Yesterday I taught class all on my own, without a co-teacher. I didn’t mind that much, since it was a class I was supposed to teach with one of the more stressfully clueless teachers. When I came in by myself and announced that the other teacher wouldn’t be there, the students all applauded. What am I going to do next year when I’m not a celebrity anymore? I might actually be expected to teach my English classes at MSU based on something other than my exotic foreigner status. What a shock.

I was worried that I would have enough to do with them, but it turned out that we needed to finish 2 lessons, instead of just one, so that was no problem. I started out with a version of team “Telephone,” where they pass a sentence to the back of their row and the last person in each row has to write it on the board, the object being to get all 10 words correct and therefore keep all 10 of their points. It’s a successful game at both of my schools. Then we covered 2 lessons worth of material, with listening comprehension and pair work.

And I did everything in English. Everything. I did not speak any Japanese to the students at all, and they seemed to understand almost everything the first time. For the complicated instructions for the game, I asked for a volunteer from the class to translate, and that was it.

It’s kind of depressing to me to think about, actually. If these students had teachers who consistently spoke English to them in English class, they would be so much further ahead now. If more Japanese teachers would assume that their students could actually understand them and not baby them with simple sentences and immediate Japanese translation, they’d actually learn things! An amazing concept, I know. I suppose I should be glad that I’m getting all these valuable insights into what not to do when I’m responsible for teaching on my own. In the meantime, the Japanese schools are a long way from turning out fluent English speakers.

Why don’t people just ask me? The world would run a lot more smoothly.