Internship at an Elementary School
I got the opportunity to have an internship at a local elementary school by my university. I was hoping that, by doing this internship, maybe it would help make up my mind on what I want to do with my life. I’ve been stuck between wanting to do research in the microbiology field, but I care a lot about my Japanese language and sort of developed a desire to maybe teacher English in Japan.
At the beginning of the day, the principal had me and two other students introduce ourselves to the entire faculty. This was a surprise to us three so I was nervous being up there. The principal asked me to go first and I ended up floundering, not knowing what to say. I’m not good with public speaking, English or Japanese haha. The other two students are much better at Japanese so they had no problem introducing themselves, so I was really embarrassed.
After introducing ourselves to the faculty, we later found out that we would introduce ourselves to the entire school. At least by that point, I had enough time to come up with a better introduction for the kids.
I introduced myself one more time to the kids of the classroom I was assigned to but I couldn’t think of anything new to say that I didn’t say to the entire school, so the teacher told the students to ask me questions.
First question: “Do you have a boyfriend?” No...
After that, I sat at the back of the classroom and observed what happened in a typical Japanese classroom. It’s a lot different than American classrooms, that’s for sure. Personally, I like how kids are treated in Japan better than America. The students here were given so much independent time to work on personal projects, homework, or whatever needed to be done. The teacher never hovered and there wasn’t that much lecture time in class. By 6th grade, for me, I was getting hour long lectures every class. It seems like adults have a lot more faith in the children than people in America. I see kids under 10 years old navigating the subway system on their own and no one bats an eye. Kids are given responsibility here and I think it works better than hover parents/ overbearing teachers.
Another major difference is that almost everything takes place in the same classroom. Music, gym, and English class are the exception. Otherwise, all classes are in the same classroom, lunch is in the classroom, everything. Students are responsible for cleaning the classroom and the hallways. I suppose some people would see that as child labor, but again, that’s teaching responsibility and the students never complained. Even the kindergartners had responsibilities. I always felt like I was in the way when the students were cleaning the classroom. I wanted to help but they have it down to a system and their so efficient that I just felt so useless haha.
Two very memorable things happened during my internship there.
The first memory was a project the students had worked on for several weeks. The students wrote letters to ‘important people.’ These letters were more like thank you letters/ memories of all the things done by this ‘important person’ (mom/ dad/ grandma/ grandpa/ etc.) The students wrote the letter, made cards, they learned songs, and made preparations for a special event for the 6th grade class.
The 6th grade class invited the ‘important person’ to their class . Many moms and dads came, some grandparents came as well. The students sang the song they had learned in front of everyone, and then they read their letters one-by-one.
It was probably one of the most heart-touching thing I have ever seen. So many of these kids put their hearts into their letters. Their letters were dedicated to parents, some dedicated to departed loved ones. Many of the students cried while they read their letters. Mothers cried, fathers held back tears... the amount of emotions in the room was incredible.
The teacher asked me to write a letter for my parents, even though they’re not here. I was the last person to present and by the time I got up their, I was partially choked up with tears from watching the kids, getting stage fright, and partially choked up with my own emotions from what I wrote in my letter.
I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff haha.
My other memory is that the kids were nice enough to put together a small party for my birthday. It was my birthday during my internship and the kids got together and made a card for me, as well as got party poppers and wrote on the chalkboard, wishing me happy birthday.
I’ve never been away from home on my birthday. I’ve been lucky enough to always been able to go home/ be home on my birthday. So this being my first time away from home, in a foreign country, I was a little scared that I might get a little upset/ lonely. But the kids made me happy and the care package and cards I got on my birthday made it not so lonely/ sad. I was happy.
Overall, I wish I hadn’t been so shy during my internship. The kids wanted to interact with me, but my self-consciousness of my Japanese skill sort of made me not want to talk. The boys were so funny. There was a day all the boys in the class challenged me to an arm-wrestling match. By the 3 or 4th boy, I decided I wasn’t going to lose, so by the 10th boy, my arm really hurt haha. The girls were the ones that talked to me the most. They would always compliment me. There was a day a girl told me how pretty my blue eyes were and that her brown eyes weren’t pretty. It made me a little sad to hear that, thinking so highly of a genetic defect haha. I tried to reassure her that she was just as pretty and she got embarrassed.
Maybe if I did the internship again at this stage of my Japanese studies, I would have been more confident. At the same time, I was shy because I’m a shy person so it’s hard to say if anything would have been different if my Japanese skills would have been better.
At the end, the kids threw me a goodbye party. I had taught them Heads-up, 7-up, so we played a couple of rounds of that game. The class president gave a small speech, thanking me for my time. I prepared a letter myself, thanking all the students for having me, thanking them for being so patient with me haha.
I wish I had pictures of them, but it felt a little creepy of me to take pictures of students so I did my best to write as much as I remembered of them.
