They were all ears
...written on 8.31.01, @ 1:48 p.m.
Tales of Kim's Life in Japan.
Ack! Eleven days without an update! What was I thinking? How could I be such a slacker?!
I haven't been slacking really. Once I tell you the stories behind my absence, I'm sure you will agree. Right?
Well, first off, I got back from Kyoto a couple of Thursday nights ago. I left Kyoto the night of "Daimonji". That's when they light up the five bonfires on different mountains in Kyoto to guide the dead spirits back home. I left without seeing it because I thought I had to hurry back to Ogaki to start working on the high school class that was happening the next week. It was going to be a week long and the first time that any American teacher was collaborating with the high school teachers (we usually teach jr. high).
Imagine my feeling when I was told on Friday that the teacher I was supposed to work with was off that day AND the next! I could have stayed in Kyoto and actually done some sightseeing other than the YWCA where the course was held and Kinko's Copy shop! But NOOOOOO! More astonishing to me though, was that we would then only have Sunday to prepare for this week-long course!
Sunday, Ohashi-kun and I met. He showed me the test booklet he had typed up. He pulled out the copious amounts of material I had given him before I left. I asked him if he had looked at it. If he thought it was an ok level for the high school students. If he had asked anyone for advice on how to teach this course that noone had ever tried before (College Listening Test Preparation). He was silent, but the beads of sweat on the tip and bridge of his nose were good indicators of a "no" answer. I asked him some more questions. More silence. More transparent beads. I asked him if he had any ideas on what we could do.
Funny, but I had prepared myself for this. I had told myself that whatever I would face in Ogaki when I got back that I had to be super cool. And I was. Thank Buddah I went to Kyoto and got that training! We had three days instruction on how to do listening classes there and I jumped right in to my notes and dragged Ohashi-kun with me. I showed him the lesson plan form, I showed him this and I showed him that. I outlined what we would do that day, what he should do, what he should say, what the students should do, etc. I told him I would type it all up and we would meet tomorrow at two (class started at 4:45) and do a run through.
The next day we practiced. We went over the goals and objectives of the course. I told him that the students would be doing a lot of pair and group work and why that was important. I explained all the major points and what he should say to the students in Japanese. After all this, I saw him pacing the room with the lesson plan in his hand, talking to himself as he tried to commit the salient points to memory. I asked him how he felt and he said he felt better about the course than he did yesterday. No mochi! (I think mochi tastes like crap)
It was show time, so we took everything upstairs and prepared the classroom. Our introductions went smoothly, things were going according to the lesson plan. Ohashi-kun looked very relaxed and composed on the outside as he did his spiel in Japanese. I only hoped he was hitting the vital info. And then I heard the word "pair" and figured he must be talking about the pair and group work. I saw the students' eyes grow incredulously wide as they looked from side to side at each other, shrank in their seats and gulped. Oh great, I thought, we're going to crash and burn.
We went through the plan, What is listening? What is the difference between listening and hearing? The students made lists of everything they had heard in the last 24 hours and then got into pairs to discuss the lists and some questions that we posed. We shared the info in a big group, did a little lecture demo, more pairs, more groups, etc. and then the one and a half hour of class was over. They had been slow to get with a partner, hey, new concept I know, but they were going to get plenty of practice in the remaining week.
After the class, Ohashi-kun and I shook hands and said "Whew." We went downstairs and started planning the next day's class. Again I asked him for ideas and he wasn't responding, so I took the lead again, figuring that this stuff was new to him too and that I must be gentle. For the first class, I had introduced a new term to him, "elicit" and I told him that it was super important to get ideas from the students, that it helped them connect their learning to themselves, etc. I marked eliciting points in the lesson plan so Ohashi-kun could ask the students questions at the appropriate time. I also plotted more pair and group work.
After we were done planning together, I asked him, "Now that you've seen how much work is needed to prepare for this class, what time should we meet tomorrow? "Noon", said Ohashi-kun. That's my boy, I thought. The next day was easier to plan and the class went well. Ohashi-kun had to teach another class after ours, so I went home to pound out another lesson plan and planned on returning at 10 p.m. when he would finish.
In the meantime, I went shopping. I bought little hand held mirrors for all the students. The next day I was going to teach them some pronunciation tips and we'd work on the l-r differences etc. In that night's planning session Ohashi-kun was using his new word, "elicit" to great effect. "And this is where I'll elicit answers from the students?" he said, pointing to a big group share period in the lesson plan. "Yes", I smiled, "that's right."
"Shall I elicit here as well?" he asked later on in the plan. I nodded. Good, he was catching on and I noticed he was offering more ideas and suggestions as we progressed in the planning. I was right, he just needed to warm up.
The next afternoon there was a typhoon heading our way, so the later classes were cancelled. That cut our class number to almost half, but we proceeded as planned. I handed out maps of the inside of the mouth and where the tongue was placed to make certain sounds. We practiced a few sounds and I asked them to look at my face, then look at their own faces in their mirrors. I also asked them to think about how those tongue and lip movements felt. On the maps, I showed them the difference between "l" and "r". I made my body a giant tongue and showed them with my arms where the "l" was and then crouched down to show them how to do the "r". Then it was their turn to try it. What happened next was music to our ears. They were doing it! The differences were as clear as can be. To be sure, I told them that it was sounding very good and that I wanted them to concentrate on the feeling in their mouths when they said each letter. One boy screamed "Wakkatta!" (I understand!) We did more sounds and tongue twisters and the class came to an end. I was sorry that six students had been absent on such an important day, but there was always the next day to do some kind of review. We dismissed the class and the students were still in their seats practicing with the mirrors. It was wonderful.
It was especially wonderful because our class was being observed every day by the other high school teachers. Like I said before, we haven't had much to do with the high school students, and the high school teachers have been rather aloof with us American teachers and have never seen us teach. Now, I was in their territory, and they all, at one time or another, stood outside in the darkened hallway and watched me through the one-way glass.
The next day I told Ohashi-kun that we weren't going to fill in the absent students about class the day before, but that the students that were there were going to tell them what went on. I had the students who were at the previous class make a circle facing out and the students who were absent made a circle around them face to face. I said "go" and the inside circle told the absent students what they did the day before, what they learned and how they felt about it. I yelled "Switch" a few times so everyone got to hear many different versions. I thought it was a cool way to review.
The next day I taught them about stress and intonation. I told them that every word in English has stress, which meant that a vowel sound would stretch a wee bit. I pronounced some words on the board and had them tell me where they thought the stress was and then I put a dot above the vowel there. To explain it kinesthetically, I gave them rubber bands and told them that when they heard me say a word that they should show me where the stress was by pulling on their rubber bands. I told them that many times I couldn't understand if a Japanese was saying fifteen or fifty and that to help them with it, they should pay attention to where the stress goes. I told them why this was important by having them imagine going to a MacDonald's in America and ordering 15 hamburgers (one for everyone in the class) and realizing the result (getting 50 hamburgers), if they were misunderstood.
For sentence intonation, I passed out whistles (kazoos would have been perfect, but I couldn't find any) and had them listen to me whistle some sentences that were on the board. I had them practice in pairs and then they were to try and guess which sentence their partner was saying.
I showed them how intonation could change the meaning of a sentence. I also had them demonstrate to each other how emotion could change intonation by having them read the sentences by crying, laughing, speaking slow or fast, by being happy, sad or surprised.
Then I taught them the beat of English. I told them that there was a reason that English sounded fast to them. That unlike Japanese where every syllable is accorded the same stress, English is a stress-timed language and that many words are squished to be able to have the important words stand out.
I put three sentences on the board all with increasing amounts of words and I started clapping with a fixed beat and said sentence #1, The children eat candy. Then sentence #2, The children eat the candy. And then sentence #3, The children have eaten the candy. They couldn't believe that sentence #3 had the same beat! They were amazed. I told them that in English we stress the important words and that they shouldn't concentrate on hearing every word to understand what was being said, but that they should think of their hands clapping and grabbing only the stressed words. Then I let the students practice in pairs and they looked like they were having a great time. In fact, every class after that they would bring their mirrors, whistles and rubber bands to practice the concepts on their own. What still makes me smile to this day is when one boy was talking to a girl and I asked them where the stress was on a particular word and the boy turned to the girl, and with an imaginary rubber band (his was on his desk) marked the stress.
Each day kept getting better. Ohashi-kun was blooming. I could see he cared deeply for the students and he had become an active planner in our preparation sessions. The students were doing things they'd never done before, learning things about the English language that they never knew and having fun while doing it.
Finally, Friday arrived. It was to be another listening station day (an overwhelming enthusiastic vote the day before settled it). I had three stations set up, one slow, one medium, one fast. One station focused on pronunciation, one on actual test materials and one had authentic listening materials with different activities the students had to complete before, during and after listening. After hitting the listening stations we asked the students to fill out an evaluation sheet on the course. I was surprised at the length of their responses, but would have to wait until Ohashi-kun could translate them for me later. We gave them tapes and a little "Good Listening!" certificate and thanked them for being such great students. We also took them for ice cream at the place in the first floor of my apt building. It was a great class.
I went home to rest before meeting Ohashi-kun and his boss back at Frontier. The boss was taking us to dinner to thank us for a job well done. He would leave every night and look in on us to see us crouched over a pile of papers with the white board full of scratches, outlines and mind maps. He said that he was impressed with how hard we worked.
I got to Frontier and found them both giggling over the evaluations. Ohashi-kun told me a few things, I saw that someone had written that "pronunciation" was their favorite part of the course, and then I asked Ohashi-kun what they had said about pair-work. Ohashi-kun smiled and said that they loved it and that they wished they could do it in their other classes too. That they had said it was much more stimulating than having the teacher talk all the time.
As a result of the evaluations, Ohashi-kun's boss wants to do the class again, probably during the Winter/Christmas break (never any rest for students or teachers in Japan). At dinner that night we batted around some more ideas and in front of his boss, Ohashi-kun said something that really moved me. He said that I not only taught the students how to listen better, but that I had taught him how to teach better as well.
Now I'm working on wrapping the whole project up. I'm revising some of the objectives, thinking of things to do better next time, etc. I am so happy that it went so well.
mata ne,
kimu