Our first week at IUJ

Our first week in Urasa was a bit of a whirlwind! We arrived late on Wednesday and spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday in orientations, learning about the program and our class. Tristinn and I both teach a class called “OCSALS”, which stands for “Oral Communications Skills and Academic Listening Skills”. In our class, students have discussions, listen to lectures, take notes, have listening and speaking tests, and give oral presentations. For me, it is mostly review as I have taught this class the past two summers, but it is all new information for Tristinn, and IUJ is very different from Cascadia in many ways! We also took time to get settled in, meet new people (for me, seeing old friends and colleagues), doing some shopping for groceries and other necessities things, and of course, getting over jetlag! The first few days were very busy and a little overwhelming at times, with new faces, new names, and just so much to do in such a short period of time before the program began.

Thursday we had time to go out for dinner with a few of the other instructors, and we went to a local kaiten sushi place. At kaiten sushi, there is a long conveyor belt that goes around the whole restaurant and you can pick up colored plates from the belt. Or you can place a special order and it will arrive at your table on a “shinkansen” train! Luckily this place had an English menu (not all restaurants in Japan do!). We had a lot of fun picking and trying new dishes, including my new favorite dessert “crash biscuit cake”. It's supposed to be “crushed cookie cake”, but the translation wasn't quite right. I still understood it and thought it was pretty cute – and tasty!

Monday was the official beginning of the program, and it started with orientations for the students. Here the instructors had a chance to introduce ourselves, and then we had a real meet & greet in the afternoon where we had drinks and snacks and everyone went around introducing themselves and chatting. Everyone, students and instructors, wears name badges here so it helps to learn so many new names. The students themselves are mostly Japanese, and come from all over Japan. There are also a number of students from other Asian countries, like Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, China, Korea, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and others. Tuesday brought more orientations and meetings, and all of the students took the TOEFL or TOEIC test and essay tests so we had a better understanding of their level of English, both in listening and writing.

Tristinn with our coworker Michael who also teaches OCSALS at the welcome dinner for all the IEP instructors and staff.

                                  Sakana listens along to one of several orientations for Week 1.

Wednesday was our first official class! We did more getting-to-know you exercises in the first class, and already started preparing for our first big project, the students' first oral presentation that they would give on Monday and Tuesday of Week 2. Our classes go from 8:50 to 12:05 in the morning, and then we all go to the cafeteria, and the instructors sit with the students to eat lunch. This way, we get a chance to talk more, we can all meet new people, and we can encourage the “English only” environment which is a big part of the IEP here at IUJ. After lunch, Tristinn and I go over our lesson plans and materials for the next day while the students go to their Text Skill classes, where they work on reading, writing, and grammar.

Sakana watches to be sure that Kristina's students are doing the discussion correctly. 

The first week went by so quickly but already I know that I have a good class. I have 11 students, who are from Japan, Cambodia, Myanmar, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Several of my students will go into graduate school after the IEP, either staying at IUJ or going to another university here in Japan. Others will go back to their jobs to use their newly improved English communication skills. One of my students will even to go to New York for his job. Another one of my students is former junior high school English teacher, and we have had some nice chats about teaching English! I really look forward to getting to know my students better!