Sharing my photos

Today, I only had two classes. But it was rather different today. I mean the first class that we taught today had to give their speech for the test. I thought that they did very well, but as their score reflected, they did the best in the entire 8th grade. These aren’t the highest level students either. They would be ranked 3rd highest of 4 classes. But the content of the speeches as well as the effort really showed and helped them do so well. I was thoroughly impressed with the results from the class.

We did a little fun activity in 11th grade today. All we did was listen to Queen’s “I was born to love you.” First we listened then we filled in the blanks with a lyric sheet. That song repeats itself a lot, and I mean a lot. It was kind of annoying to listen to it many times over. But then another thing came to me too. It was their last oral communication class. As seniors next year, they have discontinued the program and that next year; I will probably be teaching the highest level classes, which are the 10th graders now. I think that’s sad that the school has decided to do that. They have made some alterations to this year that won’t really benefit the students and have put more pressure on the teachers to come up with some results that are not likely. It was Ms. A’s last oral communication class at the school too since she will be one of 3 teachers leaving the school. As much as we don’t cooperate, I’ll still miss her and her feisty attitude. I think the school needed that, but there will be 3 new teachers and I’m sure some of them might bring that along with them.

After the classes were finished, I just hung around school to listen to some more speeches and then for my 12th graders. We were going to exchange pictures today, just to share our past experiences. I showed them my pictures from San Diego, and they showed me pictures of the trip they took to Kyoto and Osaka. They had bought me a gift too, which I thought was nice of them. Them refers to some of the students that were in my electives class. I think that I was able to teach them, and at least have them enjoy learning English. I hope that they could take it with them as they move onto the next level. Also today, another 12th grade student got accepted into a university. We are very excited for her because she got accepted to Keio University which is the 2nd highest ranking university in Japan. I think that’s spectacular!

For most of the day after that, I was just getting ready for my classes tomorrow. I didn’t really have an idea of what I wanted to do, but then I asked another teacher and she said that my idea sounded good and that I should just go with that instead of doing something else. I thought that sounded good and since I had prepared it for another class, I think it would have been good just to use it. I was working on which vocabulary words to work on and how to stimulate the students to learn as they are having fun.