We woke up today, knowing that it was going to be our first day of work. I think that we were both nervous about it. Because I have five years of teaching experience, though, I was much less nervous than Paola.
As the day was progressing, I could see in her face that she was not very comfortable in this new job. She was especially scared of the actual teaching that we were going to perform with real Japanese students. (They call it On the Job Training. We get a short introduction to how to teach a part of the complete forty minute lesson, and then they put us in a class where we teach that portion of the lesson.) Furthermore, while the training and introductory part was done with all of the trainees together, the real teaching was done with each trainee apart from the others, so I was not there when Paola did her teaching. This bothered me because, not being there, I felt that I would not be able to help her. In fact, even if I were there, I still would not have tried to help. I felt silly, but there were several parts of the day, when we were together, that I wanted to jump in and assist, or give her the right answer; of course, I never did. Whenever we did get a minute, though, I would ask her how things were going, and for the first half of the day, she would only give an insecure nod. I was hoping that she would be able to pull through.
During lunch, we went to a popular fast food place that has served billions all over the world. The other trainee, Phil, joined us. He was from Australia, and worked as an artist. He had come to Japan a few months ago to try to find work, and this is what he came up with. He came to try to get his art exposed in Japan, and in a few months, he is going to participate in a convention of sorts, where artists display their work, hoping for galleries to pick them up. I enjoyed talking for a bit about contemporary art. We also agreed to swap dvds, so that we could have something fun or different to watch.
I think that the reason that I liked the working experience is because there were people whom we could talk to, other people in a situation similar to ours. Everyone there was very friendly and nice, and easy to get along with. Everybody offered good advice as to how to take care of different things that we were concerned with (like internet access, and phones). I appreciated that.
During the second half of the day, it was more of the same, just focusing on different parts of the lesson. So basically, after the first day, we got the introduction to the second half of a whole lesson. Since all the lessons are pretty much the same, it is easy to adapt the same criteria to different lessons. Tomorrow we will learn the first half of the lesson, and we will be ready to teach the whole lesson. The third day, I assume (I would be able to tell you for sure if I actually looked at the schedule and plan that they gave us), will be focused on honing our skills, and other administrative matters.
When we left, I was anxious to ask Paola how she felt about the whole thing. From my earlier assessment, I was afraid that she would not be happy with the job, and might want to quit. To my surprise, she said that by the end of the day she felt very comfortable with the job. She even said that she felt more sure of herself than the last teacher that she worked with (while she practiced her part of the lesson). She did say that she was still nervous because tomorrow we are to give a whole lesson by ourselves, but she knew that she would get the practice, and that in the end she would be fine. I reiterated what the trainer had said, “You just have to be confident, and be in control, or at least look like you’re confident and in control.” It seemed to me that she would be able to do the job just fine. We even agreed that it might even be of some benefit to her since she is typically a shy girl. Yet again, I think that everything is going to work out just fine.
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