First day of teaching - and now I need sleep

There's so much I haven't talked about since my arrival in Japan. I want to make sure that I at least get today down for the record. Today was my first real day on the job, my first day teaching in front of a class.

For an ALT with no prior teaching experience, I think this would probably be the most nerve-wracking day. Yet with all the other frightening experiences I've had - the adult English class I did with my predecessor, the mock lesson I had to give in Kyoto two weeks ago, and the self-introduction to the junior high school yesterday - I think my nerves were plain fresh out of wrack. It's as though I were so tired of worrying, I just wasn't capable of worrying anymore.

Approximately 50 Japanese 3rd year junior high students got to see pictures of me, my family, my friends, and a couple random pictures of typical American things. That's two classes, which make up all of the 3rd years in my school. My predecessor showed me how he made his self-introduction using his laptop, with lots of digital pictures. I wanted to take it further, turning my slideshow into a full-on presentation, complete with music in the background and crazy text effects. Except it turns out that text effects are still lame (I'm looking at you, people who like to use every single transition and effect possible in Powerpoint) and my choice of background music (AC/DC's "Thunderstruck") doesn't quite work with pictures of people opening Christmas gifts. So I had to settle for a plain vanilla slideshow.

I spent about 30 minutes introducing myself, going through pictures, and writing on the board to explain some new words and phrases. Then I had the students write down questions for me in English, and I collected and answered them. I kept the English simple, and while I was worried that it would still be too tough for them to understand, the JTE for these classes reassured me that my talking speed and vocabulary level were good. It's really tough, though, because I get so little feedback from these kids. Half of them don't even look in my general direction while I'm talking, and of the ones that do, almost none of them give me anything besides blank stares. This is everything that experienced ALTs told us to expect from JHS students.

I will say this, though. I was really blown away by how different the two classes were. The first one was far quieter, and seemed very bored no matter what I did. The second one had more students that seemed on the verge of speaking out. Almost as if they were forming questions in their minds, about to open their mouths to speak, when all of a sudden they realized: "I almost forgot, I'm a Japanese junior high schooler. I should keep my mouth shut!" There were actually a couple of class clowns in the second class, but hey, at least they were speaking.

Outside of the classroom, I got to interact with some of the kids, and it's nice to see them in a more relaxed mood. Although I like to use as much English with them as I can, I end up talking a lot in Japanese. I think it helps to put them at ease, because they know I'm not testing them, and they have the upper hand with the language. Grassroots internationalization, my friends. And I get some Japanese practice out of it too.