The Eye of Patrick

The day of the speech contest arrived last week. This was going to be my first time being involved in a speech contest as a teacher and not as a student. So as a result I was a little nervous about whether I would able to teach the students enough to do well in the competition. This was also the Japanese teacher of English (JTE) first time too so I was not alone in not knowing what to expect.

The car ride to Fukagawa was a fairly fun trip as we decided to take my JTE’s car instead of taking the train. The reason was that the train to Fukagawa has a very irregular schedule and so the return trip to Shimokawa would involved a two hour wait after the competition at the train station. Also by driving we were able to save some money. The reason is that in Japan that trains are fairly expensive and so are the highways. But if more then one person is going in the car (in our case 4 people) then it can be cheaper, as the toll fee is paid for the car only and not in relation to the number of people in the car. The train is usually cheaper only in situations were you are going alone.

The route that we took to get to the speech contest was through the country roads. This meant that we were able to avoid the heavy traffic that sometimes occupies the main road and give us more time to talk. This is a wonderful thing as my high school JTE is one of the best people I have met in my town. She speaks English really well and has a cool personality. (By cool I mean that she is a unique person and has her own opinion. This is sometimes hard to find in a country where many people will not share their opinion if it goes against the beliefs of the group) so the drive there passed quicker then I thought it would.

In preparing the night before, I had charged my ipod and brought the fm turner to let it use the car audio to play music. When I brought out my ipod and fm turner both my JTE and the students were amazed at the device. They could not believe that you could listen to music from your ipod through the car radio. (The ipod has taken longer to get popular in Japan compared to Canada or USA as a result there is a larger selection of mp3 players at the electronic story then back home) I played music that ranged from stuff she knows from the 80s to Japanese music that my students knew. It was like our own private karaoke room in the car.

We got to Fukagawa and started to register for the contest, we had to go to a pre-meeting to understand the rules for the contest. It was all in Japanese and I could not understand a word of it, but I was happy that my JTE invited me to go to the meeting. It felt like she was treating me as an equal partner in teaching. This is a feeling that I don’t always get with the other teachers. A lot of time at my other schools they are so used to operating without me there, that when I am there they fail to help me get involved. But not my JTE at the high school, she helps to make sure I am involved in school life.

After the meeting the contest started. The contest opened like they always do in Japan and that is with an open ceremony filled with very uninteresting and monotone driven speeches by the contest organizers. This did not help to raise my excitement for the speeches to follow. After we got through that, the contest started. There was a small selection of speeches that the students could select from. At first it was interesting to hear all the speeches. But as time progressed and I heard the same group of speeches over and over, I started to be able to repeat them in my head. But I don’t blame the students for that.

Some of the speeches were amazing and I could not tell they were non native speakers. Usually those people were the students who went to the international high schools and probably got more opportunity to interact in an English environment. It was amazing to watch them attempt to give a speech in their non-native tongue. I watched and thought to myself about when I was a student and how nervous I was at giving speeches in my own language. I couldn’t imagine the pressure of given one in another language. Some of the people added emotion to their speeches, in one about the bombing of Hiroshima; the girl grew louder to describe the dropping of the bomb. This really helped to bring life to the speech. While another girl forgot her speech on stage and took out the paper with the speech on it and read. I feel very proud of her for not giving up and staying on the stage. She could have cut and run, but she fought through her nerves and finished. I hope I have that kind of courage when I face awkward situations.

When my students came up and did their speech I felt so proud of them. They stumbled and where not perfect. But they got through and finished the speech and for that I respect them so much. I wanted to hug them and give them all high fives after it.

I think afterwards I felt really positive about the experience. This was a first experience for both my JTE and me in participating in a speech contest. But I think it was a good learning experience and that we can be much more prepared next year. Plus I had the opportunity to get to know some of my students for who they were and about their lives in a more personal setting. Which is a break from the typical days were I am in a class of 20 students and maybe can engage in a small conversation. I really look forward to working with my students and preparing them for the next year contest.