The Outsourced Teacher: Japanese Cowboys

My classroom all set up for Parents

What do you get when you cross Japan with the Wild West: MeySen Friends Day. Friend's Day as I have learned is one of the most important days for the school and teachers. Its basically like your average school's open house on Steroids. All the kids come for hayrides, hotdogs, cheesecake, etc. and have to go to an hour worth of class. Its that one hour of class that teachers gotta be on their game. Basically, the room should be perfectly clean, and you're ready to show. The parents spend good money to make sure that their kids are getting the best English experience they can possibly get in Sendai. Its truly amazing the respect the community has for MeySen. Many fathers work in Tokyo (5+ hours away) all week and leave their families here just so they can go to school here. For the immersion program that I teach in, parents wait in 3 day lines just for the chance to get on a list to sign their kid up. Because of this, there is great pressure to be on your game the one day families get to see what they are putting their money to.

I spent most of Saturday helping transform the campus into an American Cowboy theme. Mostly I spent time pitching a few tents (save your dirty humor) and then set up my classroom. Lets just say my apartment isn't half as clean as my classroom was. Luckily, our bosses all chipped in to help us with our classrooms. It went pretty quickly.

Friend's Day itself went off great. There were tons of people, "country music" (with Michael Jackson sprinkled in), lots of cookies, ice cream, hot dogs etc. The hot dogs and horse rides are really the main staple of the event. Hot Dogs are not much of a norm around here so the kids love them. Also, horses are not really a native species to the island of Japan. Luckily for me, I had to teach at 1 so I didn't actually have a job for myself besides dressing like a cowboy and making a fool of myself in front of the families which I am happy to oblige.
By 1 o'clock I was ready to start my class. I was pretty prepared and wasn't feeling nervous outside of the fact that other teachers hype this thing up as I better not make a single mistake. Of course, thats impossible even on a normal day. However, my kids were on their best behavior and really worked hard to impress their parents. The class itself is about half the actually time our normal class is so we take bits and parts of what we teach and it turns into a show of what the kids have learned. All went well until the Dictionary game I had planned.

My student's work they showed off.

I was starting to pass out dictionaries to the groups when one slipped out of my hand and nailed a student in the back of the head. She gives me this look and stares at her parents like "you see what I have to deal with." Now her parents probably think I throw books at the kids every day. Not only that but in the middle of the lesson, one girl felt the others weren't sharing with her enough and she began to cry. I had to deal with that in the middle of trying to play the game. Lesson learned, never expect perfection because life just isn't that way.