This was a while back, not Easter time as it should have been, but back in May never-the-less. I had bought a ton of Easter eggs at great difficulty and confusion, especially when the teacher insisted on paying me back but I couldn't find the receipt. I eventually got 100 very expensive plastic shells. The goal was to hide them around the school and then have one student know the location and guide the other student.
This seemed like a good idea at the time.
Despite that foreshadow, it didn't go so bad. Unfortunately, I had to teach them how to tell directions, do an example activity where I had one student tell a second student how to walk to a third student's desk, and then actually do the activity all in a mere 50 (or sometimes 45) minutes.
The classes were still jumbled up, so half of the classes were doing the email activity, while the other half were doing the Easter eggs. So I had to hide them twice.
While we were doing the activity, apparently some of the eggs disappeared. I managed to get some of them back when I discovered that some of the third years had accidentally taken some, but some still remain missing.
It was exactly as I had predicted - chaos. After rapidly explaining the terms and doing a demonstration, we only had a little time. I had hidden five eggs of different colors in ten locations, thus giving fifty numbers. I had the students pair up and designated one to be the walker and one to give the commands. I told the commander where to go and showed a picture of the location to make sure. Then the group went on their way to find the egg, get the number, and write it on a chart on the board. In later classes, it was my hope that they could get enough eggs to solve how I had numbered them, but there was never enough time or effort or understanding on their part.
Because they were outside and I was busy trying to dish out the next location constantly, I can't be sure they used English. The principal was willing to help and we hid some eggs in his office. Unfortunately, the students apparently used Japanese from what he reported.
At any rate, I enjoyed the chaos, and hopefully it became a memorable event for the students.
Later I reused the Easter eggs for ESS with actual chocolate in them. This time I just generally hid them. I also used the extra large eggs I called mega-eggs that came with the set I bought to hide 3x the chocolate. The second years were busy with the teacher about the guests coming in a few weeks, and the first years looked bored so I sent them ahead. Eventually, the second years were also released. I walked around giving out clues, but not all the eggs were found, and apparently a few were claimed by ants.
By the time I got back to the room we were using, the teacher exploded on the students for never using English or making her do all the work or some combination of that. Her Japanese devolved into heavy Yamaguchi accent and I couldn't understand her at all. The students all stared down at their feet, waiting for the barrage to end. One of the first years had been thinking about quitting, and the teacher had told me earlier she was afraid it would cause an exodus, but she suddenly targeted that student and told her over and over to say what she thought about the club and started saying that she said something about the club that the girl had to claim wasn't how she felt, but the teacher just forcing her to say bad things about the club. I wanted to step in and stop her, but I also didn't completely understand the situation and I didn't want to make things worse.
Fortunately, even though she repeatedly claimed she didn't care if everyone quit, everyone didn't. After she left, the students deliberated for like an hour. I sat and watched, but I couldn't understand everything. A few did decide to quit, but most stayed.
Despite their resolution to apologize in English, as well as my recommendation to do so, they didn't. No English was spoken that day.
The apology also took forever, so I ended up staying at work rather late.
The club seems to be using a lot more English now, so I guess things worked out. They are now, somewhat ironically, working on translating a book on sign language.
If they don't learn English, maybe they'll learn ASL instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment