I was asked if I would be willing to go to the local Elementary school and teach them English. "Sure", I said. My enthusiasm slowly turned to confusion and intrigue when I was told I would teach one 45 minute lesson to 100 students! What the? I was afraid I would feel like a one-man band, singing and carrying on having to entertain these kids. With the help of a colleague at Sanyo J H, we formed a plan. The lesson had been changed from a Friday afternoon, on which I would have taught 2 lessons at the Junior High school and gladly welcomed the relief, to an Elementary School day. So I had to ride to Arakawa in the morning teach 3 lessons, ride to Sanyo to meet Mr Fujiwara who accompanied me and then rode to Tegara Elementary. Mr Fujiwara was running late so we only just got there in time for the lesson to start, we were meant to have 15 mins prep time! So we dove straight in.
In the gym, the 100 6th graders were arranged in a horseshoe and I had a whiteboard at the front. I started by introducing myself and told them a bit about my life in Australia. Next they asked me some questions, both in Japanese and English. Mr Fujiwara came in extremely handy as he had to act as the interpreter, not only for the kids, but for me too! The first activity we did was a game where they had to win cards off others by playing Janken (rock, paper, scissors), the winner asking the loser "Do you have a ______" and had to guess what kind of animal card they had in their hand. If the guessed correctly the loser handed it over. The students who'd collected the most cards got a prize. Thanks to Jess and the ever generous Australia Post, I had many little prize packs to give away. The kids thought it was Christmas! The packs consisted of a pen, balloon, stamps, a colouring in sheet and a booklet about Dangerous Australian Animals. At this point I must explain why I look like Ranger Stacey! The title of my T-shirt is "Dangerous Australians", Jono and I thought it was pretty funny (maybe a little bit true!), hence me wearing the shirt! Mr Fujiwara even asked me, "Are you a dangerous Australian?" I answered yes, of course!!
The next game used the same technique of Janken and question asking, this time it was Bingo. Students had a sheet filled with names of different famous Japanese people. They had to assume an identity and go around asking people "What's your name?" They would then check this name off their sheet and try to get Bingo. Well, there were apparently about 20 kids who got Bingo at the last minute (the Aussie teacher in me says they may not have all been truthful!) so I didn't have enough prizes for everyone. And how do you solve these issues in Japan? Well, you play Janken against the teacher!! So the whole 20 kids and I chanted "Janken Hoi" to decide who got the remaining prize packs. It was very entertaining as the kids are quite serious about this game!Well as it turns out I did "Enjoy English with 100 students!"
