英語の先生になった日曜日です。 Ｔｈｅ ｓｕｎｄａｙｓ Ｉ ｂｅｃａｍｅ ａｎ Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ Ｔｅａｃｈｅｒ

At the end of the fall semester, my landlord approached me to see if I would interested in teaching at her English school once a month in the new semester. I thought it would be fun, so I said yes and waited for our first class. It was the last Sunday in January when I'd be starting to teacher and that Sunday is a day I'll most certainly never forget. Not because of the school, but because of how much snow Nagoya got on that day! It felt like I was back in Canada when I looked outside. In some respect, I wish i could have stayed inside the whole day, as when I went outside it was obvious Japanese people weren't used to driving in snow. Driving from our house to her school, I remember closing my eyes preparing for death several times as my landlord raced around turns and speed down narrow streets. Thankfully/surprisingly we didn't crash, nor somehow did I see any other accidents. Literally have no idea how...
Arriving at her school, I was surprised at how nice it was. A single level building with about 5 classrooms. Brushing the snow off ourselves, we took off our wet shoes, put on some comfy slippers and went into the classroom.

The first class of the day was children aged 4-6. They were simply adorable! Obviously knowing very little Japanese, let alone English, in this class we sang various English songs and played some simple games. It was a lot of fun, thought I must say I'm not much of a singer...

Following this class was the 6-8 year olds. We started the class off much the same as the previous one, with some classic songs like incy wincy spider, and then moved on to learning some vocabulary. I would first read through all the words, and then one by one read them as the children repeated after me. After that was a chance for some questions for the Gaijin (me!) having everyone be so shy, my landlord asked some questions and I got to tell them a bit about my background and where I come from, which is always nice.

Next up was the Junior High School students. It was obvious that they had very little practice actually speaking English, which wasn't surprising because I know in Japanese schools the teachers only focus on grammar, but even simple questions had the students stumbling over their responses. This class saw the exact same start as the previous two but now had an additional reading component. Very similar to the vocabulary, I would read out a sentence and the students would repeat it back to me. Fun stuff...

The final class of the day I think was still Junior High School students, just more advanced. They were able to introduce them selves and answer basic questions. That day's class had the students prepare a self introduction to present to the class, and I was able to help out with them. Trying to explain why certain words are spelt the way they are or why different words are used at certain situations really made me glad that English is my first language, as I can imagine it's hell to try and learn!

This past Sunday was the last time for me teaching at the school, and my landlord had a sort of party/games day for it. It started about 2 hours before the class usually started and with the children we made various crafts and such. It was a really nice way to wrap up my teaching at the school, and was really nice to see all the children having so much fun, rather than just sitting in class.