This last weekend, we got to attend the school festival, where each class creates a project and decorates their class. My favorite was a room called “Midnight Museum” where you enter the class that was redecorated as a museum, and then had 45 seconds to steal 3 given artworks, before exiting through an obstacle course without getting caught by security guards. It was a fantastic display of teamwork and creativity. Some of the after-school clubs also had exhibitions, like the tea ceremony, dance, and light music club. It was a great experience to be able to see and participate in this festival, it is great to see students have fun and show their projects that they worked really hard to their classmates and parents. It is definitely something I wish we had in Canada.
These past two weeks I got to participate in lessons as needed. Which would include participating in groups with students, providing feedback, and simply having discussions In English. As we spend more time at the school, we are able to observe the varying English skill levels of students. Students are overall pretty shy, even if they want to speak to you, so it is important not to give up and to keep trying to make them come out of their shells. There is a program called Good Talks, where students send an email (in English) to an international teacher to schedule a 5-10min conversation during lunch or after school. They would prepare questions (what did you do this summer, what is your favorite Japanese food, why did you come to Japan, etc.) and it could just be an unstructured conversation. It was a great opportunity to talk to students and get to know them! I also noticed that participation levels in PE are very high, it is pretty rare to see students not playing or participating to some extent. It stood out to me as it is usually one of the main challenges in Canadian classrooms. While there is definitely a cultural aspect at play, it is also due to how the teachers I am placed with are able to create low stakes environment. Not placing the spotlight on anyone, not being overly focused on results but rather effort and progression, and simply being enthusiastic. They are great role models for my future practice!
For anyone going to work or volunteer in Japan, here is a very useful phrase:
Otsukaresamadesu = thank you for your hard work
You would use it with coworkers in many different contexts, even when simply running into a coworker in the hallway
There is also:
Otsukaresamadeshita = thank you for your hard work
This one is typically used at the end of the day, as it is the past tense version of the sentence.