Goals and Musings

I set some goals for myself about a week ago--here's how I'm doing.

1. Brushing up on Japanese. I've started reviewing vocabulary and kanji on smart.fm. I'm also doing dictation, which is a legit challenge at this point and probably exactly what I need. Also, I've been flipping through books, refreshing my memory on verb patterns.

2. Lesson plans. It turns out my predecessor is leaving me with some to get me started. However, I'm not slacking off. I've found some sites that have games, and while I don't know what exactly we'll be studying when I arrive, I'll at least have a repertoire.

3. Packing. Right now, I am entirely unpacked from college and about half packed for JET. I packed things for JET before unpacking and felt like I had extra clothes even then. Now, figuring out what to do with stuff is my very own Sisyphean challenge.

Lately, I've been meditating on what a language class should be and why it's important. My own experiences with language classes have been uniformly amazing thanks to great teachers. (It should be noted that my current state of 日本語をあまり話せない is no one's fault but my own for not practicing.) In retrospect, even quizzes and tests were fun and felt more like puzzles than exams. I've never felt like learning a foreign language was an all or nothing deal or even all about me; rather, the classes were about understanding what other people had to say and finding a way to express myself, even through the haze of new vocabulary and sentence structures.

It's idealistic, but I want my time with students to be an environment like this. I want to make students feel comfortable and feel like themselves when they read, write, listen to, or speak English. I want it to be fun, and I want to make it so they can see themselves grow. No, I'm not the teacher--merely an assistant--and yes, my job will be mostly review, games, and random supplementary lessons. However, it's the games and the random happenings in the context of learning a foreign language that made it so fun and that held my interest.

This job isn't simply about me or my personal/career advancement, and I love that.