For the love of English

I'm stuck at home with a sore throat, but luckily I'm huddled under my wonderful kotatsu table. (That is, a low coffee table with a heater stuck on its underside. It's covered by my pink kotatsu blanket, so the heat is trapped under the space. Like many other JETs, I am in love with my kotatsu table. I have been whining about the cold for the past few weeks, so I'm glad I finally caved and bought a kotatsu. Anyways).

So, I'm spending my weekend in Motomiya for the first time in a while.

With all this free time, I decided to break out my worksheets and do some correcting. Some of the stuff I've read in their assignments and in-class cracks me up, so I wanted to share it with you.

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In one of our classes, the students had to interview their teachers and translate their answers into English. The art teacher inserted a couple witty comments. Here's what the first-year students had to say about him.

1. He teaches fine arts.
2. His favourite colour is the rainbow.
3. He speaks English. (Bless his heart, but he doesn't! haha)
4. He lives in Fukushima.
5. He likes drinking.
6. He likes basketball.
7. He teaches moral education. (Really?)

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Hmm... for my second-graders, we wanted to teach them the meaning behind the word "because." So, my JTE designed a lesson with the theme "Let's find Gemma-sensei a boyfriend." Basically, he would put up photos of dudes and I'd say "Oh, I like that guy BECAUSE he is blond/American/he has a mustache..." One of my potential boyfriend candidates included a photo of my JTE... awkward?! My pred says the JTE thinks it's pure hilarity.

The next day, I noticed on one of the blackboards that a student had scrawled something in English: "Girl, I'll be your boyfreind." Amazing.

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Yesterday, one of my funny third-graders kept asking me how to spell "crap." He even looked it up in the dictionary, but to no avail. "Gemma-sensei, is it "c-l-a-p?" He tried really hard.

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One of the first-grade teachers found my pen, and presented it to me while yelling "LOOK! NO CAP! NO CAP!" He was so proud that he could utter those words in English for me. He is seriously one of my favourites. At the last matsuri, he even offered me free yakisoba (dericious noodles) from his booth.

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One of my ichi-nensei girls scrawled "I love you" on a small scrap of paper, then handed it over to me. She's such a sweetie! And she wrote a follow-up letter, saying she didn't know how to write in English, but would try very hard. Kawaii ne!

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Little nuggets of such sweetness and hilarity make school life interesting. Jya ne...