Ishikawa, Japan

As I mentioned yesterday I was a bit wary of today. They invited the local ALTs to do crafts and activities with the kids calling it an “international day”. It was all funded because they are one of the English pilot schools for this year. The reason I’m wary is that very often these events turn into “look at the foreigners, aren’t they strange!” festivals

Luckily today they had a very good bunch of ALTs who came up with some very cool stuff, e.g. making a Native American dream catcher, making “s’mores” (first time I’d heard of them!) in a camping lesson, plus other games and songs for the other grades.

All the teachers for my workshop in the afternoon attended and the school was pushing it as part of their English education programme.

However apart from the window dressing there was no English education at all. The ALTs tried explaining things in English, to which the kids responded with “eh?” so correctly switched to Japanese (otherwise the kids would just have ended up hating the lesson), and when the ALTs did give English that the kids understand the teachers would quickly realise it was something that they understand and instead of giving the kids time to think they jumped in with their, often incorrect, translations.

Maybe a better way would be to plan the curriculum for the previous few months to include language that the kids are likely to use here. Then when the ALTs do arrive the kids will be really, really happy and very proud that they can actually use the English they’ve learnt. That’s what I try to do when I do when I visit schools. Then again I might be wrong.

So as far as English goes today, zero points. As far as an exciting and very enjoyable day for the kids to remember forever, full marks.

Model Class

Then it was my “model class” for 5th and 6th grades. 6th grade is tough. I can do stuff for that age group, but it’s very hit and miss and not what a “model lesson” should be. As most 6th graders at the beginning it was like drawing blood from a stone. So I used my normal trick of doing my self introduction. It’s a bit showy off, but if you can tell the kids you’re the CEO of an an internet company and show pictures of you travelling the world then at least you have their attention.

If you can, try and find one thing to impress the kids in your own self introduction, even something small can often work wonders. Teachers are, after all, role models, so if a kid thinks “Wow, I want to play baseball in America too” or “I want to play the guitar too!” then it’s a good day’s work.

Next was to try and get some motivation out of them to learn English. As this school has been doing the Eigo Note and just “playing with English” the kids don’t have much sense of why they are learning it. That’s the next thing to work on.

How to motivate 6th graders

One trick here is to find out what they want to be when they grow up, and then get them to try and find a job where they won’t need English! If it were about today, then in Japan that would be quite easy, but when you get them to think of 20 years’ time, where most of the jobs they will be doing haven’t even been invented yet, there isn’t a single job in Japan where you won’t need a foreign language at least a little bit. (If you don’t believe me, try it yourself!)

That had them sold on the idea. So now it was to find out what they know. The teachers yesterday told me to do my self introduction etc. in English. I said that wouldn’t work unless they could at least understand part of what I was saying. So I asked the kids what English they knew, to which the answer was “none!”. So then comes my usual trick for showing 6th graders that they do at least understand a lot of English, even if they can’t actually speak that much.

Once I had them on that we had 5 minutes to show a “model lesson” so I just did the Genki Disco Warm Up and Rock, Paper, Scissors to show the GE rules, and they were really, really good.

As with anything, if you can see the road you are going in, it’s a lot easier to actually move along it.

Funky Japanese Noodles

Then for lunch we had some excellent nagashi soumen.

Shyest teachers ever?

Then it was the teachers’ workshop.

I thought these were the shyest teachers I’ve ever taught. Until I realised that the reason they weren’t asking questions or sharing their problems was because that they don’t have any! They’ve been taught to not bother whether the kids get good at English or not, and for the curriculum they have the eigo note. Hence they were not very motivated. The only real questions came from the junior high school teachers. One of the teachers asked why I was so genki. The reason was that I had to be to get them to even have an ounce of passion amongst them!

As usual with these types of teachers, it wasn’t the “how to teach” that they wanted, many just wanted to have a free Genki English lesson. And sure enough in What’s your name? and Wie heisst du? they became the outgoing, confidence filled speakers they can be. But if I have to teach every person in Japan myself there aren’t enough days in the year! I need their help to do the actual teaching. Which is actually what they are paid for!

Luckily though in the evening I had dinner with the teachers and it was a lot easier to explain that “getting good at English” doesn’t necessarily mean tests or grammar or whatever, and that even if the kids think they are just “playing with English” then they can learn a great deal as long as the school plans the curriculum and materials well. They were actually really into things by the end of the evening and were really into the idea of getting the kids to be able to speak anything they want to in English.

Why ALTs are the best

However one thing that struck me today was how much better the ALTs are than the classroom teachers at teaching English. I’ve always known this, but as ALT budgets are being cut and as there are no where near enough of them, most of this year I’ve been focussing on how normal classroom teachers can teach on their own. This can be done, and there are some great teachers out there, but in general they need a heck of a lot of confidence training, and a very supportive system behind them.

Whereas with the ALTs all they need is a little guidance on what to aim for, a few warnings about what not to teach (e.g. don’t start with ABCs) and then the vast majority take the passion and excitement they have for being in Japan and use it to really inspire the kids to learn AND they get amazing results.

So come on Japanese teachers, prove that you can be just as good as the best ALTs! Dekiru, dekiru, dekiru to omoeba dekiru!! desyo! : )