Role play / Talk with Mrs. Katoda

Today’s senior class lesson was role playing. In today’s class with the seniors, we did a role playing activity. The activity was to make up the dialogue from a comic strip that is famous in Japan. My teaching partner had prepared some comic strips from Sazae san and I asked her to blank out the words in the dialogue box. The object of the game was to make them fill in the blanks and to perform it for me. There were quite a few comics that each group would have to do. At first I thought it might be too difficult for them, but at the end I felt as if theirs was better than the original one. It took up most of the class time all the way into the second class period. They are really creative, something that I haven’t seen in any of the students ever. So that was a shock for me. But then I guess if you give them an activity that will allow that, they will go off with it.

The next activity was a detective game. It was a short little activity that the other teacher prepared for me. We would have a card and you’d have to ask the other students certain questions to determine who the criminal was. It wasn’t that interesting, but served as the perfect time filler since it lasted the rest of the period. I would always call out the people who were very shy and quiet and say they were the criminal. They enjoyed the class so I was happy.

After class, I was already preparing for Monday’s lesson. I had asked another teacher to a projector and some wires ready so I could test my laptop with it. It will be for a slide show presentation that I have prepared for the class. So we went into the tatami mat room where all the equipment was. I tested the other teacher to see if she could answer all the questions that I would be asking the students. Some of the questions she couldn’t answer because they were at a very very hard level. But I decided to be an asshole and leave it in there anyways. I felt as if the students would be able to answer.

But after the slide show presentation, I started talking to her and we got into a deep conversation talking about a lot of things. It was really quite enjoyable since this was the first time I really talked to her. It’s been six months since I’ve been working at the school and this was the first time that this English teacher really talked to me. I think she enjoyed it a lot too. We were talking for about 2-3 hours and it was really getting late. I think that we ended our conversation around 8pm and then we went home. She’s a really great person and I think her and her husband make a good couple. Her husband is the teacher who sits behind me. He talks to me frequently so it’s odd that her English teacher wife doesn’t. As we were leaving another English teacher caught up with us and wanted to join in the conversation. They tried to invite me to go see Around the World in 80 Days with them, but I decided to pass. I was aching for a break from school. I hadn’t really had a day of rest in a long time. But since I wasn’t going to go, I decided to watch it on my computer. It wasn’t that great of a movie, but I did like the principle of it that you should go after your dream, willing to give up everything that you have for it. But that review will be for another day.