Beware of the teddies!
Is anyone else beginning to feel like if they don't leave their JET job soon, then they might either (a) crack up completely, (b) realise that their brain has been irreparably turned to mush, or (c) be forced to strangle one of their colleagues for being quite frankly laughable at English! If you have answered 'yes' to any of these points, then welcome to my world! I am doing my best to remain enthusiastic, and continue to be the funny, hard-working and reliable ALT I have been for the last 21 months (with the odd 'off' day of course!)...but it's a really difficult task when in my final term of teaching in Japan, I am handed an awful teacher, who riles me more than anyone else has before! I thought 'the moron' was the worst I would encounter here...and although I've been lumped teaching with him again this year, I am finding the experience easier, as I now know what to expect, how to handle him, and what I need to put up with. But this other teacher is a different kettle of fish all together.
She is a nice, smiley, pleasant lady, who always looks happy to see me, and thanks me profusely for any help I give her....but there's a reason for that....she is rubbish, and I therefore presume that she looks forward with relief to the day that I go into her classes. How she was able to acquire her 'English teaching license' is beyond me! She is about 30 years old, and up until this year she has been teaching social studies at junior and senior high school. And now suddenly this year, she is an English teacher! I knew it was going to be a tough few weeks when she turned to me in our first meeting and said, with a grin, "please tell me everything. I don't know anything." And she really wasn't kidding. Her English is clumsy, grammatically inaccurate, often incomprehensible, and virtually non-existant in the classroom. Having a conversation with her is difficult, and I feel like someone is stabbing a blunt pencil in my head as she's trying to get her point across. She has no idea of personal space, and insists on planning lessons while leaning over my desk, and pushing all of my things out of the way. She is also one of those ridiculous Japanese women who seems proud of the fact that her desk is covered with teddie bears, and her e-mail addresses contain the words 'teddy' and 'bear'. Yes, before you tell me..I know I love Hello Kitty and many other of her Japanese 'chums' (rirakuma, anpanman, and of course the Miyazaki family..)...but I DO NOT sit at a desk swimming in sickly sweet, supposedly 'cute' teddies, who have even influenced my e-mail names, and who I claim are 'all my friends' (reaaaaaallllly scary!). Yes, I like cute as much as the next JET, but I know where the line between real life, and make-believe cute playland, needs to be drawn..and I do not cross it! This woman appears to have rubbed out the line, and redrawn it a hell of a lot further up the scale! Aaaarrrghhh...she drives me crazy! Its comments like "in my golden week i changed my clothesesss...winter and summer. That all," and the fact that she is wearing culottes today, that I find so annoying!
Anyway, moan over! I thought if I wrote it all down and got it out of my system, I could try to like her...teddy bears and all! So far, it hasn't worked....but....it has stopped my brain from going to mush for 20 minutes. Every cloud......
She is a nice, smiley, pleasant lady, who always looks happy to see me, and thanks me profusely for any help I give her....but there's a reason for that....she is rubbish, and I therefore presume that she looks forward with relief to the day that I go into her classes. How she was able to acquire her 'English teaching license' is beyond me! She is about 30 years old, and up until this year she has been teaching social studies at junior and senior high school. And now suddenly this year, she is an English teacher! I knew it was going to be a tough few weeks when she turned to me in our first meeting and said, with a grin, "please tell me everything. I don't know anything." And she really wasn't kidding. Her English is clumsy, grammatically inaccurate, often incomprehensible, and virtually non-existant in the classroom. Having a conversation with her is difficult, and I feel like someone is stabbing a blunt pencil in my head as she's trying to get her point across. She has no idea of personal space, and insists on planning lessons while leaning over my desk, and pushing all of my things out of the way. She is also one of those ridiculous Japanese women who seems proud of the fact that her desk is covered with teddie bears, and her e-mail addresses contain the words 'teddy' and 'bear'. Yes, before you tell me..I know I love Hello Kitty and many other of her Japanese 'chums' (rirakuma, anpanman, and of course the Miyazaki family..)...but I DO NOT sit at a desk swimming in sickly sweet, supposedly 'cute' teddies, who have even influenced my e-mail names, and who I claim are 'all my friends' (reaaaaaallllly scary!). Yes, I like cute as much as the next JET, but I know where the line between real life, and make-believe cute playland, needs to be drawn..and I do not cross it! This woman appears to have rubbed out the line, and redrawn it a hell of a lot further up the scale! Aaaarrrghhh...she drives me crazy! Its comments like "in my golden week i changed my clothesesss...winter and summer. That all," and the fact that she is wearing culottes today, that I find so annoying! Anyway, moan over! I thought if I wrote it all down and got it out of my system, I could try to like her...teddy bears and all! So far, it hasn't worked....but....it has stopped my brain from going to mush for 20 minutes. Every cloud......
posted by Lauren @ 1:20 am
2 Comments:
At 8:40 am,
Kat said…
haha this made me guffle loz...i've never quite seen the attraction in teddies...except the ones with teeth and fangs!X
At 1:19 pm,
Turning Japanese said…
Tomorrow must be a different school.
I have an idea... Make a calendar of the times you still have to teacher with the new moron... Cross them off one by one. I am sure you will feel better.
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