Textbook Birthday!
Apr. 17th, 2008 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
parasitegirlWe celebrate my birthday with the gift of textbooks! And I personally celebrate it by appearing to work very hard pouring over them and writing about them. It's going to be a very long and enjoyable post, for me at least. When it stops being fun to write I will end it. This post should probably be broken into three or four different posts, but it won't be. It's long but it has pictures and it is mostly on one theme. Take your time, get a coffee and enjoy it, citizen of the world.
I now have my own shelf at work for English textbooks. The gifting began yesterday when they told me I would have my very own copy of Junior Columbus. JC is my most beloved classroom resource. It was created with the input of the Super English Teacher who advised my last school and is a constant advisor to NHK's Eigorian program. The lessons within are my style; activities and hands-on use of communication/critical thinking skills instead of chanting and clunky word-use games. When I started working at the On Paper school I photocopied every single page of the two JC textbooks. I knew I wouldn't be given the 100$ to buy them for myself.Those photocopied pages filled 5 binders have served me well.
I was alarmingly happy to get my own copies. I jumped up and down. The sweater vest men looked.
Before I came, my department ordered a shitload of English texts for me to use and to evaluate. I'm currently sifting through them finding nuggets of ideas to plug into last year's month by month teaching goals. Some are unusable. I am not making my students chant dialogs. Most are unintentionally funny. I've mentioned that some of the precious class time spent with Warning-san was spent laughing at visual aids...I haven't outgrown that.
Sunshine Kids has some posters I'll use, but the textbooks are sucky. They seem to have been illustrated using the same squiggle-vision I loved on the Dr. Katz animated show. They love the use of chants and of bingo games, I've hated for less...the kicker is that the higher level textbook has katakana pronunciation keys for English in sections...I've killed for less.
And then there is this, from a unit called "Does it live in Japan?"
CD: Panda, panda, where do you live?
Group 1: I live in China!
CD: Space shuttle, space shuttle, where do you live?
Group 2: I live in America!
Now, I can deal with the fact that the space shuttle has been anthropomorphized...as has the Eiffel tower and a Matryoshka (nesting doll). A Korean Chogori can be thought of as alive because I project personalities on my clothing...but...
CD: Cup of coffee, cup of coffee, where do you live?
Group 7: I live in Brazil!
WRONG! Coffee is a citizen of the world. It lives everywhere. It has so many passports that it would never make it through an American airport security check if it wasn't internationally known and loved.
There is also a section titled "Where is Mother?" but after scanning the teacher's version of the text I could not find the phrase "she sleeps with the fishes." or "somewhere pissing-off someone about something" It turns out that mother is in the living room although she seems to be active instead of laying on the couch immobilized by a cat on her tummy....that's not MY mother. Discovering where she was didn't sooth my initial reaction of thinking "Everyone has different home lives and there are children who don't want to answer that question before their peers in any language."
Rainbow Kids makes me happy, but it's the one textbook set that I don't have the teacher version of. I'm enjoying the "all about Egypt" section. This textbook understand that students need topics that are at their level of study/interest outside of the English classroom. It has a page on hieroglyphics. I think we can all agree that hieroglyphics are interesting. The text book goes to many countries, we make maple syrup and design totem poles in Canada (we do not learn how to point out to Americans that a specific entertaininer/sportsfigure/comedian is Canadian, which seems to be a Canadian pastime up there with hockey, but maybe that comes later), learn the Samba in Brazil, and have many adventure in old haunted castles because the UK is chock-a-block with castles. I forgive Bea for never mentioning that she lives in a castle like everyone else in my text book, I often forget to include tiny life in Japan details because I have grown so accustomed to them. This is the UK as imagined by Rainbow Kids. Bea, how many sheep do you have in your castle?
But back to what we're doing in Egypt where the idea of playing an assisted "pin the tail on the donkey" as "put the star on the pyramid" amuses me but I can do them one better with the "put the body stocking on the scandalous belly dancer" version. It would be a more difficult game as the team assisting by shouting Left and Right would have to speak loudly enough to be heard over the other teams screaming HARAM! HARAM!
HOLY SHIT! They DO have DANCERS in this text book! Yeah, they are wearing those damned face veils but still! And the next trip "Let's have an African safari in Kenya" we make a drum..and dance! This text book gives me many opportunities to dance. I have already created a full lesson plan on "dance costumes of the world" which involves colors, flags, finding countries, and guessing which music goes with which country/costume.
And then there is this image in One World Kids...all the kids within have survived the crisis of infinite worlds and are suspicious of recent moves by the publishers to return to the multi-world universe of English teaching....but I digress.
(Ack! I forgot the image at work, you'll have to wait next week for Poor Urban Planning: The World's Worst Zoo...we'll count how many animals survive!)
Scanning and mocking textbooks is not my only source of entertainment this morning. An ALT called into his school sick this today....now this wouldn't be a huge issue if the bastard hadn't been so goddamned honest about it. He told them that he'd drank too much and had too horrid a hangover. Fucking IDIOT! I want to know if he called in and admitted it or if his pissed-off Japanese wife made the call and ratted him out. I've made sure that my co-workers understand that this isn't a cultural thing, he's an idiot...I've also explained how Aussies aren't supposed to be such drink wussies (although New Zealand readers may have other feelings on the subject)
I have now taught my co-worker the phrase "You get what you pay for" in regards to ALT salaries. Our 3 ALTs come from the company that I voted "The #1 waste of my fucking time!" when I was running the interview marathon. The company had filled the position I applied for, only had part time positions, but waited until I'd come in Shibuya and passed the first interview to tell me this...and then they also admitted the pay for full-time was probably way too low for me anyway. In week two of interviews I could have used a night off.
I met our three ALTs briefly last week. Lambs to slaughter. One is a Canadian who has been teaching for a year and is married to a Japanese woman but doesn't speak Japanese, one is a very loud Australian with one year of teaching, no Japanese skills, a Japanese wife, and the hangover, and the last is an American boy who has no teaching experience but worked at Disney World in customer relations for 13 years .
The American loves Japan and is sooo happy to be here. He is painfully earnest in his desire to please everyone...I think the Mouse Overlords broke him. When we read of the 13 years on his intro sheet my co-workers asked me if it was odd that he chose to list it under teaching experience and what it might say about him. I said it was odd, but we could count on the fact that he wouldn't have visible piercing or tattoos. Disney University rules for "cast members" have lightened up a bit but I think men still can't have earrings. I sure as hell can never be a cast member. Disney is more strict than Japanese Health Clubs...and I don't have what it takes to lie to The Mouse. The Mouse has ways.
Much like a textbook, it's time to fun-fact some knowledge:
Fun fact: To the best of my knowledge my co-workers have all their teeth! The same cannot be said for the history department. The head of the department has sporadic teeth and likes to talk to me. Japan, and dating in Japan, has challenged my American views on teeth.
Details of Japanese life that I may have failed to mention: The Japanese are good about teeth brushing, which is surprising for reasons I don't really want to go into... After lunch we all head to the bathrooms and brush, brush, brush. All my schools have had crowded bathrooms after lunch for this reason. Here all the women brush in the women's restroom, all looking in a slightly different direction to avoid dealing the privacy of the act of ablution. The men mostly pace around outside of the bathroom door when brushing. I don't know how many men brush inside the men's room. I theorize that the outside brushing has to do with urinal rules of allowable proximity and gaze: too many teeth brushers will decrease the physical space that is unoccupied by bodies or gazes. Math Geeks with an interest in Urinal Rules might be able to figure out a formula.
Fun fact: Everything I know about Urinal Rules comes from fellow birthday-buddy Chuck4 who once linked to a You Tube clip that explained everything. Choosing the wrong urinal leads to massacres.
Fun Fact: I share my birthday with 2 other LJ friends. Happy Birthday Chuck4 and Larry!
Fun Fact: My first conscious thought of this morning was "Who the fuck is calling me at 6am?!" followed by "ooooooh...birthday....better get it." Thanks Dad! Dean Mommy called after coffee.
Fun Question: I share my birthday (and year!) with the bloody takeover of what city? Longtime friends will find this waaaaaay too easy. New friends are encouraged to hum Dead Kennedy songs and review Spaulding Gray monologues. No comments needed. I've been to the country twice, and the city once...never on my birthday.
Lunch time is over! Back to the textbooks, where we hit blogging gold.
There are three teacher texts called something to the effect of "Let's learn about the issues of the world in English!" sounds fun, doesn't it?
These are the first textbooks to, in my opinion, earnestly over-challenges the students and have a a specific progressive/hippy agenda...these issues are important but they really aren't hands-on enough for our level of English.
Original songs with a few lyrics quoted from the 3rd and 4th grade text. I swear I am NOT making this up. Maybe I'll post an mp3 sometime. Maybe I'll burn you a copy if you beg. I think the synthesizer used was pulled from Devo's trash...REUSE AND RECYCLE!
1. Where are you from? (My name is Tutty, I'm from Jakarta)
2. The Arctic ( The Saami, The Yakut, The Inuit. Many native peoples live in the cold)
3.Let's share the chores (My grandpa sews as well as my grandma)
4. What should I do? (They always bully me. It never seems to stop)
5.Let's reduce garbage (Listen and remember the three Rs. Reduce, reuse, and recycle!)
6. The Shining Sun (The sun! Creating life on the earth!)
7.Let's cooperate! (great things happen when we put our ideas together)
8. What time is it now? (let me sleep. let me sleep)
9. Let's go to school (I would enjoy going to school, if there were no P.E. class)
10. Beans Around the World (chick pea dip in Israel)
From the second text book for 5th and 6th grade most of the songs are the same, but there are new ones
2.Bedouins (Bedouins Know. Camels know)
3. Work! (My mother is a police officer)
4. Breakfast (What a nice breakfast! It has a lot of nutrition!)
8.Let's make a peaceful world! (No more landmines!)
10. Cloth and Clothes (to show our very own unique spirit)
I guess "Daddy drinks, who do I tell?" "Gender is a flexible thing" and "Hemp has many uses" are in the Jr. High edition.
The MESSAGE pervades every lesson. In some areas it is blatant like in "Is this trash?" where we learn about how the pressure to buy things is leaving the earth in tatters in 6 easy to understand images!
But in other sections you notice it with the fact the verbs "to sew" " to repair" are in the housework vocabulary.
I think this is all made worse by the fact that dynamic topics get reduced to songs and bingo games. True, landmines play a role in my fun birthday fact of the fall of a city, but I don't teach it. Also painful is the fact that no gender role can be subtly challenged...there is no subtly in this world. Women MUST be police officers, brothers MUST be librarians, girls singing must be good at math and science. I don't think there is a single figure suffering from being gender-cast. True, Grandpa is a carpenter but he's spry and physical despite his age so his occupation serving a Purpose and we also know that he sews and likes it...I don't want to mock such lofty ideals, but they are so heavy handed that the force me to mock. Bullies!
World Issue Bingo! Oh, the issues I have with this....
"Oh! I chose landmines and wheelchair access, but if I'd picked the right to vote I'd have bingo by now! Prioritizing my world views and English are HARD!"
You know what makes me a bad person? The great joy I have in knowing that this primer is filled with images ripe for making icons from. I'm going to be at city hall all month...I invite you to also play along at home.
I continue to pretend to be working hard today. My head hurts from too much screen time. When I get home I'm gonna take a nap before heading out to Tokyo for my birthday diner...well, I'll nap after I upload images and post this for you. I'll also be book, cd, and magazine browsing at the huge Tower Records while I wait for my dinner partner to get off work and call me. Now that I have a health club membership I'm going to have to pick up my old addiction, Shape and other light fitness mags, to figure out some machine routines to start with. Shape is my friend and enemy, as I know I will spend some time screaming at the nutritionalist propaganda within...along with all the other issues I have with women's magazines (except Bitch and Bust). It's a Love-hate relationship, but mostly hate.
45 more minutes to go in my work day and The Milkman's Sister, my sweet hapless co-worker, has been alerted to the fact that it's my birthday. She's a bit miffed that she didn't know earlier because she would have had the department head order me a cake and we could have all had cake at lunchtime. Cake at lunchtime! The envy of all the suits! She thinks this was a terrible oversight on behalf of the male workers who knew. She then ran around the office, found tasty honorable souvenirs for me to eat, put them in a mailer from the Matsudo police department, and presented me with them. It is wrong for me to view her as a large version of one of my students...but all that gesture needed to complete it is a shakily written card. Very sweet.
And that is a good note to leave this post on.
I now have my own shelf at work for English textbooks. The gifting began yesterday when they told me I would have my very own copy of Junior Columbus. JC is my most beloved classroom resource. It was created with the input of the Super English Teacher who advised my last school and is a constant advisor to NHK's Eigorian program. The lessons within are my style; activities and hands-on use of communication/critical thinking skills instead of chanting and clunky word-use games. When I started working at the On Paper school I photocopied every single page of the two JC textbooks. I knew I wouldn't be given the 100$ to buy them for myself.Those photocopied pages filled 5 binders have served me well.
I was alarmingly happy to get my own copies. I jumped up and down. The sweater vest men looked.
Before I came, my department ordered a shitload of English texts for me to use and to evaluate. I'm currently sifting through them finding nuggets of ideas to plug into last year's month by month teaching goals. Some are unusable. I am not making my students chant dialogs. Most are unintentionally funny. I've mentioned that some of the precious class time spent with Warning-san was spent laughing at visual aids...I haven't outgrown that.
Sunshine Kids has some posters I'll use, but the textbooks are sucky. They seem to have been illustrated using the same squiggle-vision I loved on the Dr. Katz animated show. They love the use of chants and of bingo games, I've hated for less...the kicker is that the higher level textbook has katakana pronunciation keys for English in sections...I've killed for less.
And then there is this, from a unit called "Does it live in Japan?"
CD: Panda, panda, where do you live?
Group 1: I live in China!
CD: Space shuttle, space shuttle, where do you live?
Group 2: I live in America!
Now, I can deal with the fact that the space shuttle has been anthropomorphized...as has the Eiffel tower and a Matryoshka (nesting doll). A Korean Chogori can be thought of as alive because I project personalities on my clothing...but...
CD: Cup of coffee, cup of coffee, where do you live?
Group 7: I live in Brazil!
WRONG! Coffee is a citizen of the world. It lives everywhere. It has so many passports that it would never make it through an American airport security check if it wasn't internationally known and loved.
There is also a section titled "Where is Mother?" but after scanning the teacher's version of the text I could not find the phrase "she sleeps with the fishes." or "somewhere pissing-off someone about something" It turns out that mother is in the living room although she seems to be active instead of laying on the couch immobilized by a cat on her tummy....that's not MY mother. Discovering where she was didn't sooth my initial reaction of thinking "Everyone has different home lives and there are children who don't want to answer that question before their peers in any language."
Rainbow Kids makes me happy, but it's the one textbook set that I don't have the teacher version of. I'm enjoying the "all about Egypt" section. This textbook understand that students need topics that are at their level of study/interest outside of the English classroom. It has a page on hieroglyphics. I think we can all agree that hieroglyphics are interesting. The text book goes to many countries, we make maple syrup and design totem poles in Canada (we do not learn how to point out to Americans that a specific entertaininer/sportsfigure/comedian is Canadian, which seems to be a Canadian pastime up there with hockey, but maybe that comes later), learn the Samba in Brazil, and have many adventure in old haunted castles because the UK is chock-a-block with castles. I forgive Bea for never mentioning that she lives in a castle like everyone else in my text book, I often forget to include tiny life in Japan details because I have grown so accustomed to them. This is the UK as imagined by Rainbow Kids. Bea, how many sheep do you have in your castle?
But back to what we're doing in Egypt where the idea of playing an assisted "pin the tail on the donkey" as "put the star on the pyramid" amuses me but I can do them one better with the "put the body stocking on the scandalous belly dancer" version. It would be a more difficult game as the team assisting by shouting Left and Right would have to speak loudly enough to be heard over the other teams screaming HARAM! HARAM!
HOLY SHIT! They DO have DANCERS in this text book! Yeah, they are wearing those damned face veils but still! And the next trip "Let's have an African safari in Kenya" we make a drum..and dance! This text book gives me many opportunities to dance. I have already created a full lesson plan on "dance costumes of the world" which involves colors, flags, finding countries, and guessing which music goes with which country/costume.
And then there is this image in One World Kids...all the kids within have survived the crisis of infinite worlds and are suspicious of recent moves by the publishers to return to the multi-world universe of English teaching....but I digress.
(Ack! I forgot the image at work, you'll have to wait next week for Poor Urban Planning: The World's Worst Zoo...we'll count how many animals survive!)
Scanning and mocking textbooks is not my only source of entertainment this morning. An ALT called into his school sick this today....now this wouldn't be a huge issue if the bastard hadn't been so goddamned honest about it. He told them that he'd drank too much and had too horrid a hangover. Fucking IDIOT! I want to know if he called in and admitted it or if his pissed-off Japanese wife made the call and ratted him out. I've made sure that my co-workers understand that this isn't a cultural thing, he's an idiot...I've also explained how Aussies aren't supposed to be such drink wussies (although New Zealand readers may have other feelings on the subject)
I have now taught my co-worker the phrase "You get what you pay for" in regards to ALT salaries. Our 3 ALTs come from the company that I voted "The #1 waste of my fucking time!" when I was running the interview marathon. The company had filled the position I applied for, only had part time positions, but waited until I'd come in Shibuya and passed the first interview to tell me this...and then they also admitted the pay for full-time was probably way too low for me anyway. In week two of interviews I could have used a night off.
I met our three ALTs briefly last week. Lambs to slaughter. One is a Canadian who has been teaching for a year and is married to a Japanese woman but doesn't speak Japanese, one is a very loud Australian with one year of teaching, no Japanese skills, a Japanese wife, and the hangover, and the last is an American boy who has no teaching experience but worked at Disney World in customer relations for 13 years .
The American loves Japan and is sooo happy to be here. He is painfully earnest in his desire to please everyone...I think the Mouse Overlords broke him. When we read of the 13 years on his intro sheet my co-workers asked me if it was odd that he chose to list it under teaching experience and what it might say about him. I said it was odd, but we could count on the fact that he wouldn't have visible piercing or tattoos. Disney University rules for "cast members" have lightened up a bit but I think men still can't have earrings. I sure as hell can never be a cast member. Disney is more strict than Japanese Health Clubs...and I don't have what it takes to lie to The Mouse. The Mouse has ways.
Much like a textbook, it's time to fun-fact some knowledge:
Fun fact: To the best of my knowledge my co-workers have all their teeth! The same cannot be said for the history department. The head of the department has sporadic teeth and likes to talk to me. Japan, and dating in Japan, has challenged my American views on teeth.
Details of Japanese life that I may have failed to mention: The Japanese are good about teeth brushing, which is surprising for reasons I don't really want to go into... After lunch we all head to the bathrooms and brush, brush, brush. All my schools have had crowded bathrooms after lunch for this reason. Here all the women brush in the women's restroom, all looking in a slightly different direction to avoid dealing the privacy of the act of ablution. The men mostly pace around outside of the bathroom door when brushing. I don't know how many men brush inside the men's room. I theorize that the outside brushing has to do with urinal rules of allowable proximity and gaze: too many teeth brushers will decrease the physical space that is unoccupied by bodies or gazes. Math Geeks with an interest in Urinal Rules might be able to figure out a formula.
Fun fact: Everything I know about Urinal Rules comes from fellow birthday-buddy Chuck4 who once linked to a You Tube clip that explained everything. Choosing the wrong urinal leads to massacres.
Fun Fact: I share my birthday with 2 other LJ friends. Happy Birthday Chuck4 and Larry!
Fun Fact: My first conscious thought of this morning was "Who the fuck is calling me at 6am?!" followed by "ooooooh...birthday....better get it." Thanks Dad! Dean Mommy called after coffee.
Fun Question: I share my birthday (and year!) with the bloody takeover of what city? Longtime friends will find this waaaaaay too easy. New friends are encouraged to hum Dead Kennedy songs and review Spaulding Gray monologues. No comments needed. I've been to the country twice, and the city once...never on my birthday.
Lunch time is over! Back to the textbooks, where we hit blogging gold.
There are three teacher texts called something to the effect of "Let's learn about the issues of the world in English!" sounds fun, doesn't it?
These are the first textbooks to, in my opinion, earnestly over-challenges the students and have a a specific progressive/hippy agenda...these issues are important but they really aren't hands-on enough for our level of English.
Original songs with a few lyrics quoted from the 3rd and 4th grade text. I swear I am NOT making this up. Maybe I'll post an mp3 sometime. Maybe I'll burn you a copy if you beg. I think the synthesizer used was pulled from Devo's trash...REUSE AND RECYCLE!
1. Where are you from? (My name is Tutty, I'm from Jakarta)
2. The Arctic ( The Saami, The Yakut, The Inuit. Many native peoples live in the cold)
3.Let's share the chores (My grandpa sews as well as my grandma)
4. What should I do? (They always bully me. It never seems to stop)
5.Let's reduce garbage (Listen and remember the three Rs. Reduce, reuse, and recycle!)
6. The Shining Sun (The sun! Creating life on the earth!)
7.Let's cooperate! (great things happen when we put our ideas together)
8. What time is it now? (let me sleep. let me sleep)
9. Let's go to school (I would enjoy going to school, if there were no P.E. class)
10. Beans Around the World (chick pea dip in Israel)
From the second text book for 5th and 6th grade most of the songs are the same, but there are new ones
2.Bedouins (Bedouins Know. Camels know)
3. Work! (My mother is a police officer)
4. Breakfast (What a nice breakfast! It has a lot of nutrition!)
8.Let's make a peaceful world! (No more landmines!)
10. Cloth and Clothes (to show our very own unique spirit)
I guess "Daddy drinks, who do I tell?" "Gender is a flexible thing" and "Hemp has many uses" are in the Jr. High edition.
The MESSAGE pervades every lesson. In some areas it is blatant like in "Is this trash?" where we learn about how the pressure to buy things is leaving the earth in tatters in 6 easy to understand images!
But in other sections you notice it with the fact the verbs "to sew" " to repair" are in the housework vocabulary.
I think this is all made worse by the fact that dynamic topics get reduced to songs and bingo games. True, landmines play a role in my fun birthday fact of the fall of a city, but I don't teach it. Also painful is the fact that no gender role can be subtly challenged...there is no subtly in this world. Women MUST be police officers, brothers MUST be librarians, girls singing must be good at math and science. I don't think there is a single figure suffering from being gender-cast. True, Grandpa is a carpenter but he's spry and physical despite his age so his occupation serving a Purpose and we also know that he sews and likes it...I don't want to mock such lofty ideals, but they are so heavy handed that the force me to mock. Bullies!
World Issue Bingo! Oh, the issues I have with this....
"Oh! I chose landmines and wheelchair access, but if I'd picked the right to vote I'd have bingo by now! Prioritizing my world views and English are HARD!"
You know what makes me a bad person? The great joy I have in knowing that this primer is filled with images ripe for making icons from. I'm going to be at city hall all month...I invite you to also play along at home.
I continue to pretend to be working hard today. My head hurts from too much screen time. When I get home I'm gonna take a nap before heading out to Tokyo for my birthday diner...well, I'll nap after I upload images and post this for you. I'll also be book, cd, and magazine browsing at the huge Tower Records while I wait for my dinner partner to get off work and call me. Now that I have a health club membership I'm going to have to pick up my old addiction, Shape and other light fitness mags, to figure out some machine routines to start with. Shape is my friend and enemy, as I know I will spend some time screaming at the nutritionalist propaganda within...along with all the other issues I have with women's magazines (except Bitch and Bust). It's a Love-hate relationship, but mostly hate.
45 more minutes to go in my work day and The Milkman's Sister, my sweet hapless co-worker, has been alerted to the fact that it's my birthday. She's a bit miffed that she didn't know earlier because she would have had the department head order me a cake and we could have all had cake at lunchtime. Cake at lunchtime! The envy of all the suits! She thinks this was a terrible oversight on behalf of the male workers who knew. She then ran around the office, found tasty honorable souvenirs for me to eat, put them in a mailer from the Matsudo police department, and presented me with them. It is wrong for me to view her as a large version of one of my students...but all that gesture needed to complete it is a shakily written card. Very sweet.
And that is a good note to leave this post on.
