{"id":592,"date":"2011-11-30T20:17:07","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T11:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kcjs.jp\/cip\/?p=592"},"modified":"2011-11-30T20:17:07","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T11:17:07","slug":"drae-mckenzie-assistant-english-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/2011\/11\/30\/drae-mckenzie-assistant-english-teacher","title":{"rendered":"Drae McKenzie: Assistant English Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kids Will be Kids<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I first entered the doors of Doshisha\u2019s kindergarten I didn\u2019t know what to expect. How were the children going to react to me? Will they be any different from the children in America? Turns out children are equally energetic and wound up any where in the world. Everywhere I looked they were screaming, clawing at each other, jumping off the slide, hanging upside-down from monkey bars. To be honest, I was a little terrified.<\/p>\n

Then I heard the first \u201cHello!\u201d Many other small voices hesitantly followed, tiptoeing towards me as to get a closer look. My reply resulted in an explosion of giggles from the investigative party. I can certainly say spending time with these children allowed me to see a unique facet of Japanese life.<\/p>\n

Most of the time I felt the kindergarten wasn’t much different than that in the United States, there was one apparent difference. When children got frustrated, or angry, sometimes just a little too energetic I often saw them hit (or even tackle) their teachers. Thankfully, because I am a foreigner I was granted a \u201cbarrier\u201d from the children\u2019s physical attacks. But the teachers I encountered weren\u2019t as lucky; I witnessed countless numbers of secret ambushes. The teachers seemed more like \u201chuman pi\u00f1atas\u201d than \u201cfigures of authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an American, I found this shocking. I\u2019d grown up with the idea that a \u201cgood parent\u201d or a \u201cgood teacher\u201d was someone who set strict boundaries and, when those were crossed, consequences. I\u2019d assumed that these standards were the same no matter where you were in the world. But after volunteering at the kindergarten I realized rules aren\u2019t considered nearly as important as fostering the development of a mutual child\/teacher friendship. To me, this seemed more effective than the strict rules placed in American schools. All in all, it was an eye-opening experience that allowed to me to experience teaching English and, in turn, gave me new insight into Japanese culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kids Will be Kids When I first entered the doors of Doshisha\u2019s kindergarten I didn\u2019t know what to expect. How … \u7d9a\u304d\u3092\u8aad\u3080 →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_locale":"ja","_original_post":"592"},"categories":[41,33,43,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}