The Teacher becomes the Student

There's some Chinese proverb I can't recall about how the teacher should learn from their students, or something like that....

Can I call myself a teacher yet? I suppose not. Teacher-to-be then. Although tomorrow I get to teach so maybe I can then say I AM a teacher.

Seven weeks today I'm off and, again, I'm completely buzzing over it. This week I'm being a bad girl and skipping work to do a foundation teaching course with the school I'm going out with. Being with an entire group of people who are as psyched as I am about doing something is wonderful. A couple of them have done it before, and loved it so much they're going to go and do it again. I am still to hear of a single person who had a bad experience or disliked their teaching in Japan experience. Very encouraging.

Today was a lot of fun, with lots of getting-to-know exercises, a Polish lesson (!), a vocabulary lesson (we're meant to know grammar!) and a chance to meet the students we'll be having to teach over the next couple of days in assessed sessions. Unfortunately, the students were a lovely bunch of mainly Europeans and South Americans, who were all very confident, outgoing and extremely enthusiastic. The opposite of what we're expecting our Japanese students to be like. Shame we couldn't have practiced with some of them, but never mind.

And, like a good teacher to be, I came home (via a quick beer with some of the others) and prepared my lesson plan for tomorrow!