Balloon Shapes By Cops » English School

Chibiko – That’s Babies To You

Silentjim — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 03:39:36 +0000

Had my first experience of Chibiko classes last week when the girl that usually does them didn’t turn up.

Chibiko kids are between the ages of 2 and 4, and the class essentially revolves around singing and dancing along to a cd while trying not to let the little creatures cry or come too close to you (kid snot and saliva might not look too good on your shirt in the adult lesson you have next…).

An exercise wholly redundant in terms of teaching English, but not as bad as I imagined it to be.
Despite coming out sweating buckets, and knackered, it was more fun than teaching the 9-11 year olds I usually have to do on a Tuesday.
The babies also spoke more English! (Pizza, Corn, Bread and Hamburger where the chosen words for that lesson).

It`s Tuesday tomorrow, so I have a feeling I may have to do it again. At least this time I`m a bit more prepared…

Teaching 4 Year Olds English in Japan

Silentjim — Sun, 21 May 2006 01:53:46 +0000

Last saturday I turned up at work with a bad feeling, and I was right. They had me doing a Kinder class (my second ever, my first being the complete nightmare at Mukogawa), and not only that they want me to go to Mukogawa kids school every Monday in June!

All the other teachers were saying bad things about this kids class, they had to clear the room of anything that could be picked up or broken before I went in, and the girls were talking of horror stories, and “those kids need a man to order them around“.

They were actually relatively ok, the beard works everytime, keeps them distracted, apart from one kid who did his own thing, kept leaving the room, wouldn`t listen to a word I said, etc. etc.

Oh well, at least it was only one of them.

I found out about 3 hours later that he’s autistic! Nobody bothered to tell me I was supposed to be teaching an autistic child! And certainly nobody told me how I was supposed to teach him, training being hardly enough to teach the other kids.

It’s pretty disgusting if you ask me, that Nova takes the parents money, but don`t have anybody that can properly teach their child who obviously needs special attention.

Hopefully i don’t have the same class again today :`(

Nova and the Chibiko Lessons

Silentjim — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 06:17:37 +0000

Found out last week, that I`m gonna be trained to teach English to children aged 2 to 4. Bearing in mind how much I enjoy teaching 4 to 11 year olds (>:-[) you can imagine how overjoyed I am at this new endeavour.

The lessons apparently consist of 40 minutes of singing and dancing with a 2 year old and a parent (or up to four 2 year olds!). How is a baby supposed to learn English with just 40 minutes a week??? Me thinks this was invented by a Nova accountant, and gullible mothers are lured in with the big bucks.

Crazy.

Oh, I got sent to a kids school last week, as someone messed up the schedule, so had to teach kinders, followed by junior and then seniors! I nearly quit.

Seniors are too bored and cool to be there and play stupid games.
Kinders are too young to maintain attention for more than 2 minutes (one was particularly distracted by my beard, so she lunged at it, and groped my chin).
Juniors just want to beat each other up.

40 minutes of hell.

Nova Kids Lessons and a Pending Drink Problem

Silentjim — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 05:34:10 +0000

Been a bit busy lately, and not updating this as much as I`d like, got a bit of time now before we head off to Kobe to watch “Crash“, so thought I`d write about a change in my fortunes at Nova…that is Kids classes!

I was kids “trained” as they call it which is basically 2 days (of 4 hours each) in a room with other teachers kind of pretending to be kids and learning a few games and techniques. Training at Nova seems to be “here`s a little bit of what you need to know, you`ll pick the rest up as you teach the lessons, who knows in a couple of weeks you might have some idea of what you`re doing, oh, and good luck”.

I was told that I wouldn`t have to teach kids till April, so I would have time to go over the manuals, and the activity glossary etc. so get some preparation ,however, one of the teachers at my school left last week, and he decided to call in “sick” for his last two days. One of those ,I was in, and he was supposed to have a Junior class (7-9years) and a senior (10-12years)…which I now have.

“Luckily” my boss was in, and had a free lesson, so came in with me on the junior class, but for the senior I was on my own.

You get a lesson plan to follow, but has lots of secret words, like “Number Wave”??? which turns out to be a mexican wave calling out numbers. Also, as they are children you have to sit cross legged, or kneel down, and keep getting up to keep them entertained. My legs ached for 3 days after!

The Junior class went quite well (according to my boss), and they were all very well behaved. The seniors however…it was a public holiday in Japan, so only 2 of the 7 kids turned up, and they were quite pissed off that they had to be there when the other kids were obviously at Universal Studios or playing video games or some`at.
And, unfortunately, I know some Japanese so, could understand some words like,
“futari de…yada” – “only 2 of us, bo**ox”,
“kuso” – “this is shit”,
“tsumaranai” – “boring”, etc.
Which was nice.

Came out of it, tired, pissed off, stressed and needing a large drink. A lot of Nova teachers are border line alcoholics it seems, and I think this might have a lot to do with the kids lessons!

Oh, forgot to mention as well, in the senior class, as I wasn`t sure what I was doing, my boss said he`d getting everything I need together (flash cards, etc.)…found out afterwards while reading through the lesson plan properly, that he`d given me the wrong ones! No wonder the kids were as confused as I was!

Did the same lesson to some other kids on Saturday, went a lot smoother with the right equipment!

Taught those 2 kids lessons again this week (they`re gonna be my regular ones, plus one on Monday, and one on Saturday), and it`s getting easier, partly due to my not caring so much (they don`t want to be there, so why should I care if they learn anything), and also because I spent more time getting them running round playing games, which obviously is less boring than staring at the book.

The senior class was “fun” (that`s sarcasm by the way), as the other kids who skivved last week, turned up, and I could hear the boy from the week before telling the others how much the lesson sucked.
Think I`m gonna pick on him from now on.

Nova Training – if that’s what you can call it

Silentjim — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 01:24:26 +0000

Had my orientation and training this week at Nova. The orientation was at the headquarters in Namba, Osaka,and was very intimidating. Think they did it on purpose just to try and freak us out. Gaijin acting very serious and formal, very Japanese, lining us all up, one takes your passport, the other takes your tax form, etc. then we were sent to our allocated seats where we found out where our schools are going to be, and where the training is to be held.

Things relaxed a bit after that, as we were shown lots of slides about how to live in Japan, how to wear a suit, and how not to upset your Japanese neighbours.

Glad it was over.

The next day, training started. 3 days of training and you`re sent out to your main branch. By the end of the first day, you`re made to teach the first 20 minutes of a lesson (they`re 40minutes long in total)! Very stressful. The next 2 days consisted of a total of 7 full lessons, all except one are observed by the trainer (a very nice lady from Manchester), which obviously adds to the pressure. Was kinda getting the hang of it towards the end – main problem being my timing – you have to finish at 40 minutes, which takes some practice.

Didn`t feel very confident or prepared for going to my main branch, but had no choice. At least I had the Friday off, to relax a bit, before starting work proper on the Saturday.

One of the most stressful weeks I`ve had in years, wouldn`t like to go through that again.