April 11, 2010
The day of my farewell party, March 26th, was also the first official day of spring break—for the students. Teachers are still required to come to work. For ALTs, this usually means sitting at our desk trying to keep ourselves amused for seven hours a day, while all the “real” teachers scramble around preparing for the new school year. This time, however, Matt and I volunteered at an English camp to take place at the Kanoya Asia Pacific International Center, otherwise known as KAPIC.
Ah, KAPIC, that magical oasis near the lake, with its pastel-colored Asian museum and its confusing passage of stairs. I had done a summer camp here once before with Shibushi Junior High School, but this camp was more generally geared to any interested junior high or high school student. The director of the camp was named Sakura. She told us ALTs that she was the only one allowed to speak Japanese to the students. The rest of us, no matter the level, had to feign ignorance.
Of course, it’s always ideal for us to speak to the students in English as much as possible. But in my case, it proved to be difficult. Matt and I were paired up to look after a group of six 13 year old girls: Nanami, Chiaki, Haruka, Azumi, Mayu, and Yui. These girls had only been exposed to one year of English, so their level was pretty low. The task Matt and I were given: help the students that research a foreign country and present that information in English at the end of camp. We had three days.
This sounds simple, but let me put it this way. The first day, after the students chose a country (France), they had to research the continent, bordering countries, and boarding oceans; the size and how it compared to Japan’s; the population and how it compared to Japan’s; and the capital. Look at those words again: location, continent, bordering, population, compare, and capital. Not exactly English 101.
Matt and I decided to split the girls into pairs and have each pair research a different topic. That wasn’t too difficult, as our classroom was set up with wireless internet and tons of laptops which the ALTs brought. What was harder was getting the pairs to share that information with the wider group. In the end, we confiscated a whiteboard. Each pair wrote the information and gave a mini-presentation while everyone else took notes.
This was extremely effective, but it took all afternoon and it wasn’t even the main part of the presentation. We still had to get the students to choose a different topic to research, write out a speech, make a poster, and practice saying their presentation. We had two full days left and an hour on Friday morning.
I must also add that, besides those basic requirements, there were no guidelines set out by the camp. I think they wanted to give the students freedom to express their creativity and a democratic work ethic. A Western-style learning environment. All well and good, but Matt and I were dealing with students who could barely answer, “What do you like?” We decided, in an unspoken way, that we were going to have to take charge of the group.
This was not the case for everyone. There were four groups of 4-6 students with 2 supervising ALTs per group. Some of those ALTs seemed to do very little work. One group, in particular, had most of the high school students, and those students simply plunged into their topics. While our group was struggling to read out “The population of France is sixty-five million, four hundred forty-seven thousand, three hundred seventy four people,” their group was making posters for the history of American cinema.
We didn’t care. We worked at our own pace. The next morning, Matt and I spent the first half hour presenting a list of topics for the pairs and having each pair choose one. Then the girls got to work.
Oh, there was drama indeed.
First of all, there was a problem with one of the pairs. Nanami, a bright, flighty, outgoing girl, had been paired with Chiaki, a slow, diligent, reserved girl, and needless to say, their styles clashed. Matt and I split them up and gave them each a different topic. We had been warned that Chiaki was at an extremely low English level. Her topic was the French language and fortunately we had a French-Japanese language book. But her entire method of working was to write “(English word) is (French word).” That was all she did the entire first day.
Nanami, on the other hand, finished most of her work that first day and still had enough time to get her heart broken. Matt and I saw her suddenly become depressed and start crying. We didn’t know what was going on. We weren’t allowed to speak Japanese. Fortunately, some of the other ALTs comforted her and she cheered up by the next day, though she still spent an inordinant amount of time making eyes at that boy.
In the meantime, Yui, who had been up all night, felt sick and had to lie down. Her partner, Mayu went with her, so they were out half the afternoon. Then, the next morning, Haruka and Azumi, who had drawn an absolutely beautiful poster, were told by Sakura that their speech was too short. They had to research new information and translate it into English—an hour before the deadline for finishing their speeches. Rather than push back the deadline, we separated the pairs and helped each girl with their speech.
It was at this time that I learned the loophole to the “no Japanese” rule. We weren’t supposed to speak Japanese. No one ever said we couldn’t understand Japanese. Azumi wrote down the information she wanted to say, and I translated it for her into simple English.
On the afternoon of the third day, after a trip to KAPIC’s Asian museum, we took the girls outside and had them practice their speech. Matt and I decided we’d begin the presentation by having all the girls say “Bonjour” and end with “Au Revoir.” I made them stand on “stage” (a slight hill) and practice, over and over again. I also went to each girl individually and coached them through their speeches, tirelessly correcting their pronunciation.
In the morning of the fourth day, in the hour or so before the presentation, we stood the girls on the stage (the real stage), hung the posters on the whiteboard, and went through about three dress rehearsals. There was no doubt about it—our group was prepared.
Unfortunately preparation was not one of the criteria being judged.
They threw this at us literally right before we had to get on stage. That is, Sakura mentioned there would be a contest on the first day, but she did not say how we were being judged. The categories, it turned out, included content, memorization, and creativity. They were not in our favor.
But you know what? I didn’t care. Yeah, we didn’t have much content. Yeah, we hadn’t memorized our speeches at. Yeah, we didn’t have costumes or props or do a dance like the Austrian group did. But our girls gave a solid performance. They pointed to their posters when and where they were supposed to, they made eye contact with the audience, and they spoke fluidly. And by the way, did I mention, we were the FIRST group to get on stage. I was proud of our girls. We came in fourth, but it was a close fourth. I bought the girls soda from the vending machine as a reward.
Matt and I talked about it in the car afterwards. Winning, we both agreed, had never been the point. The point had been for the students to learn English and feel the confidence that came with it. Through our constant supervising, explaining, correcting, and cheering, we had accomplished this. Chiaki, who had hunched into herself at the start of the camp, was beaming by the end of it.
A picture of me and Matt that Haruka drew.
