Working at an International Kindergarten in Tokyo

Kon'nichiwa!

A few days after arriving in Japan I secured interviews at various schools in Tokyo, and a few days after that I was offered a job. Finding a job here was much easier than I thought it would be, though I get the feeling that my luck was down to living in such a big city – finding work elsewhere in the country will not be so easy.

I’m currently working at an International Kindergarten. The vast majority of the students are Japanese, though we have a few kids who are half American, and a number of Chinese children in the baby classes. The school, and my job, is split into different sections. In the main school, there is the kinder class (3-5 years old) with about 30 kids enrolled and the pre-kinder class (2-4 years old) which has about 20 kids. In the little school, there are three classes. The 2 year old class (2-4 years) has about 20 kids, the 1 year olds class has about 15 kids, and the baby class (under 1 year) has about 12 kids. I also have one off-site class a week, which has kids of anything from 2 to 5 years. So basically my age range is 5 months to 5 years.

In the off-site class, I act as an assistant teacher in a eurhythmics class. Also known as the Dalcroze Method, it was developed in the early 20th century by Swiss musician and educator Émile Jaques-Dalcroze. In eurhythmics class, what we teach are the concepts of rhythm, structure, and musical expression using movement. It’s all a bit crazy, but lots of fun. Basically, the music teacher sits at the piano and plays music for most of the class, and I encourage the kids to jump around and do whatever it is they are meant to be doing… which I need to learn, like, on the spot. My first day, the teacher asked me:

“Have you ever taught eurhythmics before?”
“No.”
“Oh, can you play the piano?”
“No, but I used to play the flute a long time ago.”
“Ok, so you can read music?”
“No… not really.”

So, yeah – it’s been a bit of a challenge! Luckily I’m a fast learner and despite not really knowing anything about the art of creating music, I’ve managed to pick things up as we go along. When the music teacher plays different sorts of music, it’s a signal to the students to do a different action. For example, there is a different tune for running, walking, skipping, slow walking, tumbling to the floor, etc. If the teacher plays a minor scale (which, until a month ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell from a major scale to save my life) then they have to walk backwards instead of forwards.

Sometimes we play a game where they have to listen to the music and do the action in a high or low way. When they were learning the fruit vocabulary, they had to pretend they were picking fruit from the tree, and when the teacher played a high note, they had to reach up high and pick from there, and a low note signified that they should pick from the ground. Its good fun, but exhausting! Sometimes I have 3 classes over a 2 hour slots, and most of that time I spent hopping around like a buffoon, so I’m knackered when class is out. But it’s just once a week so I can’t complain.

I spend most of my time at the main school, but usually I go to the little school for an hour each day. At the little school I teach one class a week – 30 minutes to the 2 year old class. Most of them can’t speak any English at all, and as there are so many of them to control at once that I just try and get the majority of them to say a few words over the lesson – just basic things like emotions, colours, numbers etc. All my other time at the little school is spent reading story books, or hanging out with the kids during ‘free play’ time. This is the best – I just sit on the floor and the kids come over and pile all their toys up on me.

With the bigger ones (2 years old) they are always competing for my attention. Because of this, I’ve learnt the Japanese for ‘look’ (Mite - 見て) because the kids will parade in front of me while pulling a funny face, doing a dance or demonstrating a karate move saying “look! look!” to show off. In the baby class, the kids range from 5 months to just under a year, and from time to time I read them a book, but most of all I just try to engage with them without having them burst into tears. There is one little girl who says hello to me, and a few who will tolerate my presence in the classroom but won’t come to play with me. Of course, there are a few who just cry every time they see me – at only a few months old, they’ve had limited experiences with foreigners and don’t quite know what to make of me. The smallest ones can’t walk or crawl yet, and when I hold them I do so with them facing away from me, so they can’t see that they’re being held by the ‘scary white girl’.

However, most of my time at work is spent in the Kids house, with the 3-5 year olds. Their English, for the most part, is excellent. They come out with things like “My favourite colour is sky blue”, “The potato tastes good because it’s salty”, “Do you think I’ve drawn a window on my rocket? It’s not – it’s an aquarium!” and “The fish in this picture is poisonous so please be careful, don’t touch it!”

The schedule at school is rarely stuck to, and English lessons happen sporadically. Sometimes I teach two or three classes a day (30 minutes each) and sometimes I won’t teach a class for days on end. I supervise at lunchtime, snack time and nap time, and the rest of my working hours are just helping out with whatever else is going on – Montessori class, free play, going for walks, dance class… I just sort of go with the flow. I also have to teach a 30 minute ‘parent class’ once a week (which is a major joke because their toddlers are in the classroom with us so we get very little done), and a 1 hour ‘staff class’ once a week with some of the staff who speak less English than the kids. I don’t like teaching adults and this is pretty much the worst hour of my week – especially given that I did specifically say when I was interviewed that I didn’t want to teach adults… but there we go. It doesn’t matter where in the world you work – people will tell you lies to make you sign a contract.

So that’s my working life. I’ve been working at the Kindergarten for over a month now, and already I’m starting to look for a new job as I know we won’t be here in Tokyo for much longer. Ideally I’d like to be working somewhere with more structure and regularity to the English classes, with materials and a curriculum rather than ‘just teach whatever you want’. So we’ll see. But for now it pays the bills and I enjoy being with the kids – even when they’re coughing and sneezing in my face so I’ve got the lurgy too. I’ve been putting off posting this for ages as I wanted some pictures to go with it. But after asking each of my managers three times to email me the pictures they took at school recently, I’ve given up on every getting copies of those!
Sayonara for now!