For the last month or so I've been doing substitute lessons on Fridays. Today my school was about an hour and a half away, in Saitama, straight north of Tokyo. I was actually a tiny bit late, but got away with it, out of sheer luck. When I arrived a bit winded from running about 2/3 of a mile, I found the place from the two mothers with their child-laden bicycles standing out front.

   My first class was two 5-year old kids, a boy Yuto and a girl Yui. It was like trying to juggle jello squares for 45 minutes, but somehow I managed, and they had fun. The girl, Yui was definitely the easier to engage of the two. Yuto gave me the impression that if it didn't explode or fly around in a spaceship on his TV, then he didn't care. The lesson was very very basic -- "touch the door, touch the window, touch the chair..." and six words (banana, apple, balloon, ant, bird, airplane) and writing the letter "A" on the whiteboard. Also, counting backwards from 5 to 0, and at zero yelling "jump!" and jumping into the air. I was careful this time with jumping in a classroom I'm not familiar with -- the first time I did a substitute lesson, around November of 2003, I almost cracked my skull on an aluminum room-divider that was about eight inches abovemy head, and taught the rest of the lessons with blood in my hair.

   The second lesson was just one girl -- Sakura, about 6 years old. My god, the girl is a genius. A few times I was tempted to just kick back and watch her -- she was having a hayday drawing on the whiteboard -- "this is a policeman, this is a paramedic, here is a car crash -- here is a police station." (she even drew prisoners shackled to the wall of the police station -- I wanted to laugh with glee.) But what I'm trying to remember with my students is, even the brainiest of them like running and jumping around. So I also did a bit of that too, getting her to count backwards from 10 to 1, and then jumping into the air, or running around and touching things. After the lesson I talked with her mother, who was also competent in English. She has her daughter enrolled in an international kindergarden and also taking English lessons somewhere else.

   The third class was a slightly older girl named Mizusu at about the same level, more responsive but less wildly creative. With her I tried to push more the difference between "this" and "that" and slightly longer sentences "put the red pen on that chair." My company pushes a teaching method based on sheer repetition -- get students to repeat a phrase well before they know what it means. But with Mizusu, I had a lot of luck with something different. In her case I taught her the phrase at the same time that I taught her how to use it. I walked her slowly through each piece "Put." "the red pen." "on." "this chair." After a few times she was saying it and doing it with no problem.

   The fourth class was three girls and three high-strung boys. One kid was kinda pissing me off, so I had my revenge by pretending to mis-understand his name, which is Junki.
Me:"Junko?"(a girl's name.) Other students: "heeeheeheaaahaha"
"Oh, no! Junka?" (Another girl's name.) "hahaheeeehahahe"
Later it struck me as funny that I was enjoying humiliating an 8-year old boy as part of a day's work.
For the lesson, I had them do a bit of practice writing the alphabet, trying to teach them to say and hear the distinction between F, V, and B (face, vase, base) and using questions for different persons of "to be." For example, "Are you hungry? Is he sleepy?" "Is she angry?" For each student I wrote their name on the board with a yes/no for whether they were hungry, angry, or sleepy.
For the last 10 minutes I have a little balance game, where you have to balance different shapes on the top of an unstable base -- the first person who makes it fall over loses. I have to admit it's not an especially useful teaching tool, except to teach shapes (circle, square, triangle) and maybe phrases like "be careful!" or "don't touch the table!" But they have fun, and so do I.

   For the last class of seven students between 10 and 12 years old, I recycled the same lesson, and tried to turn the "face base vase" thing into a game, but it kinda flopped because everyone was too good. For the hungry/angry/sleepy part, it was "no" Across the board. This annoyed me (and made the lesson less useful) so I grabbed one girl's gloves and pretended to throw them out the window. Again the question "are you angry," and the answer I was hoping for (with understanding of what I was doing) "Yes! teeheehe." And then I spent a few minutes asking students what kind of ramen, pizza, hamburger, or ice cream they liked. Then I asked again "are you hungry?" That got one more "yes" for me -- something I could work with.

   And then after straightening up the classroom and putting the tables and desks where I found them, I was done for the day. A work day of about 5 hours leaving me feeling tired, hyper-stimulated, and happy. I'll never see any of these kids again most likely. So this is my job at its most easy and most fun. Usually it's a bit more challenging to see the same group every week -- you have to worry about actually teaching something, keeping fair relationships between kids, letting them have fun, not making it too hard, keeping good relationships with the studens but not losing control if they figure out they can walk all over you. I've had some memorable successes and some memorable failures.