Part-timer
Inari-juku has a new part-timer. She came to the cram school and worked for first time last week on Thursday. Today she came again and it was second day so I thought I would use this post to introduce her (Actually, I planned to do it last week but I forgot. Haha).
The new part-timer is Anna, a Japanese-Irish teenager who is bilingual and who just came back to Japan last month after studying in Ireland for a year. She’s fun and kind and she’s open to doing many things so she’s the perfect person to help me in my lessons.
The biggest reason I asked Inari-san to hire her as a part-timer is because I have two students who are going to study abroad and I wanted to give them to interact with an English speaker who isn’t me so they can get be exposed to a different kind of English.
One other reason is that in my classes I usually slow down my speech rate so that my students can understand me. Although I know this is the right thing to do, I recently realized that for a few of my students, I can and should speak faster so they can get used to faster speech rate. However, even if I know that, it is quite difficult to do it because my students are at a different level so it’s hard to remind myself to slow down or talk faster. Now that Anna is in a few of my classes, she can talk quickly and I’ll continue speaking at a slower rate, which is a good thing for the student, I think.
One more reason, which I only realized after Anna came last week, is that I can focus more on my students with Anna in the class. Although my students look at me when they’re not sure what to answer or say, I can use more of my attention on just them instead of the conversation, the next thing I should do in the lesson, etc. This give me a better chance to learn what else they need to work on.
So I think there are a lot of good things in having Anna in a few of classes. I don’t know if having her in my class is all good, but I hope the students who have met her and will meet her are as equally excited as I am in having one other English speaker in class who can help them improve.