It’s a great feeling when a class just “gets it”.

This week’s lesson has been on how to invite someone to a party over the phone. Yes, I know, an actual goal-oriented lesson. Some textbook pages in our New Horizon textbook, labeled “Speaking Plus”, are supposed to be geared toward speaking exercises. They’re pretty poorly written and contain no real variations; for example, if someone asks you for directions in English, you should always tell them to take Bus Number 3, even if there are no buses present. Usually teachers just steamroll over these pages and tell students to follow along by reading their textbooks. This covers the vocabulary, but obviously it turns “Speaking” into “Reading” and removes the logical thought that should go along with speaking. (I wanted to do a more generic invitation, but the textbook included the word “planning” and so we had to use the phrase, “I’m planning a party”. At least the teacher let me change the dialog a bit.)

Anyway, my original plan was to not write anything down. I had the kids repeat some sentences, but they were having trouble remembering things when it came to pair exercises. I wound up writing the sentences on the board with arrows where a question was being asked in the dialog. Then, after the students practiced and as I asked them to say the dialog in front of the class, I gradually erased it from the blackboard until the only thing left were the words “Saturday” and “12 o’clock”, and a few arrows. Then it was just a matter of reminding them that they didn’t have to look at the blackboard. And then before long I had them changing parts of the dialog; not much, but enough to give them a hint that they could muck with the dialog and still get it right.

Did I mention we had props? A pair of old telephones. That helped a lot too, I think.

I had a strange dream last night.

The “opening”, if you call it that, started out with me playing the role of a fugitive in a dystopian future, on some alien planet. I had escaped to this planet in order to get away from the overlords of what I presume to be my home planet. This new planet had a very very wide dirt road, about 40 meters wide, I guess for really large trucks. But something else told me it was just a game trail for really BIG animals. And I was right; as soon as I looked down the road I could see my fellow humans running from the entrance to a large cave. Why? Because an enormous black bipedal dragon-creature was running down the road toward me. It had a carapace like a beetle but its head was certainly more of a reptile shape. So what did I do? I did what any rational human would do in such a situation, and ran like hell in the other direction.

They say that when fleeing from a lion you don’t have to be faster than the lion; you just have to be faster than the slowest guy. And I was the slow guy. While I was running away people somehow had time to remark that they hadn’t seen me before and ask if I was new on this planet, etc etc. And then they ran past me.

Thankfully, the dragon-thing didn’t eat me or anything; it picked me up and put me on its back, where I promptly discovered why the beast was so angry. The humans had installed an interface plug into the back of its neck. But since I apparently also had a plug in my neck, I could hack the beast and calm it down. As soon as I plugged in I must have blacked out for a bit, because next thing I know the beast was dropping me off at a sort of deserted train station in the middle of nowhere. But at least it didn’t try to kill me.

Being a dystopian future, there were no ticket takers at this station. Although I had the feeling I was breaking some sort of law by riding it, when I got on the train it departed without incident. The train wasn’t normal; instead of windows to the outside it appeared to have a narrow row of mirrors to make the inside look bigger. The contraption was cheaply made; it seemed to be jury-rigged from plywood with no paint or furnishings apart from the mandatory steel poles to keep standing passengers from falling over. I think it was supposed to represent the bare minimum means of transit.

After a long ride, I finally arrived at the villa of the “master” of this place. There was some discussion about the economics of the dystopia. Everyone was assigned a “tier” based on their positive and negative contributions to the society. Based on their tier, a person could access goods and services. When they went to use the service they were “scanned” and allowed or denied access based on their status. Thus a person in one of the higher tiers could use personal transportation devices, but someone in the lower tiers could only use the rail system. I had been convicted of something or other (I assume wrongly) and thus would be on the lowest tier, and since I was also a fugitive I should have been denied even basic services everywhere; but apparently I had found a way to discreetly hack around it. This presented a problem for the established regime.

And then I woke up.

I haven’t posted recently simply because I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to post. Here’s a quick rundown on the past two weeks.

Last week on Monday and Tuesday I had to go to the Miyagi prefecture Mid-Year Conference. This is a mandatory forum where veteran JETs give talks about topics like “Extra-curricular activities” (how to get your students to use English outside of class) and “Effective use of the textbook” (I would say the first step is knowing when NOT to use it, but hey, what do I know). Some of the talks, like Mike’s on Extra curricular activities, were interesting, logical, and well thought out. Others were simply horrid. I guess it’s not surprising that if you force unqualified people to give talks you’re going to get a mixed bag in terms of quality.

Anyway, that completely screwed up the week’s schedule. I had been trying to teach a lesson with the new 1st year teacher since she arrived several months ago, but scheduling conflicts had prevented us from having a full week where I could meet each class. Before I left for the conference we had decided that we could spread the lesson out over two weeks; I would meet up with two classes on Wednesday, and the other two I’d meet the following Monday when they next had classes. To make things interesting, she wanted me to make a lesson plan. Yeah, it surprised the hell out of me too.

Of course this meant that I had to write up this lesson plan before Friday, with just two days to work on it. And at the same time, the 2nd grade teacher was starting to realize that she could ask me to write up worksheets, and she had asked me to write up one or two before Friday as well. I somehow managed to pull this off at the last minute despite being busy in classes most of the day, but not without staying in at the office until 6pm. I think the other folks in the office were surprised when they saw me at my desk doing real work, let alone so late at night.

Around the same time, I had a few of my 3rd year students come by the teachers’ office and ask to speak to me. They asked me to come to their class, despite the fact that the 3rd year teacher doesn’t seem to want to include me in the lesson. I realized at that point that even if I wasn’t able to directly participate in the lessons, my presence there had at least some effect. And a conflict of personality was a pretty stupid reason not to go to their classes. So I added the four 3rd year classes back into my schedule, plus another “elective” English class that I had never known about before. (I can only imagine the useful things I could have taught an eager crowd of 3rd year students given a full year to do so. If only the teachers would communicate these things with me. Dammit. I guess there’s next year.)

The Wednesday I came back from the conference the 1st year teacher and I had a meeting. A long meeting– we took up the class period before our lesson. Mostly we talked about teaching methods, how we wanted to get the students interested in the material, and how much time to spend on each activity. To me this was another surprise, because traditionally middle school English teachers in Japan don’t seem to do activities; they lecture on grammar points and read from textbooks for the full period. But maybe the lesson plan I had devised awoke something in her, because she seemed genuinely interested in breaking the mold.

My original plan was fast-paced, never doing the same thing for more than 15 minutes. It revolved around activities, skits, and dialog, usually getting students to start with a base conversation and changing the pieces around to make the students more comfortable with making their own sentences. Basically, I was trying to emulate the style of language teaching that seemed to work when I was first learning Japanese.

Anyway, she liked the plan but already we were running behind in the book and she wanted to push ahead several pages. So we used that hour in the room to come up with a plan for next period’s lesson. Basically we thought up several different ways of presenting the material, and then decided to spend 5 or 10 minutes on each one. (In case you’re interested, it seemed to work really well, but we’ll have to see if they remember the stuff next week when we do a bit of review.) In addition, she told me that she wanted me to come to each one of her classes just for 10 minutes or so, so that her students could hear me speak for a bit in every English class they had. It sounded like a good idea to me, as long as she could work out the scheduling conflicts. But of course this meant that because of the increased load from the 3rd year classes I would not be at my desk that much anymore. And what little time I did have would likely be spent making worksheets and lesson plans, and not checking email or updating my blog. I suppose this is a good thing, because it makes me feel a lot more useful, and spending more time with the kids won’t hurt either.

Outside of school, I haven’t had much free time either. Mondays a bunch of us get together and play card and board games at a friend’s house, Tuesdays I’m supposed to run the evening adult/small children English club in the next town over with George, Wednesday is poker night at my apartment. (Did I mention we just got real chips? They’re a blast to play with.) Thursdays I’m just trying to unwind from elementary school; usually I wind up going to my buddy Yassan’s restaurant in Furukawa and spending far more time than I want to there. Friday evenings are sometimes free, but Saturdays are my day to meet up with my girlfriend. I haven’t even had time to go to the local grocery store to buy a light bulb to replace the one that burned out in my bathroom.

Finally, for those of you who are still reading, I have one last piece of news. I’ve turned in the form to recontract for a third year. I don’t have any pressing reasons to return home in August, and I have a few good reasons to stay. My reason for staying last year, the kids… well, it’s still a good reason, but by itself it’s not quite enough. Among the friends I’ve made, most of the JETs here are leaving this year, but my motorcycle buddies of course are sticking around and they’re cool folks to hang around with. But the kicker is the girlfriend. I’ve got someone really special here, and if I went home now I’d be throwing it away. Loren, what you said before was right… we’re not married and I don’t know how far things will go, but I have a feeling that if I let things play out they will turn out well.