First day of Teaching!

So I started teaching on September 6th, about three weeks ago. In the days leading up to my first day I was somewhat nervous but I was more anxious than anything because for the 6 weeks prior I had been sitting in the office thinking about my first day. I was glad that I was finally going to be able to meet the kids and see the environment where I would be teaching for the next 10 months.
In preparing for my first day, I asked a lot of questions. How will the kids behave? Will the students be enthusiastic about learning English? Will I be able to actually teach them English? I asked many people some or all of these questions and the most common response I heard from the people who knew these kids first hand was that they were very shy. That they will be very quiet and unresponsive at first and I must work very hard to get them to come out of their shells. Understandable. I mean I can remember those days in middle school or high school when we would get a new teacher or even a substitute teacher and no one would raise their hand to answer a question. It’s unknown territory. Here is a new person of authority who we don’t know very well at all and who we haven’t interacted with before. Of course they will be shy. So I prepare myself to do all the talking in the initial days until they warm up to me. I make a PowerPoint of my self introduction or “jiko shokai” and try to make it somewhat appealing to my audience which will be students from 1st thru 9th grade. I included a lot of silly pictures of myself and I tried to make it easy for them to be able to relate to me and feel comfortable with me. The Friday before my first Monday I felt comfortable and ready to meet my students.

When the first day actually arrived, I woke up and felt as though it was my first day going to school. Memories flooded my mind of how important it was to me to wear nice clothes and make friends whenever I started a new school year at home. Strangely, even though I would be the teacher this time, I still wanted to make friends. Haha. When I got to the school I walked into the teacher’s room and am greeted by the 15 or so teachers. The atmosphere was very relaxed and it immediately brought upon me a sense of calmness. The bell rang signaling the end of first period and I got my things ready for my first English class with 5th and 6th graders. I walked to the classroom and the students stood up as I walked into the room .The class leader said something in Japanese and then all the students responded in unison “Good morning Mr. Luis!” I had just walked in and they already knew my name; great start I thought. The homeroom teacher said something in Japanese and then I started my presentation. I got through my PowerPoint and I felt it went pretty good. Then I let the students ask questions. Of course they are a bit hesitant at first but as soon as that first student mustered up the courage to ask the first question, the rest of them began to ask question and before I knew it I was answering questions I never thought I would be answering like “What do you look for in a girl?”

After the class finished I thought back to all those people who said these kids would be super shy. They are not shy. Not one bit. During class periods they say hi, they hold my hand, and get me to play games with them. This happened at every school I went to that first week. I visited my elementary schools first and then the junior high schools but the process worked the same. Of course I played a lot more games like dodge ball at the elementary schools. One of the elementary schools I went to I literally played dodge ball all day. Literally all day. I was exhausted by the end of the day but I definitely enjoyed getting to know the students outside of the classroom. I figured that this would make my actual lessons a lot easier because the students will be comfortable around me.

Overall my first week of teaching was a great success. I’m definitely ok with playing dodgeball all day. Haha.