Anyways, it's oft repeated hububb on JET that we, as scary foreign ALTs aren't ever supposed to be left alone in the classroom. That there's always supposed to be an officially licensed/hired teacher in the classroom. Whether or not that's actually the case, who knows? But that's what "they" say. And even in Elementary school, in those classes where the homeroom teacher may do little but sit in the corner and grade papers, they're still there. I have started off classes though, when teachers were running late or whatnot, but they were always enroute.
But today the retinue of English teachers at my Jr High fell from 3 1/2 [yes, I only count myself as half a teacher] to only 1 1/2. One was off on a shutcho [business trip] and the other was attending her daughter's yochien [kindergarten] field trip.
So yesterday the teacher off on her daughter's field trip asked if I could cover one of the classes... dum, dum, dum!... on my own.
No problemo.
Lending itself to the ease of the class and my outstanding savoir faire was a couple things... the first being that the teacher who was off with her daughter is starting her pregnancy leave next week, and we've already reached the "hand off" point she wanted to get to for the next teacher. So no new grammar points or info needed to be taught. My Japanese ability remains completely inadequate to that sort of task. The second being, the class of second graders I had was a good group of kids, with nary a yanki bastard in sight. [The second graders overall are a really good group of kids. One or two are flirting with yanki-ness, but it looks like they're gonna make it out of their 2nd grade/"year to screw off" with no problems...]
[Btw, in case of any confusion Yankee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"In Japan since the late 1970s, the term Yankī has been used to refer to a type of delinquent youth"]
So, yeah, piece of cake. Today became "Big Vocabulary Review" day. Once the kids got over their shock and surprise - "Eeeeeeeeeh? Hitori dake?" - and their cheers that no other teacher was coming - kinda uncomfortable recognizing their dislike of one of the teachers who didn't come - the class knocked out without a hitch.
5-10 minutes with the standard line game warm up, about 15 minutes of board race spelling and definition review games and then 15 minutes on a 40+ word find worksheet. [I still can't get over the laser like focus even the least apt students puts into these. They work even in elementary school.]
So, success. And all that kinda thing. Honestly, I did dig on the feeling of working "without a net" so to speak. Even though conditions were pretty ideal.
And whether the whole "can't be in a class alone" is true, who knows? I doubt I'd have been asked to cover if it was such an out of bounds thing to do. Shoot, even the Principal happened to walk by and spent some time checking out my awesome handout. Though in hindsight, maybe he was checking up on me... either way, the point of all this rumination and typing is that I am awesome. That is all.
I think the whole "ALT alone in class" = no no is something more of an ideal, rather than a rule. I've handled classes before with no JTE. Makes more sense though with JHSers, as their English is, in theory at any rate, lower than SHSers, who should, in theory at any rate, be able to understand the ALT's English instructions.
ReplyDeleteYou're just trying to make me feel less special and "rogue-ish" aren't you? :)
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