No, Really, I Am an American

‘m backtracking a little…

I had my first full day of teaching yesterday (Sunday the 26 of February 2006). I think it went all right. Nothing too bad happened and no one fired me yet. In fact, they asked me if I wanted overtime. Based on the title of this post, you can see I took them up on it.

The way the schedules work is you teach a total of eight lessons, but they’re split by a break. So I taught three, had lunch, and then taught five. I think they go three and five, four and four, and five and three. Personally, I think I prefer a four and four, if anything because the break would fall on a more typical lunch time. Then again, my hour schedule is all over the place that I really shouldn’t take particular notice.

Sunday: 7:30AM - 2:50PM
Monday: Off
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: 6:40PM - 10:40PM
Thursday: 3:10PM - 10:40PM
Friday: 6:40PM - 10:40PM
Saturday: 10:00AM - 5:40PM

I was literally in the middle of a lesson when one of the LS (MultiMedia office workers) ladies came running up to my booth waving hastily written message beside me. I was a little flustered because my students were in the middle of dialogue practice, thus I wan’t on camera, but because I was distracted, I didn’t change the text fast enough. There was silence over the “class” and I was thrown. After a hasty click of the text, I read the message. “Can you stay until 17:40 and teach three extra lessons?”

I stared at the woman blankly, while at the same time realizing my students were once again sitting in silence. I turned back to my class and threw up the dialogue again, telling them to switch roles. I frantically wrote down, “What’s 17:40?”

Needless to say, I was barely aware of what was going on in my class…for all I know, they were speaking Japanese (which, for the record, they’re not supposed to do). I think I ended up having them practice the dialogue one last time before I remembered I could mute my mic.

“How late do you want me to stay?”

“Until 5:40.”

I shrugged, “Why not? Sure, I’ll do it.” The way I figured it, the more practice I got, the better.

I felt really bad for that particular class; I wouldn’t be surprised if they called in and complained.

That’s maybe one of the harderst things for me to remember about Nova. It’s not a school the way I think of one. It’s still a corporation. These students are paying a lot of money to practice their English with a native speaker. Get this, I found out that for having my degree in education, I get an extra 5000 Yen. That translates to about fifty bucks. Can you believe that?

I actually liked the last two classes I taught — the first of the three was just run of the mill. I had a lot of fun teaching my first M2M (man-to-man) lesson. Kenji was a Fox, as in rank, not in “a catch”; so it was pretty easy striking up a conversation with him. He and I ended up having some similar interests, which was what the lesson was on. Then the lesson after him was a group of Golfs on a lesson in pop culture. They made me laugh. I filled them in on some American trends and they helped me with the Japanese ones.

At the end of that particular lesson, when I was telling them they did well, Hisami laughed and said, “No we didn’t, but it was nice of you to say so.”

I was really surprised by her comment. I wasn’t kidding when I told them they did well. They’re pronunciation was pretty good and while the lesson wasn’t without the usual minor glitches, I really enjoyed teaching it.

I’ll be having my one week observation soon. I hope I don’t suck.