Learning Teaching: After the Bazaar and into the Bizarre

Alot of my learning about "how to teach" here in Japan is completely dependent on Japanese culture. When my teaching was having a rough point last week, Gerald gave me some advice.

"Have you noticed what I do when students are being uncooperative? I flirt with them. Guy, girl, it doesn't matter. It works."

I wasn't, and am not ready to do such so as to make my teaching more effective. However, I have quickly hit new "lows" that I am comfortable with.

Teaching the Girls

My new method of getting the uncooperative girls to work, which has been almost 100% effective since Gerald pointed me in a similar direction, is to act disgustingly cute to the girls. This works especially well with some of the girls that might have come to college more for the parties and to find a soon-to-be wealthy/high status man than for anything afterwards. And it is quite notable that English majors are interested in western living and...well, so they chat about how cute I am for a minute after each set of instructions or motivational speeches, then work for about 10 or so, until I have to repeat the process. It's better than before: no matter what you'd do or say was useless before this.

Productivity is up 20% for the ladies. *blih-bling!!* (Level Up!)

Since I pretend to understand no Japanese while in the classroom (because they are taught English almost exclusively in Japanese much of their lives, and that habit has got to go), the girls usually don't think to make their voices especially secretive when have short discussions after I give motivational talked how kawai (cute) and even how kirei (pretty) I am. Occasionally a girl takes initiative and tries to make a move on me. The way to do this is to call me over to look at something, then, when I'm leaning over to see whatever it is they are drawing me near with, little to my knowledge, they lower their voices to where only the girls of their small group can hear. They want them to hear, but not the class specifically.

This is obviously a different intent than simply chatting about a teacher they think is cute. This is a display to their friends, as well as some kind of an invitation to me. Luckily they don't know how to be flirty in English! So the girl will tell me (personally) how cute and pretty I am, in clear, Subject-included Japanese to make sure I don't miss the point. Of course, since they lure me in with homework questions (like the story they were supposed to be reading about Midori Sasaki, one of our teachers) I have so far been able to divert the comments to the people in the script. "Oh? You think Ms. Sasaki is very cute and pretty? I'm sure she would be very glad to hear that. (note: we would say "handsome," not pretty, but pretty men are favoured over handsome ones here. They understand the concept, they even use the same word, but pronouced "hansom.") I just hope I can keep ahead of their flirting skills as they begin to legitimately use English with native speakers, and as they search their electronic dictionaries. The bad part is, the better I teach them, the faster they will catch up to me!

Teaching the Boys

For boys, I get their attention with jokes. This is less effective on the ones that need it most. However, the boys are a real crowd in each of my classes. They are all listening to me at the same time if I'm talking to any in the group. Works this way in offices I hear. No secrets. Fine by me: it means that they can learn from each others' mistakes even when working alone.

Productivity is up 15% for the boys. *blih-bling!!*

Here's the science of it.
There's been alot of research done on "what students think makes a good teacher." Both outside Japan and inside Japan. There have been double blind tests between other countries and Japan, even specifically from places like Australian Japanese classrooms cross-checked against Japanese English classrooms. Australians tended to value "professionalism" as a top trait, but the Japanese had an almost 1-1 correlation between entertainment value and how good the teacher is regarded to be. So basically, my students will think of me as a bad teacher and not want to participate in a bad class (following logically from having a bad teacher). So I've tried to make everything even the simplest bizarre or entertaining. It hasn't been changing what or how I teach, just how I motivate students and how I perform the same tasks. I'm a little weird anyways, which is obvious even to most of my students, I think, but now I'm cranking it up to regular-old-me. Finding my own place for my character, while not making myself an exile...I am entering STAGE 3!

*Cricket cricket* (wrong kind of level, sillies).

Stage 3 of Culture Shock, that is. "Adjustment."


My First "Woah! My teacher shops for groceries!"

Some of you might know what I'm talking about. I've heard profs complain about it. They see a professor off-campus and they kinda double take. It's "Wow! You aren't on campus! And so am I! And I left, but you are here!" For some students, it is too much. Like many I went to school with in my undergraduate. I'm a little ashamed. I had TWO of those today. I had to act fast for one of them so as to break the moment of surprise, and save face with his buddies. He didn't want to give a bilingual introduction all of a sudden outside of school. He may have never used real English once outside of the school. It might be an entirely foreign action for him. So I took him to High-5 city, making him look respected and cool in front of his friends. I knew he could explain to them after a moment, so I took off following the 5 to get some chicken.


Other News:


I'm sweating all over the place in class every day still, windows open or not. My student are mostly wearing 3 layers. Shirt, thicker shirt, and a coat; or shirt, sweater, sweater; or Shirt, sweater, giant feather and fur winter jacket. IN CLASS. I'm sweating in a shirt meant for summer and pants meant for the same. Some of them are shivering in clothing meant for TRUE winter, and it is still the kinds of temperatures that nobody could die from if they wanted to at the cold of night. And they are doing this all day! I'm the only one in the community that is wearing shorts anymore, that I have seen (and only outside of school, of course). I am seen as some kind of freak of nature to be so "insensitive to what most people in the world would call "mild" weather and which here is called "cold." I think anyone from the western, northern, or central states would agree with me that 65 degree F/20 degrees C is not an occasion for triple layered clothing including winter wear.

I was told by one of my students that "Okinawa has winter." This surprised me, considering that it is basically like Hawaii, based on latitude, weather patterns, and the fact that it is a small tropical pacific island. When I asked her what temperature it gets down to at lowest at night in the "winter," and she told me "20 degrees" (C). Right. *cough* winter! Of course. Winter. *Note to self: never go to Okinawa. You will sweat from the coldest daytime temperature of the year.*