elementary school blues...sort of

you know what i hate...being sick. i've been sick all week. it was mostly due to teaching elementary school and partially due to drinking a little too much amount on the weekend. but you know what i love...the students. whilst i felt crappy all week, they continued to give me their all. they were so excited for lessons, it was unbelievable. after teaching 4 classes thursday i walked into the 3rd grade class (my last class of the day) exhausted. then i saw their faces--they were bursting. i did the greeting "hello, how are you? i'm fine, thank you." then i said, "ok, we're going to sing the....A,B, C song!" they screamed in delight. i'm not talking about little, wussy whoops, i'm talking rockstar fan screaming....for the A,B,C song. it was incredible. we rocked out to it. the teacher and i started dancing and soon everyone was dancing their way around the room.....to the A,B,C song. have you ever tried dancing to that? and then on friday after teaching 5 classes(each being 45 minutes long with the semi-out-of-control 2nd graders) i walked into the 5th graders room. i've been wanting to teach the song "hello, goodbye" by the beatles for quite some time and today was the day. i had already taught it to two of the three 5th grade classes and it went well. but this last class LOVED it. i had the words written in both English and katakana. first they had to listen to it and write (in katakana) the missing words. at first (i've come to realize that japanese kids tend to say anything in english is "too difficult" and "i don't understand english at all" before they even give it a try...a slight annoyance to me. i usually just reply "you can do it, it's easy. really." to which they reply with more "english is too difficult". ah!) they were hesitant. we listened two more times and they, for the most part, got it. i spent the next seven minutes teaching them gestures for the words ("Oh no!"--hands on head, "Hello, hello!"--big waves, etc.) Then we tried it with the CD and the beatles. that's when i realized they were addicted. i'm not joking. we sang, gestured/danced "hello, goodbye" 10 times. after the bell rang for school to be let out, we did our "lasto timu" and i left the classroom in disbelief. students are amazing. they can teach you much more than you teach them sometimes.