Tuesdays are always tough

I had a full day today. I was teaching a total of 6 classes in one day, which I think no one at the school, does. The first class that I taught today was an 11th grade class. I don’t normally see 11th graders so it was good for me to be a sub for the day. CP was still in Australia for her sister’s wedding and the lesson plans was still just to introduce the test topic on a movie report. My partner was Ms. YWbe, and she was worried about doing the lesson by herself so I came and helped since I’ve done it with other classes already. I kinda got the hang of how the 11th graders are and know their ability. I personally think they are the highest in the school. I think the lesson went really well, meaning it accomplished what I was planning to do, I prepared the students for their test and I made it enjoyable. It was a little shocking to hear, but one of the students in the class had told me that she loved me. She just shouted it out in the middle of class, which was pretty awkward to say the least. Since I don’t know why she did it, since we weren’t even talking about it and it was only the first time that I’ve ever walked into that class. But it’s better than having them say that they hate me.

The 9th grade class was quite interesting today too. They were all chatty which isn’t usual and they were trying to take advantage of the situation that I haven’t taught the class before, I’m just there only as an assistant. So I turned the tables on them. Since I was working with them at the English Festival in December I started to get to know the students by a first name basis. The lesson for the day was food and restaurants so I was just talking about different kinds of foods that we have in America since they will be going to Santa Barbara in March. They were getting a little out of control and not paying attention so I started to call out names and have them read the dialogue out loud. I made the really loud ones come up to the front of the room to do it. I would then break them up into groups and if I heard any Japanese they would have to go in front of the whole room and have to perform with everyone watching. It worked beautifully. I think my partner for the day was happy since it’s her homeroom class. I think it went better than usual and no one was speaking in Japanese. I love fear, it has its advantages.

Today for my four 10th grade classes, I just introduced the debate topic and had them start working on the debate materials. I had made a sheet for them to use and to get their ideas out onto the paper. But because I hadn’t realized that Feb. 1st there aren’t classes, I was actually a week behind. So I had to get the students to finish two papers, when I normally planned for one. I was falling behind because I should have started earlier. I tried to get them back on track and have them finish more of what they needed to do. In the first class, things went incredibly horrible. Things were all getting mixed up and my Japanese English teacher partner. I think many things were getting mistranslated and therefore led to much confusion amongst all the students. Of course, no students ask me what I wanted them to do even though I’m the one going to be grading them. But that was all in the first class. In the second through fourth classes, they all seemed to understand completely. I had developed a pattern about how I would go about to teach these girls. So by the end of the day, I was able to communicate what I wanted from them perfectly.

After school we had a little pow wow with the English club. My girls from junior high school showed up too. I didn’t have anything really planned for them, so we did something that I did with the seniors. Since there was a lot of them today and almost none of them yesterday we played Shiritori. That’s basically the game where you have to say a word that begins with the last letter of the previous word. It was a good activity because there were some junior high school girls there and they don’t know that much English. Although there was one eighth grader who’s English is almost perfect. After that, I practically collapsed because I was getting too tired. The time was about 6pm when we stopped club, I didn’t want them to go home too late. But I still had many things to do and to prepare for the next day and for next week as well. I didn’t end up leaving till around 8pm. That’s pretty late for me.