How God changes my sucky attitudes:

Today was a great day at school! Of course, when I got up this morning, I really didn’t want to go to work (I go through these phases where I don’t want to work at all). But when I got there, God blessed me all over again with my students. In all of my fifth and sixth grade classes, we have been learning school supplies, the grammar “Do you have a pen? Do you have a ~?”, and transitioning into learning body parts. Today we played the same game we played last week one more time because it is good practice for them. The game is essentially a spin-off of “Go Fish” and has been used to teach different English conversations within the AET circle long before my time here. The students make groups of six and then each student gets six cards, each with a different school supply on it. They must go around the group and each person asks another “Do you have a ~?”. The other person answers “Yes, I do.” and gives them the card(s) or “No, I don’t.” and the asking student has to draw a card from the pile. The whole goal of the game is to get as many sets of four as possible. The prize for every winner is a big sticker.
I knew they liked this game, but when the students of my first class actually started clapping and saying “Yatta!” (All right!) when I told them we were going to play the game, I felt tingly all over. My students liked this game and they were more than happy to play it. What’s better, most of them really tried to speak the English. They even begged me to allow them to play longer when I told them that time was up! I can’t tell you how good it is to a teacher’s soul when students are excited about something that you want them to be excited about.”
After we stopped the games (much to their disappointment), we started learning/reviewing body parts. Of course, the perfect song to go with teaching body parts is Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. This particular version sings it over and over 6 times, but each time, it gets faster and faster. The students loved it! They tried to sing with it and to keep up with it when it got incredibly fast. Even the students who never pay much attention really were trying. I can’t tell you how amazing it is when 6th graders respond well to anything. Generally, since it is their last year in elementary school, they are now the cool sempei’s (upperclassmen), and they are transitioning from immature elementary students to cool jr. high students, it is hard to find something to snare their interest. But this magical, once irritating-to-me song has done it, and I couldn’t be more blessed. The topper of the day was when one of the 6th grade classes actually asked to borrow the CD so they could sing the song before lunch. I couldn’t teach them today because I had to take a business trip during their class, but they had already learned it the week before. They heard the other class doing it, so they wanted to do it to. How wonderful is that!
God is so good. He blesses me like this even though I don’t deserve it because of the sucky attitudes I can take on sometimes. God is so good!