My First Day of Teaching
Tuesdays are always my busiest days because I go to 5 classes and then have English club afterwards, but today was even more busy. One of of my English Teacher partners, CP was going to leave early to have a doctors appointment. She told me about this before so I would have to cover for her two classes that she's missing. I looked at my schedule for her and noticed that there are three classes that she would be missing, so I asked another Japanese English Teacher about it, but she didn't know that CP was leaving. It was kind of important because I was going to be filling in the Japanese English Teachers class CT, that's why I asked her.
So she talked to the Scheduling person, and the scheduling person didn't know, she thought we were talking about the other English Teacher, Erin S. Because she wasn't going to come in the whole day at all. So as the drama is unfolding, both of my English Teaching partners will be gone for the day. I have to cover for both of them, which was mainly possible except for one class. But I didn't have the lesson plans for Erin S's classes. So I had to learn it in 20 minutes before I went to go teach it.
First Period I have off, and then Second Period I was with CP and Eriko S. talking about foreign currencies. Third period was my true first class of teaching at a school.
The topic of the day was a demonstration speech since that's what the 10th graders are working on. They have to give one next week, so what I decided to do was to demonstrate how to do a demonstration speech. I used tying a tie as the topic. First we went over answers from the previous week's homework and the class went along with it pretty well. Then I got there attention by taking off my tie. I'm sure the girls loved that, so they were paying close attention as I demonstrated in six steps how to tie a neck tie. I needed to have six steps because that's what the assignment is. I think the class went pretty well since everyone was working on the assignment and doing what they needed to do. The Japanese English Teacher in the class, my assistant YWbe, said I did a good job. But the class is good, so everything went alright.
Fourth period I had to teach CP's class which was 7th Grade. My Japanese English Partner was CTshi, and she's really a good help. I had more fun in this class because it was unexpected. It was the first time they had ever met me and I was going over the topic of calendars and numbers. We went through that pretty quickly, but the class really understood what I was talking about, so that was really good. I think I really related to this class pretty well, but I did need to have a lot of things translated since their English level is quite low. And it's one of the better classes. This is the first year they will be exposed to English. I talked with CTshi after class and she asked if I have ever taught before because she was impressed with how I conducted the class. He only criticism of the class was my handwriting. Particularly my "r" because most of them learn to have the part at the top stick out, but I wrote things fast and they couldn't read it. But she said I did a good job, so I was happy about that.
The next challenge was the toughest class in the entire school. My Japanese English Teacher partner was MAda, and she isn't the nicest person in the world, could be the reason why she's teaching the toughest class. This is my usual class, so these 10th graders usually see me. The topic again was demonstration speech, I did the same thing as I did before, but the class is rowdy. And MAda always has to yell in Japanese to quiet them down. But that's usual and has nothing to do with me teaching the class. I think it's quite rude because they call her by her first name instead of last name and Sensei. That's how bad this class is. They are the most unmotivated people I've met, but I'll have to learn how to deal with it, since soon it will be my class to teach. I had them quiet for about 3 minutes as I was showing them how to tie a necktie. I think that was pretty amazing, I've never seen that class so quiet before, and everyone was watching and paying attention.
Finally came sixth period. This is originally CP's class, and the Japanese English Teacher is my boss AOwa. It's a 12th grade class, but their level is lower than most of the other grades in ability. So CP told me that we had to go over some dialogue by playing the tape a lot, but that's not my style. So I had people in the far right and far left rows read the dialogue parts. It was great because the dialogue had a guy's role and a girl's role. But I teach at an all girls school, so who would speak the guys part. We would do paper, rock, Scissors and take votes so everyone would be involved and not get bored as they were reading.
We did the same for the second dialogue with the next two rows, so they would have practice speaking and listening at the same time. And it was repeated a few times so they could listen to it a lot. For the middle rows, I just read one part of the dialogue and they had to reply. That way we don't over do it. Then we had to start with them making their own dialogue since they will have to make a presentation next week about what they did. So I explained it as detailed as I possibly could. I noticed that spelling Japanese words wrong will get them to speak up to correct me. I really got along with this class, and it was a great way to end the day of teaching. The class had a lot of fun too I think it was because I was a new teacher and introducing a new style of learning. Everyone had fun, and most people believed that they saw me in California, but they didn't.
My boss was really really impressed, and that was the best part. She said the purpose of that class was to be fun and that was achieved. I really think she's not worried anymore if I could teach or not because the top two teachers in the English department Afterschool I had a lot more students come talk to me and speak English with me. All the teachers that sit around me are always listening in and kind of shocked that they do that.
My boss AOwa took me to her home room class so I could read the vocabulary words of the day to her class, and so they could see that I'm a new English teacher at the school since I don't teach their class. After that I was waiting around for English club to start, and CTshi brought some new students from AOwa's home room 7th grade class to join in the club. So today there were 8 people, which is very very high for club standards. So I was really stoked. All we did was play Hangman to practice vocabulary words since the 7th grade students don't speak much English. I had to use a lot of Japanese so they would understand what was going on. We played in teams, and then we mixed the teams up so they would be broken out of the cliques which was really good. I think we made some of the new people feel included and they were speaking English more.
It was a great day. After club, I went back to my office and my boss AOwa talked to me again. She was mentioning about my transportation fees being paid for. She has to take care of me better now, since on Saturday she got yelled at by her bosses that she didn't take care of CP because she didn't go to the Shabu Shabu because she got lost. It looks really bad when someone says they will go, but doesn't end up showing up. But I took this opportunity to ask her more information about teaching the teachers, and I didn't notice but it's mainly the teachers sitting around me. There will probably be around 20 teachers or so. Most of the teachers are around my age, which really is surprising. I'm not sure anymore if I'm the youngest teacher. I really believe that my boss puts more trust in me now, she's really really not worried about it anymore. And I can really do any format I want. I think she sees me as a person who will redeem her and her English department from what she saw in her class today. She's been talking to me a lot more and taking care of me better too. She told me to go home and get rest since it was late and I was only required to stay to 5pm, but it was already 6:30pm. I was soooo happy today, I think I really did a good job today and hit the expectations that they had for me. Since everything was last minute, I think that surprised them even more. So I'm looking forward to the next steps.
