That So-Called "Educational Institution"

~Although the school I work at is nominally a children's school, the ages of my students vary widely. My youngest student was only six months when she started, and my oldest student is a parent who takes a class at the same time as her child. Most of my students are in grade school and middle school, with a few kindergarteners, highschoolers, and babies (who take classes with their mothers).

My parent class is extremely easy to run, because the student doesn't want to follow standard lessons or use a textbook. Usually, we talk about food for forty minutes. Seriously, she's really interested in food, especially the differences between Japanese and American cuisine. For example, we spent all of last week's lesson talking about...cheese! I brought in an empty can of Parmesan cheese, which I go through like an ADHD kid goes through Ritalin.

For students above the grade-school level, an interesting and difficult factor comes into play. Simply put, every student who comes to class is completely exhausted. Japanese students are insanely busy, and most of my students come to English class only after their hours-long school sport clubs and a long school day of difficult studying and high-pressure tests. Many of my older students attend cram schools, or juku in Japanese, where the instructors have no patience whatsoever for students who fall behind. Nationally, 70% of high school students attend juku.

I would never want to raise a child in Japan.

I have one student, a grade-schooler, whose mother makes him wake up at 7 A.M. on weekends to study English, and he has long after-school classes every weekday, in math, computers, Japanese, swimming, etc etc. Sometimes, students appear to be bored or slacking off, but often, they are simply dead tired! The massive imbibement of genki drinks is often the only thing keeping them on their feet.

The teaching methods at my school incorporate many activities to get the students moving around and awake, but older students are often "too cool" to participate. This is a major problem in group lessons that contain students of both genders. The girls will cheerfully participate (provided there is more than one of them), but the boys will invariably refuse.

I think this is because of the Japanese aversion to embarrassment of ANY kind. In an American co-ed class, the boys will often try to show off in front of the girls, but in Japan, the guys are utterly terrified of looking like fools in front of the girls. As the Japanese say, "The nail that sticks out tends to get hammered."

My most difficult class to run is a group high-school lesson with five students. Some of the students have absolutely no interest in studying English, and they glare at me and sigh for the entire class. Well, their loss. Still, I can't help but compare them to my crazy younger students. I'd rather have a student be distracted yet energetic than distracted and sluggish.

Teaching for such a wide range of students is difficult, but it can also be rewarding. Recently, my youngest student (currently 10 months old) spoke her first word in class: cat. Moments like that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. ~Oyasumi!