The Joys of Teaching... from Scott's Perspective

Hello Everyone!!!

First off, I know I know... I've been letting Jo do all the posting and you've all missed my creative prose... But here I am!

So, training's done which is awesome and we've been in the teaching world for about a week now... There have been some ups, downs and a wasted guy outside one of my schools.

At our company, we have lessons called Free Time Lessons (FTLs) where up to four people come in and we go through some vocab, I get them to chat and yadda yadda yadda... Well, there are lots of people who come in that are good speakers. I love these people. Even though I've only been doing them for about a week, I've gotten kinda cocky with them (imagine that, me being cocky about something). So, when I get some higher level people coming in, I like to not do a lesson at all, and just bring up a topic and let them go with it... I obviously tend to stray towards topics that get the best conversations... and are kinda rough around the edges. Just today, I had two women and a man, all great speakers so I decided to just say "So, Japan is pretty male chauvinistic, isn't it? What do you guys think about this?" Lucky for me (and probably the male student) he agreed with it and they just went on and on for forty minutes about it. I felt kinda sorry for the guy for the first bit, but in the end it was quite lovely. However, with FTLs you can get some people that are pretty low level... these classes make me wish I'm at home... digging out my eyeballs. These are so bloody boring, and so unsatisfying that you just want to die. Think of saying "Burger... watch my mouth... B B Burger"..."No, not vooga... burger" about 30 times... and getting nowhere. Thankfully they're only 40 minutes long.

Kids classes are a mixture of both worlds too. Sometimes the kids are up, having fun, speaking and make you look like the God of English Teaching... then there's the kids where you're trying so bloody hard, making new games and activities on the fly and they just don't do anything... sure they'll say the words but it feels like they just don't care... like when we were 4-9 and taking French classes... hmmmmm... but French teachers get paid more!

Then there's the randomness that ensues. Yesterday I was on a break so I decided to go to the local Family Mart (convenience store) and get a drink, when I walk by a random door into a staircase that led up to what I later found out to be a karaoke bar. Well, just as I walk out of the building, I see the door fly open and a pile of Japanese businessmen come falling out (literally), all carrying this one guy. He was unable to walk, talk and by the looks of it, know where in the world he was. The guy was shittered. Just think of your froshweek... that guy that never really drank before and just finished his 12th beer... yeah him. So I obviously slow my walk down so I can enjoy as much of this debacle as possible and I'll be honest, they had a great system. Two guys for the arms, one holding his head and the other pushing his legs along... great teamwork! Needless to say after I got my drink and was walking back, they were pushing him into a cab and that was the last of it... good for him! Oh yeah... this was all at 5:30 in the afternoon. What a trooper.

Well, I guess that's about it... plus Heroes just finished downloading. So hopefully I'll get on here more often and let you know what's up. Miss everyone and I definitely missed Homecoming. Hope everyone's having a great time back home.

Cheers,

Scott & Jo