Special Schedule
But not for me. Today was the same because the scheduling only affected the 11th graders and I was only teaching 9th and 10th today. The 9th grade recently seems very dead, I really don't know why. I met some of them during the English Festival since we were all working in the same room. But I partly blame the lesson plan. It's just not interesting. I honestly can't remember what we did, but just know that it wasn't something that I'd get out of my chair and stand on my desk for. I'm taking a guess that we did the oral exam. The students did very well, although their scores wouldn't reflect it. CP doesn't believe in giving a student a 5/5 in a section because that would be like a native speaker. But I think it's unfair and no one would ever get an "A" if they didn't get a 5 in at least one category. I think I will say something next year when school resumes for this class.
The 10th graders on the other hand didn't have much of a difficult lesson. They were just to prepare for their presentation of the dress code of their made up school. The first class was weird because they had forgotten their papers and most were sleepy. It's not typical of the class, and it's not acceptable either. But anyways, it wasn't a big deal. After the presentations, we played Last Christmas by Yuji Oda, which is a HUGE song constantly being played on the radio and on tv. They had words from the song cut on little slips of paper and they had to arrange them in the right order. It was a tad bit on the difficult side for them. The song was too fast.
The other classes did the same activity as well, but Kiku also had a listening comprehension part to listen to and figure out. Since they only have 29 students in the class, while all the others have around 39 students. I'm not sure how that worked out. It was kinda sad because it was Erin's last day teaching the class. She even told the classes that I was going to take over. When at the beginning she didn't like the fact that I was her replacement, so I'm happy that she did that for me. It'll be weird without her, and actually being the main teacher for such a rowdy group of girls. But I think Erin is excited about having a family of her own. After classes we were talking, a lot, about things in Japan and her life and such. It's very interesting. She's a good person, and I'll miss her. I'll visit her in Chiba after she has the baby and is settled down. I plan to meet her soon because she's going to introduce someone to me so I could start private English lessons.
English club didn't start until 5pm today.
That's REALLY REALLY late since classes end at 3:10pm. Students NEVER LEAVE. When I leave, there are still students and the teachers leave later than them. We played memory with the flash cards again. We got a new member in the 7th grade. It was the 7th graders Versus 10th + Bryan. It was horrible, the 7th graders creamed us. We played best of 3 and we lost both times. They more than doubled our cards each time. But I think that's the reason why we keep getting new 7th graders and seem to be losing the 10th graders. It was weird because at the end, I told them that I was going to be their teacher starting next year, and they couldn't believe it. They were like... eeeehhh?? and making other weird noises that Japanese people make. Yeah, that's very comforting to know how they feel about me teaching. From there went home and grabbed something to eat at McDonalds... even after reading QA's journal post. Which actually made me feel sick afterwards.. THANKS QA!
