Healthy Debate

Many of my elementary schools this year have requested that, if I'm not teaching English, I should participate in a class. This makes downtime unexistant, which is something I'm fine with. I usually request to be placed in a class where I wont get bored; PE, art, music, and science are always at the top of my list. The other day, I was placed in PE, with about twenty highly energetic third graders. I arrived to class about a minute late, they were already stretching. As they counted off in Japanese "一、ニ、三…" I decided to rebel and see who would follow. "one, two, three, four..." I said with a grin. The eight count finished and two boys standing in front of me followed (as I was a leader). I soon became curious how many kids would join. I began to push. The field of students was about four wide and five deep. A grid of twenty with two leaders and myself in the front. I had already infected two. So I pushed... We completed the sixth stretch, I had the entire front row was counting in English. At this moment, the Vice principle appeared and a small argument broke out. I continued to push... The boy, in the front row farthest from me got into a debate with a girl leading the stretches... ---Translation--- Leader girl, "count in Japanese". Boy, "I want to count in English" "you are Japanese, you are not American, count in Japanese" the girl said in a bossy tone. "Vice Principle! Can I count in English?" he said with no hesitation. "Count in whatever language you want" Checkmate. I was satisfied. Not only did I give the kids a chance to speak in English, I gave them a small lesson in rebellion. The class finished off their stretches in unison; "six, seven, eight".

ALT's have too much free time

Family and friends back home often ask me what I do for work.  Of course I teach English but in all honesty, about three quarters of the time I'm completely free.  This gives many people the opportunity to study Japanese, read books, or what you should do; prepare a lesson (who does that?)  I kid, I kid.

Recently, I started to animate in my free time.




Enjoy

L is for Luigi

A while back, I was teaching some fourth graders.  The kids were making sketches of their family, which they would introduce later, infront of class.  Each student had to scribble down something that 'their person' liked.  One boy wrote down that his father liked ''baseball''.  Of course, he wrote it in Japanese but in katakana.  I could at least read it (I still can't quickly recognize the kanjis for baseball 野球).  Being the way I am, I ask him to write it in English.  He didn't know how to spell so I said each letter for him.  When he go to 'L', he was stumped.  Right when I was about to help him, a boy sitting infront of him, whips around and says in Japanese 'L, like Luigi'.  A light burst through the boys head and he was able to complete the word.

brutal honesty

While walking to an assembly today, I turned to a boy next to me 


''Do you like meat?''


 him ''Yeah I do'' 


''Do you like meetings'' 


without hesitation ''NO, I DON'T''. 


Keep that brutal honesty kid.