English Cafe with Japanese High School Students - 日本の高校生とEnglish Cafe

Around one month ago, an email from Center of International Affairs, Osaka University arrived in my inbox. It was about international assistant recruitment for English Cafe. But this time the English Cafe will be held with High School Students! Without any doubt, I registered myself because I have been waiting for this kind of event.

I always have a high interest about socializing with students, talking about anything interesting but can be learned at the same time. When I was still working in an university as lecturer and young researcher, I prepared my lectures with high enthusiasm. At that point I would always imagine, 'If I am the student, what would I like to learn? What kind of things would interest me?'. If I may be a little bit honest, I have been through quite an uninteresting undergraduate life as long as I can remember. Went to class without a lot of motivation (except, if I really like the subject), learned something that I don't know when I will use it and how I will use it. Of course, I regret it now, why I didn't study harder. But indeed, learning something without being told what the objectives are, is like learning how to shoot an arrow without knowing where to shoot. At that time I learned the dots, but I didn't know how to connect the dots. When the time comes for me to connect the dots, I didn't learn all the dots carefully so I can't get a full connected dots.

Still, maybe because of my own experience as a student, I started to think how to teach the way I want to be taught. I also started to think in my students' shoes. I think that is the most important thing to be realized as a teacher.

So, back to the topic of English Cafe. All the assistants were given a theme for that day which was, 'Why are there many foreign students in Osaka University?', 'どうして大阪大学で留学生がたくさんいますか。'

We were also asked to prepare short introduction about who we are, where we are from and a little bit information about our own country. I prepared two simple pages. First page was an introduction about Indonesia and the other one was about some activities that usually were done by international students.

I went by myself to Osaka University Toyonaka Campus. I really love Toyonaka campus! It was sooo calming, there were so many big trees and I caught many Pokemons along the way to go to the campus hall LOL.

When it was time to start the English cafe, I was pretty nervous. That was my first time in a long time to talk to some much younger students, not to say from a different country than mine! In the briefing session, the instructors said that Japanese High School students may be a little bit shy to talk in English. They also asked us to use easy English and NOT to talk in Japanese in any form XD So, yeah it was a pretty convenient instructions for us international students.

Started the session by an introduction from me, I was surrounded by five Japanese high school students; one boy and four females. When I said that I am from Indonesia, a girl said that she has been once to Indonesia, to Bali to be exact. No wonders, that must be one of the most famous destinations for tourists in the world. Some of them maybe didn't know that it is located in Indonesia.

After this part one ended and I realized that no one asked a question, I started to ask them if they have been to other countries. Their answers were unexpected, they have been to many places...more than me LOL. Pijar, what have you done all this time in your life? XD

I continued the questions by asking which countries they might want to visit. I also got many unexpected answers like Peru, Egypt, Australia and Belgium. Such specific places :)

At this point I started to realize that the main objective is to let them talk about their selves, it is not about me. So I started to ask them many questions.

From there, they also started to ask many questions to me! Finally :) One of them asked me what I like about Japan. Without doubt my first answer was because Japan is really clean, which was responded by 'Thank you very much' by one of the students. My second reason was because Japanese people are so kind and helpful. I told them my experience when I got lost once and a kind person without even understanding my English kindly took me to the place I wanted to go. One of them even asked me why I wear a hijab which I answered simply by, 'Because my God asked me to do so.' Seriously, I didn't have any other ideas to answer that question X)

The session flew so fast for me, maybe because I enjoyed myself too much! I always get so much energy from younger people (guess maybe that's why I really want to be a lecturer). Before we parted, one of the girls kindly asked me to cut a loose thread from my hijab. I was so touched :) She is very kind. And the session ended with us taking pictures together. 

I didn't regret my decision to join this activities at all, although after that I still needed to go back to lab and continued my experiment until midnight X) But it was really worth it!!

I am really looking forward for similar activities in the future. I hope I can be a better teacher too for my future students :)

Osaka,

24 July 2016