I may come to love this school yet....

Recently I've been deep into Sports Day practice. Sports day is a big deal in my school, as most kids are in a sports club, and unlike a lot of school we do not have a Culture Festival. What this means is we put a lot into this event. I came into this school year very jaded and dismayed. I felt like all my work was bearing very little fruit. The kids were rotten much like my lessons, and I had begun to lose patience with the kids. I also realized a lot of them did not aspire to be much, usually things like Pastry chefs, Hair stylists, nail artists....things that I knew would not be requiring much English.

But, my neighbor told me something, as a foreigner with little Japanese, going to any of those places she would hope they could help her. And if something I teach them can help her, then in the long run arn't I doing something good. And then another thing, my school is somewhat blue collar and a lot of workers in the area I live are former students. I went a chiropractor and that person was a former student of my school (in Japan its a profession that requires a two year trade school degree) and at the end of the session he attempted to tell me my bill in English, bless his heart he couldn't.

So lately, I've been just trying to be nice to the kids, to talk to them at every chance. Unlike last year, I've been kinda distant to the kids, since they are basically little shits in most of my classes. I also didn't want to play favorites like I did last year (where I managed to help class 2 at cleaning time something like 5 times vs class 6's once...) But, some kids like English more than others, and some kids will like it more. I think I'm doing them a disservice if I avoid them simply because they want to talk to me, and some others don't.

But, I am also just attacking random kids. I used to think that forcing them to speak English just makes them hate it more, but I come up to them without difficult English. I try to speak proper English, but often in really short bursts. Lately, I've even been having fun. Talking to even the worst students, sometimes it inevitably fails, and I get students running away. But lately, even bad students have been running up to me or attempting to talk to me with out me having to prompt them. I get some bizarre-o sentences but its been fun. I almost feel like I can do this. But, we'll see as I have not even started actual lessons.

So I'm happy and some kids have come into clean the teachers room so time for more FORCED ENGLISH!