CAS ACTIVITY
What was important and what was needed?
- In Japan, students do not have much access or exposure to English since they start learning English pretty late compared to other countries. Moreover, since the group of 10 students in Karuizawa Junior High school was preparing for their trip to Canada next month, we want to prepare their English conversational skills the best and to improve their presentations about Japan.
- For myself, I found the need to improve my patience skills and being strict with the students to make them practice English hard without making them feel uncomfortable. I am usually not patient with teaching others skills that I already possessed because I keep expecting them to be on the same level of understanding with me without taking into account their background or feelings. Through the activity of building up vocabulary, fixing grammar and sentence structures to the kids, I practiced a lot the skill of being patient and being more persistent with their progress until the end.
I also gained important skills in planning an doing teamwork. Our team has a set timeline of what dates we will go to Karuizawa Junior High School, so at the beginning of the year we had a few meetings to decide the throughout theme of our lessons in the school. We also plan the activities of the next session more carefully in the Friday before the week we go to KJHS, and this was a great chance for me to practice distributing workload among team members and making sure that everyone is being responsible.
What made me feel uncomfortable was how hard it was for me to help the Japanese students understand something. I do not have much knowledge in Japanese either, so most of the time I was depending on simple vocabulary in Japanese that I have, hand gestures, body movement and sometimes consulting my Japanese friends in my CAS group for translation. It is certainly hard when you are teaching a second language to a person whose first language you don't even understand - and it got a lot of frustration and disappointment out of me at first. However, I later realize that I should be more understanding to my group of students and this motivated me to keep on with giving my best effort in my work.
Using diversity as a strength​
My team has 6 members at the beginning of the year, but now we have 5 members. Each person has their own strengths.
-Max: Max is very funny and he uses his humor very well in every session, whether it is our discussion for the next class at KJHS or when he teaches students at the school important vocab in English. Humor is very important, especially in an English class for beginners like this.
-Kanno is very calm and responsible. She usually volunteers to help us with any work that has to deal with Japanese. It might not even be possible for us to make a good connection with KJHS if we didn't have a Japanese speaker.
-Himawari is chill and always helpful towards the students, and I think this strength make the students less shy to improve themselves.
-Alex is cool.
- Connections I have made: Being in this CAS group, it helps me talk to Max and Ms. Gonzales (my CAS Supervisor) because outside of school I would not think that I would start talking to them at all. We also have the chance to learn more about Mr. Alvaro (Facilities team) (for example when we helped the school changing car tires - it is definitely an important life skill, but what is also important is that we talk to Mr. Alvaro and understand all the work that the faculties in ISAK have to worry about that we might have not seen them doing, and it makes me want to be a more helpful person in our community.)
Taking purposeful action when discomfort shows up​
Once, I received an announcement from Japanese class that I need to find a host family to stay at their house for a day and practice my Japanese. I was very worried about this project, so I went to CAS at KJHS and I asked Kanno and Himawari for help to translate my request into Japanese to the students and the teacher. I did not previously talked to my CAS advisor about this.
Later, only when I have delivered the request and gone back to ISAK did I know that it was quite inappropriate and not satisfactory in Japanese manners to make a request like that because I might make the people at KJHS feel that I am demanding something from them. I realized I should have asked my CAS supervisor for advice before I made the request, and also gave out the details in a mannered way (writing letter, email, FAX, phone call beforehand).
On the few next days I had a meeting with Ms. Corrias, my CAS coordinator and my Japanese teacher and my CAS supervisor so that we can talk about what steps I will take next. It is not a mistake, but it is a rather an opportunity for me to learn to think more before I act upon something in order to ensure that it is satisfactory for the culture and it is fine for everyone involved.
I later wrote an email to apologize about my abrupt request, and I also wrote another FAX which explained in details the purpose and the initary information about my Japanese homestay so that if anyone reads and feels interested, they can contact me. This brings out benefits for both sides.
This is a very uncomfortable yet rewarding situation for me to learn.
Supporting others
Here I have two examples of how I have supported my team mates:
- There were times when there are not enough CAS members presenting at the session in KJHS and I have to take on the group of students that are supposed to receive training from my team members. It is certainly hard to teach a larger group of students and it makes me feel more frustrated due to time constraint in the class, but I understand that there might be times when I am busy like them and I cannot go to CAS, they will have to help me as well.
- Sometimes, during our session, some members forgot what the next activity would be or some members forgot to bring the materials needed to conduct the planned activities. I would usually prepare extra materials or sometimes a backup plan just in case something would not work out well. For example, there was a time when we were about to play the game of drawing but we forgot to bring paper, so we though up of another game which was fast drawing on the blackboard instead. Having the skills and fast thinking and not panicking to solve these problems was very important.
How I apply what I learn in daily life​
Being prepared for the worst cases
Sometimes the plans do not work out well. For example, when we prepare a presentation for the students but it was difficult and they could not understand, so we had to adapt our plan on the spot immediately and switched to playing games. This helps me in being more relaxed and calm when it comes to solving sudden problems that arise in life.
Cultural - Japanese education
I learned much more about the education system in Japan because I did not expect that the students start learning Japanese so late. This is something that keeps me thinking and motivate me to make a change
Patience
Being patient with teaching the kids help me be more patient in doing every activity in life - doing art projects in Art class, cooking food that takes a lot of time to be edible, stop and clean...
Teamwork
Group discussions, workload distribution, reminding people to be responsible without making them feel uncomfortable. These are skills of teamwork that will stick with me no matter what project I do in the future.
Being more open-minded
Everyone during CAS discussion session has different idea and it is really hard to resist the temptation to think that your idea is the best. That's why I learned to be more open-minded towards people who have different ideas or even those who disagree with me. This is an important life skills because we always want to aim for collaboration and not war in life.