Talkmate School

Today was the first day that I've had an opportunity to work at a school other than a Nova branch. I had mentioned earlier that I interviewed with this weirdo named Yasuyo. In that interview he told me that I wouldn't be using a textbook (lie), I wouldn't need a lesson plan (lie), and that his school doesn't have a 'serious' atmosphere (lie). He told me that I would be expected to just talk with students and offer a little advice. Awesome if it had been true. 30 bucks an hour to do that!? No sweat. I got a phone call from him on Christmas Day (thanks by the way) and said something about coming in early so we could discuss the lesson plan. I had been drinking with Yuka and I was high on cake so I didn't want to be argumentative. I find it extra ridiculous that he asked me to do something like show up early since that's not time I'm being paid for... hello?!

So I showed up 20 minutes before I was supposed to teach and he has a STACK of things for me to get through. No one-on-one either, I'm teaching six people (five of whom have a pretty good command of English and one who can't speak a word of it) for two hours straight. I felt physically weak. There was no time to prepare, I had no idea what he was trying to tell me to do in his broken English and students began to show up early. I actually thought about turning around and leaving him without a teacher (what the fuck do I care, anyway?), but i tried to look at the thing as a challenge and I'm glad I did (money aside). The first hour was spent practicing talking on the phone and I was clearly not prepared. To help me out, Yasuyo kept hovering around me and would occassionally interrupt to tell me to do things differently. It was fucking awful. At one point I had the students work in pairs and the thing they were supposed to do didn't make any fucking sense (everything was from some textbook that Yasuyo bought) and I couldn't explain it, because, like I said, it didn't make any fucking sense. Each pair had a copy of the SAME schedule. They were supposed to talk to each other and fill in the blanks in their schedules by asking each other what their plans are. That would make sense if we had TWO schedules. We didn't. We had ONE schedule. It doesn't make any sense. Later, when I asked the students to work in pairs again, this old woman freaked out and then started talking angrily in Japanese to Yasuyo. She quickly sucked every other student into the discussion (except for me of course who was completely lost) and it went on interminably. The only thing I could catch is that it was about me and she was PISSED.

The second hour went better. When we took a 5 minute break I was able to look over what we were going to do next and get something together. We practiced giving presentations and it was cute in like an elementary school kind of way. They all had to read out loud some Helen Keller speech and then I critiqued them on it (I just winged it but they all thought it was genius). I had a 3 hour break between my first two hours and my last one. Another teacher came in while I was out and taught something completely different. At 3 I returned to finish my lesson thing, and the Japanese lady who freaked out gave me an eclair. In that last hour everyone had to write up their own presentation and then deliver it to the class. The topic could be about anything that they found interesting. Because everyone's English was so basic and because they didn't have like a lot of time to prepare or anything, they gave the cutest presentations that you could imagine. This one girl gave a talk about New York City (she lived there) and it was something like: New York is located in the East coast of America. There are five boroughs that are Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, the Brooklyn, and Staten Island. There are 8,000,000 people there... blah blah blah. One guy who was a geologist gave a talk about dinosaurs.

I sat in my teacher's chair with my scrap paper and just wrote ADORABLE! on it.

The highlight of my day was getting paid in cash. They handed me an envelope with 9000 yen in it while I was headed for the door. I thought I could get to Nova from downtown within an hour and it turns out, no, no I cannot (which will cost me 3200 yen in late penalties...). For three hours of awkward teaching and quick thinking I think it was worth it. After all, the day is behind me and I still have a wad of bills in my wallet.