Since week 2 of work until the middle of October, I staid after school everyday at my middle school to work with a group of six students (or at least six when they all come; usually it is only three or four) to prepare for the all Amakusa English recitation contest. It was a pretty significant event in my JET career, as I knew I would be judged slightly depending on how well we did in the competition.
An English Recitation contest, for those of you who are wondering, is a competition where middle school students perform dialogs/skits from their textbooks in front of hundreds of people. Many students have been practicing for about 2 months, practicing the same 3-5 minute dialog over and over. At the competition, everyone listens nervously to the other schools performances; many schools choose the same dialogs to perform, so it can be both painfully boring and painfully nerve-racking to see other students perform the same dialog you. Will the judges like their rendition better than yours? Is there really anything to differentiate the performances? Will they give us extra points for doing these gestures and pausing here instead of there?
Though practicing the same dialogs with my students day in and day out was sort of boring, we actually spent a lot of time just talking about whatever. It was my first chance to get to know some of my students outside the classroom. Even now those kids are my 'best friends' among the middle school students, and I feel I can talk with them without being awkward.
Anyway, back to the competition. My first years tried as best as they could to make the skit "Hamburger Shop"' interesting, but since 80% of the skills were doing the same dialog for the first year skit, I was a little worried for them. The second years had armed themselves with some interesting gestures that really added new meaning to the interpretation of their story "The Magic Box" (OK, so maybe that description has a more gravitas than is deserved), and my third year student was a natural at performing the horrendously tragic "A Mother's Lullaby" story.
BTW: Mother's Lullaby: most awkward story to teach in the textbook. Hiroshima is bombed, little girl sings lullaby to dying boy who is crying for his mother, both little girl and boy die before the sun rises the next day. Why is this in the English textbook? This is not getting students in a happy mood to learn English.
After hours of hearing the same skits over and over, the time finally came for the presentation of awards. Everyone in the room waited with baited breath as they called out which schools received "excellence" awards for each school year. Kuratake, Shinwa, Ushibuka, Hondo…Amakusa Junior high school! Then the announcement of who got 1st and 2nd place… darn. On to the next school year. 2nd years …Ushibuka, Kawaura, Hondo Higashi…Amakusa ! It was a pretty doki doki moment (doki doki is the sound of your heart beating in Japanese), but we were very happy to receive excellence awards for all of our students. Overall we came in 4th place out of 27 schools. Sadly, because of changes in the program, they only gave out trophies to the top three schools instead of the top four (which they supposedly did last year). Oh well. We supposedly got fourth last year as well, so at least I can't be blamed for making our students worse.
Other good points of the day: a fun filled bus ride and the chance to introduce my students to my 'foreigner' friends. My students for some reason think that I just stay in my apartment and make lesson plans when I'm not work, so the idea that I go around Amakusa with other people and have fun was a big surprise to them...
