to do with me and more to do with how shy a class is and how active the games are. I try to focus the elementary school classes around a central theme, which is not something that their usualy teacher usually does if they plan my elementary lessons for me. I usually try to think of a theme and then think of as many activities that I can that are at least somewhat related to that theme.

Take the other day for example. I was teaching directions and it was my best lesson yet. I began the class by playing Simon Says and having them raise their left hand, right hand, left foot, or right foot. Then we sang the Hokey Pokey with these things. Well honestly, I sang the Hokey Pokey and they just did the motions. When we got to the "You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around" all of the boys would scream "Turn turn turn!" and then start spinning around flailing their arms wildly hitting each other with each spin. This got increasingly more violent as we did the Hokey Pokey for both hands and both legs, and when it got to the final part of the song where you just sing "You do the hooooooookey Pokey!" over and over again and you spin around, the boys in the room created a massive mosh pit and started beating the crap out of each other. To my surprise, when the song ended the real teacher asked if we wanted to sing it again. "Sounds good to me," I said, and we sang it again only to more violence.

Next, I settled the class down by busting out a huge cartoon poster of an overhead view of a small town street. I taught school, park, bank, apartment, library, and other easy place words by asking them things like, "Where is the library?" and letting them guess which was the library. After they knew all of the vocabulary I had them tell me how to get to place by saying go straight, turn right, turn left, and stop, and I moved a magnetic arrow around the poster according to their directions. After I did one as an example I called one of the students to the front and had them face the other way while I pointed to a place on the map for the rest of the class to see. The students then guided the student in the front of the class as he or she moved the magnetic arrow to the specified building. It went really well and since the hokey pokey had roused the kids up a bit most people weren't too shy.

The last game is where I went a bit overboard though. There is a popular game called Suikawari that Japanese people do on the beach which is basically just playing pińata with a watermelon. I didn't have a watermelon or a big stick though, so I revised the game to use a pair of foam nunchaku and a stuffed animal Santa Clause that I had left over from Christmas. I called the game Santawari. In this game I would put a Pokémon handkerchief that I bought when I first got here around one of the kids' heads and then I would spin them around and when I stopped spinning the students would give the blinded student directions to the Santa. When the blindfolded student arrived at the table the students would say "hit!" and the blindfolded student would attempt to knock the Santa off of the table using the nunchaku.

Elementary is also unbelievably cute!

Sounds pretty fun, right? I put the blindfold on myself as a test subject. I made my way around the room following the voice of one of the louder kids and successfully hit the Santa off of the table (I think I may have hit a small girl as well because she was rubbing her shoulder when I took the blindfold off). Next I put the blindfold on one of the smaller kids. At this point, my idea was to move the Santa over to another desk just in case the blindfolded kid had a good sense of direction, and then make the kids guide the blindfolded kid to a new location to take out the Santa. The kids had an even better idea, and set up different obstacles on the desk other than the Santa. One kid put his pencil case up there. Another kid put a hat up there. As they guided the blindfolded student toward the desk, many of the kids were yelling from a surprisingly close range considering that the kid had a pair of nunchaku in their hands. He finally reached his destination and swung. Every item on the desk fell onto the floor. The kid took his blindfold off and looked down on the ground in disgust. Apparently the students had actually been putting the blindfolded student's items all over the desk.

I held the nunchaku in the air and asked if anyone else wanted a go. You'd be surprised how many actually did. So after a few more rounds of this I had everyone sit down and reminded them of the words for library, school, bank, etc. Then said "Good-bye, see you next time!" and then closed my eyes and said, "Where is the deguchi? (exit)" The students yelled out commands and eventually led me out of the classroom and I went home knowing that both them and I had had fun.

More productive than English Class

That is not a typical elementary class, but it is somewhat close, and it's the way that I would prefer most of them to go. My main goal is for class to be fun, with having the kids actually learn something somewhere further down on the list. I really think it's more important at that age that they are given the impression that English is fun to learn and this will hopefully inspire them to work harder when they reach the middle school and high school levels. Teaching things at any higher of a level could potentially further alienate the kids that aren't very good yet, and make them dislike English for the rest of their days in school.

We do everything together!

There is a chance that English education in elementary schools will become compulsory in the next few years. Right now there aren't any real guidelines for when students should begin learning English, and I personally think it's a mistake to make everyone really start studying English any younger than first year of middle school. Teaching them early may end up making them better at the exams, but the reality is that the average Japanese person, especially one from outside of Tokyo, really has no need to speak English other than to understand the broken English on many of their T-shirts and beverage containers. You could argue that it will help them in business, but the amount of students that go into international business is fairly small compared to the rest of the country. Even though all Japanese people have to study English for at least 6 years of their life most of the teachers at my school can't get past the first page of the Harry Potter book I've been lugging to school. This is not a reflection of how they failed to learn English, but rather a reflection of how little most Japanese people will need to use English outside of their middle school and high school Exams. The time that they would spend in English if it were compulsory in elementary school could be better spent toward classes that actually mean something in the real world. The real solution would be to offer English as an optional class, but because of the way the schools are set up, with set classes, and teachers that rotate between rooms, it's basically impossible for the students to be given any choice about what they want to study. Japan supposedly has one of the better education systems, but I think I probably learned more in America than I would in a Japanese school, simply because I was given a choice of what I wanted to study and when I wanted to study it for most of my educational career. When I get home and start looking for a job we'll see if that paid off!

I think you can guess which one is Harry...

I guess that's it for this journal. I guess I'll leave you with a photo of one of my students. The kids call her Harry Potter... Guess that makes me Professor Snape!

You've failed potions!