That's what I've been called for the past two days. Yesterday was my first day at work at a junior high school so in the morning I did a self-introduction to all of the staff and met the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English). Shortly after that they assembled all the students in the school (150 in total) and I had to do an introduction speech to all of them. My first class were sannensei's (Gr. 9) and they were really active and involved which helped immensely. I had prepared a little introduction speech about myself beforehand and luckily the JTE handed out a worksheet that had some questions they were supposed to listen for and write down. I managed to do pretty well for the first class and left a really good impression. I thought, "If this is teaching, it's pretty easy stuff!". My second class of the day were ninensei's (Gr. 8) and they were the quiet, sullen class. No one wanted to answer and it was hard to coax them into asking questions and getting involved. Apparently these classes are really common in Japan. After that I ate lunch with the students and taught two more classes, which were basically repeats of the first two classes. Next thing I knew it it was the end of the day. My first day of teaching - ever - was actually pretty easy!

Today I went to work feeling pretty good due to the good impression from the day before. I was at an elementary school in the morning. I showed up a little early so I had to wait in the teacher's office until 9:30am, when the class was supposed to start. While I'm waiting, the vice-principal starts chatting with me in his broken english. He lets me know that the normal English teacher was on vacation and that there's a substitute teacher today. He continues to tell me to just settle down and wait and that she will come and get me from the teacher's office when she's ready. 9:25am rolls around and a teacher comes into the office. She immediately recognized me as the new ALT and came to greet me... when it quickly became apparent that she barely spoke any english. She started asking me something which I didn't understand at first. After the help of a Japanese-English dictionary I managed to figure out that that she was trying to say that she hadn't prepared a lesson for this class at all! She asked me if I had anything prepared and I realized that she wanted me to take over the class by myself. I had my self-introduction from the other day, a canadian flag, some picture books and canadian money in my bag so I said I would do a jidoshokai (self-introduction) lesson. She looked absolutely relieved and said that she would watch from the back of the class. As we're walking down the hallway, it dawned on me that I had to handle a class of Gr. 6'rs all by myself for 50 minutes. What the hell was I going to do?! This was my second day teaching and I didn't actually have anything prepared! It was going to be a tough hour...

My self-introduction ended up only taking up 15 minutes or so after I realized they weren't at a level of comprehension as the other school. I had to act quickly. I ended up doing the rest of the lesson on fruits, drawing them on the board, getting a student to write the name of it in Japanese, then writing the name in English and getting them to pronounce it. I realized they had done this before because they knew a lot of the names of the fruits in english already. So far so good. After a while I stepped it up and wrote the name of the fruit/vegetable on the board and asked them to pronounce it for me. In order for them to understand my instructions (since the JTE substitute barely spoke english) I had to recall Japanese that I learned years ago from the back of my head . I've never had to think so quickly in my life! Luckily this ate up the rest of the lesson and by the time the bell chimed for the end of class, I was a sweating mess from running around and pantomiming the whole time. It was a good lesson for me on being prepared. I'm going to make sure I always have a game or lesson handy in order for that to never, ever happen again.

I had to go to another elementary school after that but luckily this one was a lot more laid back. There are only 31 kids in this elementary so the first thing I did was do a self-introduction to all of them in the gym. Then we played a game called Fruits Basket and then another game called What Time Is It Mr.Wolf which are both english games. This was more like it! After that we had lunch and then taught a very basic english lesson to the Gr. 4 and 5's. Because the english program in Japanese elementary schools was just recently mandated, the elementary teachers have no actual formal training at teaching English, so they tend follow a MEXT issued textbook with very dry lesson plans. I think I can spice things up in this school with my own lesson plans now that I think I have a feel for classes. After that I played with the kids some more during their spare and then had an english conversation class with the teachers after all the kids had gone home. Overall, a much busier day than yesterday.

Next week I have a high school and a few more elementaries to go to. I'm looking forward to meeting all the kids but it will probably be looking forward to a few more weeks of self-introductions. I'm probably going to take this weekend to relax and recoup for next week.