Speech Contests

English Recitation Contest: We Mean Business!

Working as an elementary/junior high school English teacher in Japan can be described as a low stress, high reward job. You get paid to basically be a foreigner, show up on time, and be silly with children. What’s not to love?

Yet sometimes, I find that this sort of work cycles between being totally awesome and fulfilling (I get paid to sing the alphabet and play tag at recess? Perfect!) and feeling like a total waste of time. When I have classes, it’s a great job. 

But more often than not, I have several days where I’m sort of desk-warming at the town hall's board of education office. 

Getting paid to do nothing might sound like every loafer’s dream. But for me, especially at the beginning of my time here, it felt sort of demoralizing. 

Everyone else has something to do, clacking busily away at their laptops, while I just have eight hours of sitting and finding clever ways to pass the time. It makes me feel like I’m a child at the office's “take your daughter to work” day.  Except that my parent is a bunch of Japanese office workers who I can't really communicate with. I just don’t feel very connected to anyone or anything.

However, when my students are practicing for the Junior High School English speech contest, these feelings are suddenly completely obliterated. 

Suddenly I’m a pronunciation expert, acting teacher, and general English master with appointments in my planner and reasons to stay late at work. All the teachers direct their questions to me. I edit speeches, teach kids the way that native English speakers enunciate and intonate their sentences, and I even get to choreograph their gestures. 

I’m suddenly useful! It’s a great feeling!

Last year, after months of practice together, one of my students, Yuta, received first prize in the Northern Miyazaki prefecture speech contest. He wrote a great speech about his homestay experience in Australia, and his pronunciation was so natural!

Yuta had clearly worked incredibly hard on mastering all the tips the teachers and I gave him, which was super rewarding to witness. 

After the Northern contest, he then went on to receive fourth prize in the Miyazaki-wide speech contest in the following month. The top three students in that contest go on to the nation-wide speech contest in Tokyo. He was so close to going to Tokyo!

He did an amazing job, and seeing one of my students succeed was one of the best moments of my professional life.

So that was last year. This year, in September, another one of my students, Masaya, received first prize again in the Northern Miyazaki prefecture recitation contest (which is basically the same contest, only you don't write your own speech). It was so exciting, and I totally felt like a champion teacher. 

I think Masaya was a little bummed that he won however, because his high school examinations were coming up rapidly. Suddenly he had to study for the Miyazaki wide speech contest and his tests at the same time. Poor stressed out middle school students! 

So, last Tuesday, one of my favorite co-teachers, Noma sensei, and I road tripped to Miyazaki City to watch Masaya perform his speech in the prefecture-wide contest. 

The Miyazaki City Cultural Center, where all the speech contest magic happens.

We chatted about non-school things: boyfriends, food allergies and rude people. She made me laugh like crazy! It was great to spend time with a teacher friend outside of school and just relax together.

Masaya did not place in the prefecture wide contest, which was a little disappointing, but I think he was happy to be done with the whole process.  His family came to watch him perform, which was very cute, and they were all so proud of him! Noma sensei and I congratulated him on a job well done, and then we went out for lunch.

A happy Noma sensei pictured with Chicken Nanban four ways. Yum!

When I was in the US, I feel like a work event like this might have been a little bit annoying to me (“I have to stay late at school? I have to sit through middle school students giving speeches? Ugh!”). But now I’ve just become so grateful to get to know the people I work with and the students I teach on a more personal level. 

I’m always surprised and delighted when I notice these little changes in perspective. Here’s to another year of figuring things out in Japan!