English Focus Week

When I first received notice that I would be participating in English Focus Week 2006, I was still in the States. The "invitation" came in the form of an email from my prefectures supervisor stating something like, "you have been invited to participate in EFW 2006, and we are looking forward to your involvement." I just got back from the camp yesterday, and I won't try and say that it was all hard work. In fact, my participation involved as little work as possible, as my duty was simply to sit in the back of the room and observe the contracted professional English teachers from the UK do their magic. This magic, which on day one of the camp promised a room full of 30 nervous teenagers improvement in English speaking skills, was perhaps rusty or rendered ineffective by the high altitude of the retreat center where the camp took place. (I'm trying to be generous, here.) In short, the three UK instructors were more than a bit displeased by just about every aspect of the camp's facilitation: from the communication with the prefectural Board of Education, to the presence of myself and other JETs in the classroom, to the English ability of the students. These teachers did not try, in any way, to conceal their strong feelings of contempt from anyone (even the students), and let the JETs and Japanese teachers know from day one that they were angered by our presence.

Let me say that it has been a challenging week.

While my first reaction was to meet their ill feelings with anger, I soon realized that I had no desire to spend the week being bored and pissed off, so instead tried to focus my energies on interacting with the kids as much as possible (allowed during meals and break periods only). This proved, I believe, the best approach to dealing with the ugliness of it all, and I got to have some fun with the kids.

And so now I'm (finally) back home in Utsunomiya, though I've in total spent more time at camp than I have at my house. I've been feeling in a daze since I got back into town yesterday, sleeping far too much last night, then falling into a nap again this afternoon. Tomorrow I go back to my school and spend the day sitting at my desk daydreaming about what I might have for dinner at the Brazilian cafe I'm meeting friends at tomorrow night. I wonder if the Brazilians serve their cuisine on a stick, too...