Back in the swing of things

As I got back to Tsushima from the trip, I was bracing myself to dive headlong into a full schedule of lessons at school. This only happened at one of my two high schools, though. Tsushima High, the main and academic high school on the island, had scheduled exams for the first-year students. I never got a full description of what kind of exams, but they were a big enough deal for them to cancel all of my oral communication lessons until after the exams. This meant I had no first-year lessons to plan for until the end of May. Mind you, these students had just started high school at the beginning of April, yet they were already being tested. My OC classes got bumped so they could double up on English grammar courses, which leads me to believe the school was having to make the students suffer because of the faculty's poor planning.

At any rate, I only had to worry about my second- and third-year classes at Tsushima. The second-years are in the Korean program, a pretty rare feature for a Japanese high school. There are only nine of them in the program, and in addition to the general-ed that all students take--math, science, history--they take classes in Korean language and culture. They also get the required English grammar lesson, and I get to teach them an oral communication class once a week. You can imagine how little most of them care about learning English. I totally empathize with them--they're already struggling with one foreign language; isn't that enough? Thankfully, the teacher who's teamed with me understands this, so we've decided to give them the same lessons I use for the first-years, and with a bigger emphasis on games. Despite the general "meh" attitude toward English, the kids are still energetic and willing to play along.

Yuki and Miyuki--the two girls I've mentioned before who talked to me a lot last year--are very good students. They're cut-ups, which is exactly what I'd expect out of high-school teenage girls, and they're not from Tsushima. They came here from Nagasaki and Kumamoto just for the Korean program. For me, that explains why they're so outgoing--they didn't know anybody when they got here--and why they're so unusually gifted compared to the other students here--they chose to come here from much bigger cities.

One day, Miyuki (the one who spent all of last year introducing herself to me every time she saw me) approached me with a devious grin on her face and called me Adam Smith. This caught me completely offguard. I'm accustomed to students not remembering my last name, and instead guessing that it's "Charlie." (The two sound almost identical when pronounced in Japanese.) Smith, though, indicates she isn't even in the right ballpark. I laughed about it and asked her where she learned that from. She and Yuki (though I know they could have articulated it on their own) got help from one of the other English teachers, and explained they'd learned about him in history class. The only Adam Smith of any historical importance is the Scottish economist and champion of free trade. I found that amusing, and tried to correct Miyuki. My curiosity and reaction must have seemed to her like I was taking offense and making a big deal about it, though, so she wouldn't let it go. Now, every time I pass her in the hall, she gives the same introduction, only she adds "Smith"--"Hello, Adam Smith, my name is Miyuki M---, nice to meet you." I play along, pretending to sternly correct her. For some reason, she and all the other girls in the class find it hilarious.

The third-years are every bit the challenge last year's class was. I know for a fact that I can't push them as hard as the first-years, because by definition none of these students are advancing to university. That means they have no need for a scholarly understanding of English. So I try to include as many activities and games as possible, but we still need to teach them something substantive. That presents me the unique challenge of creating lessons specifically for them. I know this makes for a valuable learning opportunity for me, since one of the core challenges of teaching is presenting material in ways that reach as many students as possible. It just gets a little frustrating sometimes, especially with 40 students in the room.