On Being a Model Teacher

On Tuesday, I had to teach a "model lesson" with my main English teacher at my base school. This did not involve swimsuits are speeches about world peace, as I had originally thought it would. Apparently we were doing a "model lesson" to show other teachers how lessons are supposed to work. Or something like that. I'm still not entirely sure. All I know is that my teacher was flipping out for about a month before the lesson. Everytime I came to the base school, she'd rush up to me and let me know that she had changed the lesson again. Eventually, I stopped looking at the changes she made, knowing that they'd be changed in another two days. The weekend before lesson, she came to my house on Sunday to talk about the lesson. It was really just a normal lesson, with more planning and stress put into it. I kept on telling her that she'd be fine and not to worry, but she was almost in tears at one point. She's been teaching at the same school for ten years and was just transferred to this school in April (the school year begins in April in Japan. Teachers will usually teach at a school for 5 years, then get transferred to another school in their city or prefecture. From what I hear, she was at her old school so long because she kept going on maternity leave, so to complete her 5 years, she had to stay for somethign around 10).

While I had originally thought this school was full of very kind people and the principal was super-nice, I now found out that there were currents of unhappiness going through my base school. Apparently, the principal came to one of the English teacher's classes the other week and yelled at her and the students for being too loud. He later told the English teacher that her students test scores were too low (in Japan, written test scores are EVERYTHING. This is why you will have students who can read a book in English but can't say hello) and that she needed to get them higher and stop doing so many activities with the students. Now, if you know about how American teachers are trained, this is completely reversed. It's all about doing activities to give students "hands on experience" and "real life learning". Anywho, since then, my English teacher said she's totally lost her confidence. She used to think she could plan a lesson well, but now she feels as if she's a bad teacher. Sorry, that was a long rant, but I had to get that down.

So on Tuesday, I came to school, and SURPRISE, she'd changed the lesson again. :-) Poor woman. There are 3 second-year (8th grade) classes in my base school. The model lesson was to happen the period directly after lunch, but we had a chance to teach it to another class the period before lunch. Unfortunately, we didn't get through the whole lesson, so we had to modify it. Again. I wasn't really nervous, as I knew my job really wouldn't be effected by the outcome of this lesson. My English teacher was a wreck. She had to go to the bathroom several times, said her stomach hurt a lot, and I bet she didn't eat lunch at all. I felt so bad for her. Finally Dday arrived and we went up to the classroom. There was a row of chairs in the back for the other teachers to sit in. We started class as normal. Once our greetings were over, some of the teachers began to trickle in the classroom (all the other classes were doing seatwork or something on their own, since all the teachers were watching this lesson). After that, class went fairly normally. I noticed a lot of the teachers taking notes in the back of the room. Class went well. It ended. We went back to the teachers room. I was relaxing. Ten minutes later, my English teacher asked me if I was ready to go. Go where? Oh, she forgot to tell me. There would be a special meeting to talk about the lesson. Great.

So I scrambled to get my stuff for the meeting. I brought my Japanese/English dictionary and my notebook, notes, and pencil. The meeting was an hour and a half of Japanese I couldn't understand. And it sounded like my English teacher was explaining the lesson a lot, so she couldn't translate for me. The first half hour consisted of the other teachers asking her quetsions. The next hour was the Vice Principal at a random high school in my city. I guess he was like the guest observer who was going to impart his wisdom on us. He liked his voice. He used it for an hour. It was a very serious meeting. Everyone was taking notes and listening intently. I, too, was taking notes. The words puke, asshole, and dingbat are not in my dictionary. Vomit, burp, belch, ass (donkey only, sadly), butt, armpit, feces (that was surprising - I had to respell it 3 times to find it), and poop are. I was quite happy. I'm so glad no one could speak/read English near me. If they could have read and understood my notes, I'm pretty sure I'd be in trouble. But I know that I'm not the only one who was seriously bored. The art teacher was staring at this guy after he'd been talking for about 45 minutes. He had a look on his face that clearly said, "I can't believe this guy is still talking. This is boring. This is really, really boring. I think he's even boring himself. I'm about to pound my head on this table to make the pain stop." I just hope no one was watching me. Between my junior-high boyesque way of looking up dirty words in the dictionary, my yawning, and the time I almost let out a drool stream while yawning, I would have been interesting to watch. "Hey, what's the gaijin doing? She looks bored. She's scribbling stuff in her notebook. She's blinking awfully slowly. She's yawning. She's looking at the clock. She's standing up. She's heading towards the window. She opened the window. Hey, wait! This is the second floor. She isn't going to- Yup, she jumped. She's landing on the ground and rolling. She's running into the teacher's room. She's running out with her stuff. She's backing her car into the ornamental statue. She's running over our decorative plants. She's peeling out of the driveway."