One week down, one to go

I have now completed one week of the two-week training session for ECC. Our training group of 15 is apparently abnormally large and so we were split into two smaller groups. My group began with Kids English World (KEW) training. KEW classes are for children from ages 1.5 to 12. For the past week the people in my group have gotten to know each other fairly well, considering it’s only been a week, because we've been forced to make complete asses of ourselves in front of each other.

In kids classes it is important to have a lot of energy and enthusiasm, or else the kids won’t have any fun. And, I suppose it goes without saying, neither will the teacher. We learned how to teach simple vocabulary words, grammar and sentence structures among other things. We learned a plethora of ridiculously annoying, nonsensical, sometimes catchy, but more often extremely awful and non-musical songs, complete with a whole routine of gestures. (I don’t dare call them dances). There was the “make a pizza” song, the hello song, goodbye song, let’s have fun at ECC song, Old McDonald, Itsy Bitsy spider song, etc. I had to do a demo lesson where I taught the other trainees how to sing “Old McDonald...” If I hated that song before, I really do now. It’s an awfully difficult song to teach to people without actually speaking much English. We’ve had to rely on gestures and flashcards, because in the real classes if we try to explain anything in language more difficult than cave-man talk, they won’t know what the HELL we’re talking about. Of course, these songs are for classes with kids ages 1.5 to about 6.

Truthfully, I actually loved Kid’s training. It turned out to be a lot of fun because… oh yeah, I forgot, I think singing and dancing and being a goofball is ridiculously fun and always have. I suddenly have a hunch I may not be so bad with children after all. (Now I’m wondering why I was so adamant about turning down babysitting jobs as a kid.) Granted, I haven’t actually taught any real classes yet, but my last demo lesson on Friday kind of, well…kicked ass, I think. The other trainees had very positive reactions, such as “your demo was the best one.” (That means something, right?) Even the Kid’s class trainer said it pretty much rocked. I was rather shocked by the whole thing. I was pretty nervous about it, but as soon as I began it was totally fine. I suppose I did a lot of preparation the night before due to this nervousness. The lesson I prepared for the demo was for ages 4-6. A lesson for that age group involves making absolutely everything seem new and amazing and exciting. For example, when teaching vocabulary words you must sound like this: “Oh my god!! I can’t believe it, what is this?! Ohh wowwowwow this is so cool!!!??!!! What is it? YES! It IS an apple! Amazing! Well done! Good job little Yuki! High five! Woooweee. Can everyone repeat that? Apple? Good. Apple. Good. I can’t hear you! Ohhh gooood job, aand high fives for everyone else too! Wahoo wahoo” and so on.

And the weird thing about the really young kids’ classes is that their parents attend and participate in the class too. So you have to make an effort to include the parents: “Mrs. Matsuki, since your two-year-old is still a slobbery teething creature that doesn’t even know what the hell is happening and doesn’t know what letter this is, can you tell me what letter this is? YES! Wow, great. It is an “A”! You got it! Good job, high five Mrs. Matsuki!” It’s ridiculous. And it’s really hard to keep up this level of over-excitement when you are doing a demo lesson with other trainees pretending to be the students and parents. They are tired from training, feel awkward about having to sing dumb songs in front of everyone else, and are not excited about your lesson at all. I also had to teach them the retarded Goodbye Song. Imagine as you will.
I also had to teach them words like apple, cake, egg, ant, the letters A through F of the alphabet, and of course, the whole alphabet song. The kids bring in these foam alphabet letters and you have to think of silly things to do with them while you teach them the alphabet. "Okay what letter is this? A! that’s right. Let’s say A over and over again and then put the foam letter A on our heads and then shake it off like a dog and then take letter B and throw it at the door! Quick! Yeah yeah yeah!" Kids apparently go gaga over that stuff. Who knew? They also like it when you teach them how to say vocabulary words in funny voices and do silly gestures that act out the meanings of the words. I actually really enjoy doing all of these things. This is good because after my demo lesson on Friday a couple of us trainees were assigned a bunch of kids classes to take over immediately after training ends. I guess some people need to leave Japan early and break contract, so people like me, who come in near the end of the school year, can take over their classes for the last month or so. As a result, I have at least three kids classes starting soon, not sure how many in total. The three age ranges I’ll be teaching are 4-6, 6-8, and 9-12. I think the 9-12 will be the most challenging because that’s the age when kids are no longer interested in learning and are suddenly very interested in impressing their friends. This includes making fun of their teacher and not doing their work or participating. I think this also may be the age range where the occasional kancho may be bestowed upon poor unsuspecting foreign teachers. If you haven’t heard, kanchoing is when Japanese kids find it hilarious to stick their fingers up their English teacher’s butts through their pants. My kid’s trainer actually warned us never to turn our backs to our students. Oh dear.