This issue’s column offers an uplifting essay by an international graduate student who was hired to work as a Teaching Assistant (TA) while taking required courses towards becoming an English teacher. The author describes the morphing of an acronym for his favorite day of the week into a motto with symbolic significance for his chosen teaching career. When he started an intensive teacher-in-training program, he professed needs, impulses, desires, and dreams. By the time he finished his first semester, most of those things had been changed.
Friday has always been the most enjoyable day of the week for me. When I was a high school student in China, Fridays nestled comfortably beside weekends and time spent playing basketball. Although McMurray’s (2020) acronym TGIF in the context of pedagogy positively conjures the expression “Thank God It’s Friday,” Daniel (2021) claimed the acronym TGIF meant that we could use Twitter, Google, Instagram, or Facebook all weekend long. Many of my classmates also come from China, so I suggested the acronym should be WeTGIF because the WeChat social media platform was indispensable to our love of esports and gaming. When I entered an English education program at graduate school in Japan, I presumed that I could continue my sedentary lifestyle, but it was about to be disrupted. In addition to Twitter upending Daniel's acronym—my favorite—by changing its name to X, I pondered what was going to happen when I stepped through the classroom on the first Friday of the semester?
Scheduling Fridays for My Future
I thought I would be able to work part-time jobs and evenly spread several of my elective subjects from Monday to Thursday. However, my academic schedule on Friday was crammed with 7.5 hours of back-to-back required courses and TA duties. I took English Education Practice, Seminar, and Special Topics in English. I was a TA for English Education Methodology and English Conversation. All five classes were to be taught by the same professor.
The first lesson of a semester-long course is arguably the most important for both learners and teachers who make most of their decisions about how much they will involve themselves in that course. At first glance, Friday’s eclectic lineup of courses seemed unmanageable. The instructor planned to pair the two educational-themed training courses with the two language-learning courses in a multimedia-equipped room. Students hoped that teachers would be invited to sign-up for student assistant (SA) or TA responsibilities in the language labs.
On the first Friday, the classes followed a lesson plan based on Peter Weir's (1989) film Dead Poet’s Society. The two undergraduate classes took Hirata’s (2019) advice on how to have an interesting first class and identify students’ needs and motivations. The three graduate school classes employed poetry performance techniques suggested by Shima (2024). In the first period of English Education Practice class, there were eight Chinese students and two Japanese students. In the second period of the Seminar class for sharing action research, there were Japanese students who had studied abroad in Canada and the U.K., a student from Hong Kong, and two Chinese students. The cohort in the English Education Methodology class included 20 undergraduate students who were highly motivated to become teachers at junior high schools or senior high schools in the prefecture. There were 45 undergraduate students enrolled in the English Conversation course. All 10 graduate students from the first period returned to take the last class of the day to study Special Topics in English.
At the end of my first Friday, it was fun filled but exhausting. I asked the instructor how he planned to sustain the momentum all semester long. For example, how could everyone improve their conversation skills enough to achieve the dual purposes of improving English oral fluency and teaching acumen and let alone actively participate from the bottom of their hearts? He replied that I could be a class captain to keep everyone in a happy mood. I was advised to become a veritable interlocutor, so called, “walking dictionary” by whispering vocabulary or chunks of words at just the right moment. Additionally, we decided to choose some unconventional teaching methods. Then, the students could immerse themselves in the lessons and participate in activities inside and outside the classroom. He recommended reading Shapiro and Leopold (2012) who suggested that implementing role-playing in a classroom and provided a “space between practice and play [which] is a fertile ground for cognitive and linguistic growth” (p. 128). Furthermore, we reviewed a survey conducted by McMurray et al. (2020). The researchers indicated that instructors should enlist TAs to efficiently reorganize classroom spaces, set-up outside lecture areas with blankets, and portable whiteboards and sound equipment as needed. TAs can also efficiently liaise with students to guide them to outdoor class locations and cheerlead students who do not seem to be participating. Zazkis and Nejad (2014) claimed that although the use of role-playing in teacher education is rather rare, an unscripted dramatic technique can encourage participants to improvise behaviors that illustrate expected actions of persons involved in defined situations.
I suggested that the fifth class, entitled Special Topics in English, might benefit from role-playing and a TA-cum-drama coach. My initial impression was that my classmates’ English skills were not very good, and a few of them confided in me beforehand that they were neither interested in learning English nor had any compulsion to study special topics. To demonstrate how all the Friday classes were woven together and how we overcame the initial disinterest shown by some students, I will share one of the fifteen memorable lessons that we conducted in that course.
Ghost Stories
In our Friday morning class, English Education Practice, on October 27, the teacher encouraged us to interact by making Halloween-themed vocabulary crossword puzzles. The goal was to write riddles that were creative and challenging enough to make junior high school-aged students speculate and think. One Chinese student also took this warm-up opportunity to show a video on how Halloween is celebrated in China. It was friendly, simple and easy to understand. We discussed how to adapt it for teaching at a high school in Japan. In preparation for the afternoon class of Special Topics in English, the teacher tempted us to wear colorful masks and tell ghost stories in exchange for a pile of candies. To give students an opportunity to participate in an afternoon role-playing scenario, the instructor suggested that the TA and two students could try imagined role-playing; that is, writing their own script for a dialogue between characters.
As a TA in the early afternoon, I observed how the instructor lead the undergraduate class of English Education Methodology that was paired with English Conversation.
In the late afternoon, our classroom lights were dimmed. The hallways were shrouded in the mysterious atmosphere of Halloween. As planned, the students walked into the classroom and shouted in rising intonation, “trick or treat?” The teacher replied, “treat!” Then I promptly led my classmates outdoors to a garden on campus. There, a Japanese student and a Chinese student were directed to walk onto a makeshift floral stage and tell ghost stories in English with the aid of their smart phones (see Figure 1). Their story selections were perfect: Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan and Pu Songling’s Chinese Ghost Story. The terrifying plots made the students shiver, but they were not too scary, of course. It had just the right amount of tension to keep the audience enraptured. They not only told vivid stories but were prompted by me, who was the TA-cum-drama coach. They also used rich expressions and body language. The audience said they had felt drawn into mysterious worlds. Spontaneously, the teacher made an exciting suggestion: “Let’s roleplay! Please don your masks and choose a character from either the Japanese or the Chinese ghost story to perform your part in this school garden.” Upon hearing this news, the venue bubbled with excitement. Everyone was eager to try a role that matched one’s speaking ability. To ensure the smooth progress of the performance, peer pressure nudged everyone to make a concentrated effort to remember the lines. In the midst of laughter and camaraderie, role-playing scenes officially began when the TA-cum-director called out “action!” Students showcased their strengths and reinterpreted the previous storylines, adlibbing in their own way. In this process, peers encouraged and learned from each other, constantly interacting to create new creative sparks. Whether it was the tone of the lines, the design of the set, or the arrangement of the intercultural scenes, everyone strived to do their best, hoping to present a brilliant performance to their peers in the audience. Thus, a Halloween event full of fun, mystery, and creativity came to a successful end that Friday evening. Students wrote in their reflective journals that they had gained happiness, knowledge, and unforgettable memories from participating.
Teaching Assistance for TAs
On Fridays during my second period seminar class, I took time to review with the professor what had happened the previous Friday and discussed comments recorded in student journals. We then quickly revised the Friday lesson plans and got ready to implement them. There was a syllabus that deployed lots of elements to inform stakeholders. However, I loved going into the classrooms not knowing exactly what was going to happen. That feeling of discovery and disorientation was fantastic. Even though students knew parts of the lesson plan in advance in some ways, they did not know how the instructor—me as TA—put participants in the whole story together, which was based on the choices the actors made.
Thank Goodness It’s Fun
The revamped TGIF program placed great emphasis on interaction and active participation in teaching and learning. I observed students actively participating in classroom discussions through role-playing, outdoor teaching, and other activities. This not only stimulated students’ interest in learning, but also promoted the improvement of their thinking and expression abilities. I was deeply inspired as a TA and will pay attention to increasing interactive activities in my own teaching, allowing students to participate more in the classroom.
Since I entered graduate school and became a TA, my concepts and skills have been greatly enriched and improved. Teaching is a job that requires continuous learning and progress. I learned how to stimulate students’ interests and improve their learning outcomes by observing how the instructor weaved teaching methods and strategies together. Each student had their unique learning style and pace, so I tried to use personalized tutoring methods as much as possible to meet their different needs. I offered them just-in-time coaching to enable them to use a word they needed in micro-learning moments. At the same time, I adopted a diversified evaluation approach to gain a more comprehensive understanding of students’ learning status and provide them with timely feedback and suggestions. This evaluation method not only helped to improve students’ English application ability, but also cultivated their autonomous learning and reflective abilities. By serving as a TA, I have gained teaching experience and teaching methodology insights. These gains have not only significant implications for my personal career development but also a positive impact on the English learning and growth of my students.
Takeaways From my Classroom Observations
By experiencing how to integrate five classes into a one-day program by coordinating with my graduate school peers, undergraduate students, and professor, I learned how to maximize foreign language learning opportunities. I suggest these six takeaways from my observations.
- Pair up 90-minute university lessons on the same day to synergize intensive learning opportunities.
- Follow a syllabus, but synchronize it with festive calendar dates. Allow for spontaneous changes to surprise and disrupt student pathos.
- In addition to rearranging desks and chairs in the classroom, identify venues around campus to convene extemporaneous lessons.
- Hire a TA, or appoint a class captain, to enlist team spirit and serve as a role model for activities.
- On the first day, have fun but get learners to accept responsibility right from the start by setting goals, defining responsibilities and routines, and designing a cooperative syllabus.
- If you have international students in the class, do not lose them to cellphone gaming. Instead, involve them in performance poetry slams and roleplay activities.
Conclusion
As a participant and TA during fifteen weeks of five consecutive classes each Friday, I witnessed the transformation of my students that began from their very first class. Even my classmates from China confided in me that they soon started to enjoy English. This transformation was due to unique teaching methods, which did not confine the students to the classroom but used role-playing, outdoor lessons, and props to keep everyone curious and guessing what was coming up next. The acronym TGIF became a Thank Goodness It’s Fun teaching style.
My toolkit of teacher-in-training learning strategies now includes just-in-time learning, visual storytelling, social learning, and microlearning. I look forward to Fridays next semester—weekends too. My coined acronym WeTGIF must understandably shift to Friday classroom activities that require preparations on weekends. I will continue to focus on assigned-readings, adopt flipped classroom learning, select online videos, perform poetry sessions, practice on-the-spot three-minute presentations of my master’s thesis, and use e-learning software to boost my vocabulary by processing short chunks of information within a few minutes. Following this regimen, I think I can continue to have fun becoming an English teacher.
References
Daniel, K. (2021, October 21). TGIF: Thank god it’s Friday or Twitter, Google, Instagram, Facebook? eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/tgif-thank-god-its-friday-or-twitter-google-instagram-facebook
Hirata, H. (2019). My first class was inspired by Dead Poets Society. The Language Teacher 43(4), 31–33. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTTLT43.4
McMurray, D. (2020). Thank goodness it’s Friday. The Language Teacher, 44(1), 38–40. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTTLT44.1
McMurray, D., Ozment, A., Zhao, W., & Jiang, Y. (2020). Rethinking Japan’s teaching assistant system post COVID-19. The IUK Graduate School Journal 12, 9–20.
Shapiro, S., & Leopold, L. (2012). A critical role for role-playing pedagogy. TESL Canada Journal, 29(2), 120–130. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v29i2.1104
Shima, M. (2024). Important strategies for teaching English from the very first day. The Language Teacher, 48(1), 41–43. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTTLT48.1
Weir, P. (Director). (1989). Dead poets society [Film]. Touchstone Pictures
Zazkis, R. & Nejad, M. (2014). What students need: Exploring teachers’ views via imagined role-playing. Teacher Education Quarterly, 41(3), 67–86. https://www.jstor.org/stable/teaceducquar.41.3.67