Today was Wednesday (aka hump day) for me. So that meant another day at the middle school. I taught 4 classes, so not a bad day today. In my first class, the vice principal of the school came in to observe and just hang out...unannounced! Haha, but he's a good guy. He's good at English and I think he likes to study it a lot. He's able to have a relatively good conversation via English and it's quite impressive. Although he's not completely fluent, he's good with the technicality of the language and understands a lot of the nuances that most people may not get.
Well, I haven't had feedback since I was working at Target earlier this year, so it was interesting. He said that the class that the English teacher and I taught was good, but he also had a few comments which he shared with us later. He gave really good perspective on the lesson and told us what went well, and then gave a little bit of his own insight into what he thought could have been more useful or what could have gone better.
One thing that he mentioned that I didn't even think about until then was the "situation." No, I'm not talking about Mike "the situation" from Jersey Shore! Haha, that's just ridiculous. But up until this point, I have been teaching English and helping students to understand the language. They understand basic things like "What's your name? How old are you? How are you? What did you eat for breakfast?" and other questions like that. However, the vice principal also mentioned that it's important to create the scenario or "situation" in which phrases or grammatical points are used. These are the things that can be created with 2 teachers in the classroom (myself and the English teacher). I guess that's a big reason why I'm here in Japan. To help to understand when to use the grammatical points that we teach. Instead of just cranking through the text and showing students the vocabulary, it's important to also help them understand when these things are used. There are many different words that have similar meanings. But it's always hard to know which one to use in which situation unless it's your native language.
I guess since it's natural for me, I don't think about that kind of stuff. I just know when to use different words and for what situation. But most of these students haven't been to an English speaking country, so they have no idea how to use this stuff besides when told to speak it in class. The whole "Putting what you learn to practice and real life" is what the vice principal was getting at. It was really good advice and a really good point. These are the situations that aren't always listed in a textbook. And unless there's not someone there like me (from America or another English speaking country) the students would have a really difficult time understanding how to use them.
Well, I guess a light bulb turned on for me today and that's a good thing. I'm glad that even though I'm not working in a company or advancing my business degree as much, I'm still learning new things and practical ways of life. I guess that's what is important, and even these small things can be transferred over to the business side of me.
I finished off the day with the other 3 classes for the day and then headed home. Tonight I will have my eikaiwa class for the adults, so I have that stuff prepared and ready to go...except one handout which I forgot to make copies of at the school! So I'll swing by the school again and make copies before the class tonight. Not a big deal. It feels like forever ago that I had a class with the eikaiwa group but it's because last week was canceled. I didn't have class last week because it was the national holiday. So after a one week break I feel pretty good and will be back at it tonight!
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