Adventures in pedagogy

If you work out my relative pay rate I make about 10,000 yen, or around 100 US, a day, if you just pretend that weekends are work days. I don't feel particularly bad doing so, because aside from the fact that I am not physically required to be somewhere, I probably do about the same amount of teaching as I do on school days. Probably more, depending on the day. Like tomorrow for example I am being paid approximately 100 dollars to go eat lunch. That's all. No classes or anything. Just lunch.

I'm not particularly complaining since it's at the criminally large elementary school, and as much as the kids there are generally charming little bastards like the rest of them (often times more so) I tend to have a much higher rate of classroom train wrecks there. I think it has something to do with the one-shot ALT situation, the fact that I only show up at any given elementary school once, maybe twice a month.

At the smaller schools, where I can get to know the kids in about 30 seconds since there are 3 of them, the fact that I only visit once a month doesn't actually get in the way of me getting to know the kids and form a relationship. At the larger schools there is certainly a degree of frantic celebrity which I just don't get at the small schools which is a lot of fun for about 10 minutes. Then you have to try and teach them something, and end up spending hours of your life trying to get them into a line so they can play a game. I don't think the Japanese on that one is particularly hard. I fail to grasp which part of "ok, make 2 lines!" is causing them to stick. I suspect it's that they're afraid of being the first person to try something, and then if they get it wrong the will be publicly shamed, if not stoned to death. So usually 5-10 minutes of dragging and prodding later, we have two lines, and class time is up. Good thing I was teaching fruit, which they have probably learned 4 other separate occasions, and probably knew before they had to learn it the first time. The jump from "ba-na-na" to "ba-NA-na" is not particularly taxing.

I'm rather looking forward to 2-3 weeks off of class for winter vacation. I thought about going to Okinawa for part of it to do some diving, but a good friend of mine pointed out that the water will be just about the same temperature, and going to Okinawa in the winter is kind of silly. People do it for sure, but I'd much rather enjoy the place when it's sunny, bright, and I can dive without restraint. It looks like I'll be kicking it here on Kikai, counting my money. Turns out that unless my spending changes drastically over the next 3 months, I will be debt-free by spring. Ahh, the world is full of possibilities. Maybe I'll get my sport diver license, and start planning that trip to Fiji I've been pipe-dreaming about.