Ok so the title was meant to be in Japanese but whenever I try to do the Japanese c’est le Francaise instead. In anycase my show opened yesterday after last weekend’s putting it up. Yesterday I felt decidedly inexperienced and generally crap about it. My Japanese teacher’s stuff is fantastic, all leaves growing over a bed in nightmare and good dreams. As for the Id her nets were so cool.
Today however, I feel good. We had a lot of children in today and of course kids respond really well to my stuff. Whilst the parents are hanging back going ‘what on earth?’ the kids spot the colouring pencils and chalks and dive right in. One guy added a fish to my forest floor so I made a pond for him, excellent collaborative art process.
The obasan’s in my Japanese teacher’s English class were fun too, communicating via broken English and Japanese and A LOT of gestures and poses. At one point during their visit one of my newspaper strips tore off because of the wind and went sailing out of the window (nude prints of Mish sailing through the skies of Kofu…what fun!) and a couple of hours later the obasans brought it back! Ya-ta!
Wonderful wonderful day…not much sleep however. Must catch up on that on the train to Tokyo tommorrow. Skimble is over at my place again, posing as some sort of room-mate and I’m pondering my life options for the next few years. I’m trying to get an NQT placement at a further education college. I’m just not cut out for teaching children, I know I know seems like such a cop out but whilst I do enjoy teaching I simply can’t be arsed with the motivating. I love teaching elementary school kids because they have the motivation, they’ll try anything but I can’t take them far enough for me hence frustration.
After Japan I’m thinking south america again, get my Spanish back up to scratch, then maybe France and maybe actually get a French qualification (beyond GCSE)…I’d really like to wander in Mongolia…so much world and so little time.
NQT? Would that be a Japan thing still?
NQT is, I think the qualifying year you need to become a teacher ‘properly’. I may be off on the wrong track… And she certainly can’t do that in Japan! At least, I didn’t think so! And if she can, we’ll never see her again, so don’t encourage her 😉
I have to do the NQT either in the UK or at a British School abroad, since The Jellicle and Gentleman Jez want me home I thought I might try and do it Igirisu ni!
Cool. I figured NQT had to be in a British school for it to count, but I was just checking.