Teaching so far

I'm not a qualified teacher. My only qualification for the job is that I'm a native speaker of the English language, yet I've still noticed some things that I believe to be flaws in how English is taught here in Japan.

Kenpoku Chugakko

First off, some information about where and who I teach, and who I teach with. I teach Enlgish at 4 schools in Kunimi machi, Fukushima ken, Japan. 3 of these schools are elementary schools one of which I visit for 2-3 periods a week, rotating. My base school is Kenpoku Chugakko, a Junior High School, which has 350 odd 12-15 year olds. This is where I do the majority of my teaching with 3 Japanese Teacher's of English (JTE's).

What I actually do is called "Team-teaching", I work with the JTE's to teach rather than teaching myself. There's one JTE per year, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year. The 3rd year JTE I get on with superbly, she's lovely. Ridiculously keen on teaching the kids and is full of energy. The 2nd year JTE is a great guy but just doesn't like team teaching. He's a good drinking partner but he's cancelled every single 2nd year team-teaching class we were supposed to have. The 1st year JTE is useless. I plan all the lessons, create all the worksheets and run the class. She just does a little bit of translating here and there. This works superbly for me because it means I have free reign in the class as long as I follow the grammar points in the textbook.

The textbooks are fucked. They teach that it's correct to start a sentance with "But" or "And". I get so many written pieces saying "We did blehblehbleh. And it was fun" or "I went to blehblehbleh. But it was cold". I also get to teach 2 selective classes, one from 3rd year and one from 2nd year. These classes are cool cause it's kids who're motivated and want to learn the language rather than those being forced to learn because it's part of the curriculum. I get to choose what they study as there's no curriculum. Right now we're doing halloween, as obviously it's that time of year again. On Tuesday gonna try and have some scary halloween lessons which should be awesome. Blacking out a room, setting up some jack-o-lantern's, telling scary stories and then watching halloween films!

Anyhoo, onto thoughts on teaching. From what I've seen so far, learning English in Japan is based on learning to read and write it with a complete lack of emphasis on speaking the language. This has become evident to me through some experiences I've had since coming here. When I was in Kansai, me and my friends were speaking to a waitress who studied English as her minor yet still couldn't speak the language well at all. She was happy enough reading and writing but communicating orally was almost impossible. Obviously confidence issues come into this as well, and 3 half-drunk gaijin trying to force you to speak English doesn't really help. But based on what I've seen in classes so far, baring 3rd year most of the stuff they study in English is written. I'm trying to get the 1st years to do much more speaking as they're my classes and the selective classes I get them to speak as much as possible but it's an uphill struggle.

Satomi and Chihiro

These are two of my best students. Very good English and they make me lunch as well :D Was sitting at my desk when suddenly I hear "Sumimasen, Alex-sensei!, Please eat, we cooked okonomiyaki!"

Oxford definition of Okonomiyaki:
"Okonomiyaki is THE best food in Japan. Hands down, no questions asked."