I Teach English, I Do!

Greetings all and everyone,
I've been teaching for about 4 weeks now, here's what I've been up to so far.

Up till now it's been all junior high. It started out with every school wanting me to introduce myself and my country to each class.

(each class) x (4 junior high schools) = Barry doing the same intro over and over and over...

My intro was basically a photo presentation of about 65 photos showcasing Ireland. They ranged from hurling to Guinness to dolmens to castles to cows with a few random celebrities and leprechauns thrown in for good measure.

After the first 2 weeks, when I'd given the presentation to just about every class, the real lessons started. My official role is as an ALT, or Assistant language Teacher, which basically means the Japanese Teacher of English (or JLT) is in charge and I do what they tell me. This could be anything from 'read this sentence 3 times then go back to standing there doing nothing' or 'this is what I'm teaching today. Can you put together some activity based on it that the students will enjoy?'
Most of the time it's fairly non-eventful and the JLT does most of the work.

Today was my first time teaching primary school, which is a totally different kettle of fish altogether! The teachers don't really speak English, therefore the students don't really learn English. The primary schools (I've got 8 of them!) don't get ALTs as much as the junior high schools, so when you're there they want to use you as much as possible. Fair enough.

I was really nervous about it because up until now I'd never run a whole class from start to finish to students who knew only really basic English.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much they knew. It was basic, but it was enough that if I kept it simple and made it obvious through gestures what I wanted them to do, then they understood.
I started with a cut down version of the photo presentation, just to introduce me and Ireland a bit and ended with the Irish flag. Taught them colours and did some activities involving running around and picking the right colour. So that was fun and they seemed to get a kick out of it.

Then I gave them a work sheet with a picture of Ireland and a map of the world and asked if they could find Ireland and circle it. The result was hilarious!
I knew they probably wouldn't know where it was, that's why I included a bigger picture for reference. One kid circled Africa. All of Africa!
The same kid then went on to circle Australia, Canada, South America (yes, all of South America!) before eventually circling both Ireland and the UK, which was close enough!

I wanted to show them how far away Ireland was from Japan so I asked them to find Japan and circle it, thinking they'd have some idea where on a map Japan is. Nope.

Before Japan I got Australia (lots and lots of Australia!), more Canada, Russia (yup, all of Russia!), China, Mongolia, France, Portugal, and then, eventually Japan!
I really expected at least some of them to know where Japan is and it was the funniest thing I've seen in ages to see them all immediately circling Australia!

At the bottom of the page I had uncoloured flags for Ireland and Japan and got them to shout out the colours before colouring them in.

I had 3 classes and did the entire school in that time. Classes 1 & 2 were in together, 3 & 4, 5 & 6. The school is out on an island so it's not too big, only 21 students.
I had lunch with them and one of the teachers in the classroom and then one of them grabbed me by the hand and led me out into the playground where they had a fleet of unicycles. So they unicycled around all shouting what I imagine was "Barry-sensei, look at me!"

It was kinda surreal but for a day I was really nervous about I ended up having a great time. Japanese kids aren't little shits, like Irish kids. They're great fun and they love being around foreigners. Being foreign here is great, you're an instant celebrity!
I actually can't wait for the next time I get to teach primary school, which isn't until the week after next.

Apart from that I'm still having a cool time. The weather here is great, it hasn't gotten unbearably hot and humid yet so it's like a good Irish summer without the constant rain.

We had a few days off last week so the weekend was 4 days which was great! We headed out to an island and hiked around a bit before retreating back to a bar on a beach where we BBQ'ed and drank cocktails and Guinness all night. Haven't had stout in ages and even the old bottled fizzy crap tasted good!
Everything tastes good here, so it's hardly surprising.

For those of you who don't know, there was a major fuck-up with my internet application. Their fault. And I have to start the whole application process again, which is going to take another 3 weeks. So I'm still using the internet at whatever school I happen to be in on whatever day. It sucks, but at least it's something.

Talk to you later so, keep it massive and may FUNK blossom wherever you tread.
BAM!