(The building on the left is our office.)
Although Paola felt good about the job last night, by this morning she was nervous again. This was mostly because she knew that we would have to teach two full lessons by ourselves today. That’s pretty rough, thrown head first into the mix on the second day of training. I don’t think that either of us thought that would be the case. (In fact, if we had read through the materials that they gave us when we first arrived last week, we would have seen that, indeed, this is what was going to happen.)
That said, it is not as if they are simply giving us the book and telling us to teach. The head trainer is very friendly, and he is certainly helping us get the hang of what we are supposed to do. So before each lesson that we had to teach, we went over everything that we were going to do during the lesson. He was helpful in giving us advice, and answering questions that we might have.
All three of us made the same mistake of racing through the material too fast on our first lesson. We had been trained yesterday on the second half of the lesson, but before teaching, we barely got enough training for the first half of the lesson today. For that reason, we didn’t completely grasp the first half, and so we went too fast. Like I said, the trainer was friendly and helpful, so he didn’t make us feel bad for this (we already felt bad enough), and told us what we needed to do for the next lesson.
I could tell that Paola was uncomfortable an unsure of herself during the whole process. It was as though she thought that she would never get it. There was one section of the lesson in particular that she still didn’t get the hang of, and so I could see her stressing about it. I tried to give her some help by giving her some tips about what she might want to do, and so did some other people. I could tell, though, that she still wasn’t confident about what she was doing.
After the second lesson, at the end of the day, I asked her how it went. She didn’t think that it went too well. However, when we go our evaluations back, she was reassured by what she heard. Even though she did not give enough time to the first half again, it was much better than last time, and the trainer said that she did very well. This made her feel better about everything, and more confident in her ability to do the job. After the day was over, she even admitted to me that she was really nervous and did not feel good about the job until after she got the positive evaluation. She was certainly starting to feel more comfortable in the new position. In fact, the other instructors who had been there for a while were telling us that they had the same exact feeling when they started, but after about a week, they realized that it was the easiest job that they ever had.
As we were leaving work, one of the other instructors asked us if we wanted to go out and play some pool. I wanted to go out and socialize with some folks, so we did. In fact, pool is not my forte, but the whole point was to try to participate a little bit in society outside of work. We met two other instructors, Brenden and Greg, and one Japanese staff member from another school (I can’t remember what she said her name was, perhaps Anayumi, or something). Greg and Brenden were both from England, Greg from the north, and Brenden from London. Greg said that he had been here for a month, and Brenden for three months. We talked a bit about work, and what brought us to Japan over some beers and pool. It was nice enough getting to know new people. He also gave us some advice about what we might want to do or see on our free time; I really want to try to make it out for the Sumo tournament next week, but we’ll see what happens.
-SBE-
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