Mimasaka City, Okayama Prefecture.
After the past few days I got up this morning thinking “Please let this school be good, please let this school be good.” And they certainly were!
The head teacher picked me up at 7:00 for the hour long drive into the mountains and we had a really good chat on the way. He’d been in business before becoming a teacher so was well versed on the problems of the public system like we had yesterday. He was also very into Japanese culture, but not the sort of thing you see in the “kokusai rikai” books, but real made in Japan stuff like haiku or old stories.
“Good Japanese” speak…
One of the tools I’ve been using to combat the “children must be perfect in Japanese before they learn English” reason for banning elementary school English is to use the Goethe line that “Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.” I, somewhat cheekily, suggest that the reason Japanese kids are so bad at Japanese these days is because they don’t speak any other languages. Then I illustrate it with the most famous Japanese writers, nearly all of whom spoke English or German or Chinese e.g. Natsume Soseki who studied in the UK, or even the people who wrote katakana took it from Chinese kanji. The head teacher today rolled off a huge list of important Japanese writers all of whom spoke other languages.
Eye contact is Japanese…
Plus we also talked about how eye contact is a traditional part of Japanese culture. In martial arts you bow whilst making eye contact, and one of the old tenants of teaching in Japan was to “teach in the students’ eyeline”. It was only in Samurai times that lower caste people were told to lower their gaze when the Samurai passed them by. It just goes to show that many aspects of culture aren’t what they are always thought to be.
Full speed…
Anyway, this school is again a government pilot school and they have to teach from next term (i.e. next week!) so were really motivated! They got warmed up in two minutes, gave me full respect from the start and asked loads and loads and loads of questions! We ran through two demo lessons, one with me teaching, one with them and did tons of stuff to illustrate all the solutions. They were loving it, seemed hyper relieved by what we did and I only just made my bus back in time because there were asking so many questions! Excellent.
They have to teach the Eigo Note in 5th and 6th grades, which is fair enough (they’ll expand on it using the GE songs etc. like I describe here), then they’ll use the GE Curriculum in years 1 and 2. In years 3 and 4 they’re not allowed to teach “English” as such unless it’s for a reason.
So they came up with the idea of doing projects or “video letters” ; ) , working out what language the kids will need and then working the curriculum back from there. Things like “how to grow rice” I think are great projects to exchange with kids in other Asian countries. (It’s coming up to rice harvest time in Japan)
So I’m now sat on the train heading home to Imabari feeling very, very happy. Usually I start my Japan tour being shocked by how low level the teachers are compared with teachers overseas. This time the Summer Tour started with really amazing teachers in Ehime, Osaka, Tokyo and Okinawa. It did tail off a bit this week, but mainly because of the people in charge rather than the teachers, so it was really nice to finish with such a high energy fantastic bunch of teachers. I’ve certainly learnt a lot this Summer and I now have a big new list of requests for new materials to make!
And that, ladies and gentlemen is the end of my Japan Tour 2008. I’ll be around for another couple of weeks before heading off to the schools in India once Ramadan has finished, then workshops in Cambodia, lectures at the University of Newcastle in the UK and Lulea in Sweden and then finish the year off with my first workshops in Beijing, China!
