Int'l Fest 2006

Taneichi's 1st Annual International Festival

がいこくじんのぶんかさい

June 11, 2006

たねいちのたいくかん

Taneichi's ALTs from left to right: Laura, me, Zach, Damian & Eamonn

Zach & I are from America. I work at 2 junior high schools and 10 elementary schools. He works at 4 local junior high schools, this is his wife Laura. Damian is from England and works at Taneichi High School. Eamonn is from Northern Ireland and works at Ono High School (the village that recently merged with Taneichi).

I wanted to give back to our gracious community, so I planned and organized this festival. The other ALTs made it possible, doing it solo would have been chaos. Thanks to them for their efforts! Pictured above is the stage area where we set up information about ourselves...photos, old yearbooks, pictures of friends and family etc. I also made a little play area for the pre-schoolers that couldn't participate in the other games--ABC puzzles, American cartoon coloring sheets and a bunch of those really BIG books (in English of course). All of us ALTs are leaving this area, so I thought it best to hold a rummage sale to get rid of our junk and lighten our suitcases. The sale was semi-successful, and the money raised went to our local library to buy English books. What a samiritan I've turned into eh? ;) The rest of the day was spent playing games that involved simple English and the focus was on communication! Because I work with all of these elementary schools kids, I knew about how much they could handle and all ALTs agreed, it really couldn't have gone any smoother. We were so lucky! No technological dificulties either...strange but true!

Since this was sorta my doing, I took the responsiblity of emcee-for-a-day. It was really great and felt so good to 1. teach 2. actually feel purposeful and 3. make English fun! We had about 120 people turn out, so it was smaller than anticipated, but a nice size group for all the games we had planned. The activities included various English topics: days of the week, colors, body parts, clothing, numbers and simple greetings.

We were able to share our music from our home countries with them during the games and admittingly, in the effort of time, we downloaded a bunch of "JockJams" tunes to get the kids extra spazzy. wow, listening to those tunes brought a wave of 4th grade nostalgia...but the kids really enjoyed it. We also each made a short powerpoint presentation on our countries (England, Ireland and America). It was a lot of information but with the help of my friend/student Rintaro, we were able to quickly translate the important stuff. Rintaro did an incredible job & the students really enjoyed an 'older Taneichi student" helping emcee the event. We made a great team!

While Rintaro's job was to translate, there were some times where the ALTs only demonstrated a game or activity and the students, little sponges that they are, were able to quickly pick it up through imitation and modeling. This is a style that I think would work wonderful in the junior high school classroom too. These kids played SO many new games during the festival and not one of them had any questions or was lost and confused....just goes to show that maybe the Japanese English teachers are enabling their students to be helpless. The Japanese teachers are training the students to wait for the translation, when they should be training the kids to listen for contextual clues and read body language/gestures and tone of voice. How do they think people like me, complete Japanese rookies, learned as much Japanese as we have....through translation? No way, no one can ever translate things for me. I have trained my ears to listen and shockingly, I've magically been able to remember what I hear. To each their own, suppose this strategy doesn't work for everyone, but it's worth a try as the current state of affairs is ridiculous!

get these kids interested in English now and that first 'usually-terrifying' year of junior high english class might actually be productive. my goal and reason for doing this festival was to thank the community AND to obliterate the 'fear factor' that is associated with English. all day, we repeated "mistakes are OK", "do your best" and "try!" the environment wasn't scary and intimidating and based on perfection, like that in the junior high schools. it was such a great day because i could see every kid excited, motivated and fearLESS of english! that in itself, made the day successul!

Thanks to Saori for filming the event for me! Can't wait to see it! I'm so happy Shyou and Ryou came as well! They are young and couldn't participate in some of the games, but just being around foreigners is such an important step in building a healthy friendship with people who aren't Japanese!

One of my fave pics on the day,...this is my supervisor's son. Isn't he cute! Here, we are playing a relay game where I call out an article of clothing and they must run to a huge pile of 'foreigner clothing' and dig out whatever it is and put it on. This little guy is pretty bundled up in our not so japanesey-sized clothing!

Apologies for not posting this earlier..its been a really long but good week and I was having some problems posting pictures on Blogger for some reason. Overall, this festival marked one of the most memorable 'teaching' days I have ever had in Japan. I'm so thankful for everyone that participated: students, parents, supervisors, other ALTs, the office and the staff at our gym. Couldn't have done it without your help! Thanks for sharing in the day and making it a success! Internationalization @ the grass roots level can be so challenging and changes are slow, but maybe that's why its so rewarding!