Teaming Up, FAX Overkill and White Day

Since my slide through the nose of the Great Buddha I have not done any touring about and have spent my time in the classrooms preparing lessons and reading the long scrolls of FAXs I get sent each day. Mog noted this recently in his blog but the Company uses FAX as its main means of communication. Not just any FAX machines, mind you, but the sort that just sports out long rolls of thin paper separating each of them. Here we have the most technological advanced civilizations in the history of man and they are using tools from the 1980s. I call them the Dead Sea Scrolls as when I walk into the classroom each afternoon they are curled up ready to be unfurled, digested and recycled.

I have received a lot of FAXs this week with the first one informing me that I would be sent a team teacher for observation and lesson elevation. This would be my first experience with these little team teaching sessions I here supervisors like to dole out to keep our office days nice and filled with things to do that doesn’t deal with sleeping on the classroom floor using the nice comfy pillow dice found in each class as a headrest. My first experience with them left me with the opinion that such sessions of team teaching are a mixture of good and bad elements that in the end make something drinkable. The bad side is that you are observed by somebody else for you entire day of lessons and though I am fine with this it doesn’t necessarily mean my normal route isn’t altered. I mean, it really is hard to beat the hell of the children when somebody else is watching. Oh, I kid. I don’t beat the kids…much. Seriously, though, being watched just messes with my classroom chi. On the other hand…you have other fingers. Oh, Stephen Wright you make me laugh so. On the other hand the team teacher is usually going to teach one or more of your lessons so it gives you a nice break to switch places and watch him or her in motion. Personally, though I said the experience is palatable, the drink does not go down well with me. The kids are nervous because they have two teachers in the room and some of them get confused on who they have to reply to, especially if your “teammate” is sitting to close to them. This was my first day teaching at this school and I think it might have been best if they waited to do this after I had introduced myself as the new teacher to all of the students.

I’d met my teammate before. He was the guy who moved me into my apartment. A fellow Canadian and a lad of just over twenty he has been with the company for a year now and will be returning home in two months. I’m glad he was a good guy who knew his stuff because if they send you a bumbling angry oaf to help you team teach you are going to be on damage control the entire time. He was a very tall guy with a fine collection of freckles. His teaching style is the exact opposite of my own. I am more of a passive and he more of an aggressive. In other words my games do not tend to include much running around. Running around leads to hyperactivity and accidents. This is not to say I don’t have a few active games in my repertoire I just don’t enjoy the sort of play that could cause accidents. For example, one of my teammates games was to have the kids run in all directions touching certain words he’d placed on the floor. I would not play this type of game and got visions of NASCAR wreaks as I watched the kids nearly collide on a few occasions. If it were a smaller classroom they might be missing a few teeth. I had already planed my game earlier that week for this lesson and it dealt with having the students sit in a two teams. I wrote the words not on paper placed around the room but on the whiteboard. I would then say the words and the students, already at the board, would have to place a mark under the one I said with the quickest getting a little plastic chip, the classroom principal reward system. Less motion, less screaming and reduced chance of accidents. I guess a kid could eat the whiteboard marker, choke and die from lack of oxygen but I am going to bet that only happens once every year or so. Even my more active games (like card soccer) have the kids sitting or flow against rapid leg motion. Maybe I will ease up when I get into the swing of things and get to know my classes more (and the students get used to me) but right now we keep the learning in the forefront and the smash up derby style games on the backburner.

Another FAX sent that day and it just kept coming inducing fits of laughter from the students who kept stretching it out as it nearly reached the center of the room, I joked to my team teacher that we might have to end classes today before we all die of suffocation due to overflowing FAX paper. That one would be Darwin Award, wouldn’t it? TEACHER AND STUDENTS STRANGLED TO DEATH BY FAX PAPER. Also makes for a good horror flick. “Just when you thought it was safe to fax…” FAX ATTACK 2 AND THE CLASSROOM OF DOOM! This long FAX was about a staff meeting were would be having next week and the new curriculum the company would be changing to in April. The last FAX of the day was from my head trainer and it told me that I would have an observer and trainee teacher in two of my classrooms next week. More team teaching but this is another beast as this guy is a newbie and I am asked to grade his performance and he mine. Why they are sending a trainee to me, just out of training, is beyond me. Worse yet the first day of this will be at a school that is not even mine way out in the sticks again farther then last weeks trip. It certainly should be interesting.

Today was White Day which is not as advertised as Valentine’s Day. This day is celebrated not only in Japan but also in Taiwan and South Korea. As I mentioned back on February 14th, Valentines here is a day when gifts are only given to men by women. White Day is payback for the men who now have to return the sentiment with gifts of their own. This is called sanbai-gaeshi which means triple return as it is customary here for the boy to give a gift three times the value of the one he received. So, women of Japan, give your boyfriend a Volkswagen for Valentine’s Day and be rewarded with a Porsche on White Day. The day all stated with a marshmallow in the 60s. In 1965 a Japanese marshmallow marker developed a plan to increase sales by marketing his wares with a mixture of gilt towards men who, at that point, were not obligated to purchase a return gift for whomever gave them something on Valentine’s Day. The day was originally called the really silly name of Marshmallow Day and maybe somebody realized how ridiculous that sounded and changed it to white day. Other merchants caught on to the cash cow of another day devoted to sweets and a new holiday was born. Try creating one yourself sometime and see if it sticks.

Happy White Day everybody!