Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

That’s work over for another year and its gotta be said that I am already tired of Christmas. I know its fairly common for people to say such a thing due to the commercialisation of the whole thing and the fact that its hard to escape the songs and decorations in the shops and department stores.

My problem is to do with having it on the brain a lot in the last month in terms of preparing and planning lessons for both kids and adults of whom a fair few really couldn’t give two hoots about such festivities. You may wonder therefore why we bother to do it at all but its kind of part of the curriculum and besides it is initially a nice break from the usual books.

 

Sensibly I kept last years self-made Christmas flashcards and my Santa costume and added a few more gimmicks such as the pooping reindeer (a chocolate ball drops out of its ar*e when you push down on its back – childish yes, but good fun!) and balloons to be blown up and put between the legs for a jumping ‘hunt the flashcard’ race.

No sweets could be given out due to some problem with allergies a while back so this time they got a cr*p package including a pencil, eraser and tissues which was rather embarassing to give them but I guess Christmas is all about disappointments!!

That was further apparent when it hit home to some students that these lessons weren’t that special after all and were indeed just a review of the usual b*llocks but with a very vague unsubtle Christmas twist on it. By that I mean changing games like ‘What time is it Mr Wolf (teaching the time, obviously) and the ‘Is there an (object) in the bag?’ guessing game to ‘What time is it Santa?’ and ‘Is there an (object) in the stocking?’ respectively. Ouch!

   

My company’s annual Christmas party took place in Shinjuku on Saturday but this year it was a bit different as the whole of our district in Nishi-Tokyo had one big party comprising about 180 students and 30 teachers. All in stark contrast to previous years’ much smaller intimate affairs.

The location was very nice and games were kept to a minimum with just a game of Bingo on the menu which seemed like it went on for ages. At least it got the students attention unlike the teacher introductions on stage that were heard by very few due to a cr*p sound system and a distinct lack of interest which was maybe because everyone else was busy mingling.

Thankfully I declined to take part in that ‘tumble-weed’ moment as I wanted to concentrate my energy on getting through as much alcohol as possible!! The same could not be said of the food which came and went in no time. I hardly got a look in there as no sooner had the food arrived it had gone as the food-obsessed Japanese lapped it up like flies around sh*t! All in all it was a fairly enjoyable evening and it flew by very quickly but the party continued elsewhere till first train in the morning.

   

Move over David Brent as it seems there’s a new guy in town who can motivate people and unbelievably that person is me! Not my words but those of one of my bosses who, after observing one of my Upper-Intermediate adult classes last week, said that my involvement, motivation and monitoring of students included “good pep talks to motivate…” the students. Surprising praise to be honest and the highlight of his feedback on what I thought was a fairly poor lesson.

The objective of my lesson was about ‘being assertive’ in the name of preferences for deciding on a holiday and the plan was pretty good even if I do say so myself. However, things don’t always go to plan and with certain stages of the lesson going on longer than expected I was thoroughly disappointed to have not got through everything, particularly the grand finale. This was to involve five students doing some free practice of the target language using realia in the form of Europe and Australia English language travel brochures (brought to work in preparation for that unit of the book) to decide in groups what kind of tour they would go on.

Luckily I could do all of that the following week without Big Brother’s evil watching eye but personally I wanted to show what I can do in the pressure cooker environment of an observation lesson.