A Crisis in Teaching Confidence - My Japanese Saint Trinian’s Experience

I had a confidence crisis in my teaching ability a few years ago on an intensive four-week English course for a cohort of Japanese high school girls who had come over to the UK.  Any positive preconceptions of what the class would be like were dashed during the first lesson… I realized I was in for a challenging time.  I had to explain to my beginner-level class that they had to use the door to enter the classroom, not the window.  It was also the first time I’d had to add to my classroom rules that you were not allowed to bark like a dog, it sounded like Crufts initially.

At one time I refereed a football game.  Some of the girls found it easy to score goals as long as they could dribble the ball past the opposing team’s players who were sat down braiding each other’s hair or practicing ballet moves, or the goalie who always seemed to be dealing with an important call on her mobile; I’m pretty sure Alex Ferguson didn’t have to deal with things like that at Manchester United.

As is usual with these courses, cultural excursions were interwoven into the curriculum.  It didn’t feel like I was leading the students around Leeds Castle, Buckingham Palace and various other places – it was more like herding cats (who have absolutely no interest in British history or architecture).  By the time we took the girls to Canterbury Cathedral I had realised that my life was easier if I kept the girls amused. 

The crypt of this church is where the sainted Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered by four knights of King Henry II in 1170.  The knights had apparently misinterpreted a throw-away remark by the king, ‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest’, as a command and galloped down to Canterbury to hack the archbishop to death in the cathedral’s crypt in front of a group of horrified monks.  I still wonder at what I thought I was doing.  I think because I was trying desperately to keep the girls interested, I resorted to miming the events - playing the parts of ALL the protagonists: the king, the four knights, Thomas Becket, and the horrified monks.  On reflection I have to admit that it was probably quite confusing, especially the hacking bit at the end where I was the knights and Thomas Becket and the horrified monks – it probably looked more like someone dancing (very poorly) at a rave than a mime.  To some degree it worked – the girls (and some tourists passing by) were enthralled, but probably for the wrong reason. My Japanese is not that great, but I’m pretty sure there were mutterings of ‘our teacher has finally lost it’.

When the contract ended and I had to look for more work, I didn’t restrict my job search to the teaching pages.