The first 40 minute schedule this year

Today, all the classes will be 40 minutes long. Some classes have their exams today, but the classes that I lead, won’t be doing anything too important that the time will affect them.

When I arrived at school, I thought it was just going to be a regular day, but I was wrong. So many things changed on me today. The first two classes were with my 11th graders. They did the activity very well and even surpassed my expectation. So I’m happy to report that. The activity was to pick a place that they have been to and to make a sentence using a list of words that I provided. I had them in groups of 5-6 and they had to pick a place that they’ve all been to. That was probably the hardest part, them deciding which place is good.

Then for the 9th grade class today, because of a schedule change, we had a test. They didn’t do so hot, but I guess we weren’t expecting them to do so well. They just don’t study and that leads to their poor grades. I would like to help them out, but they don’t seem to want to help themselves out. It’s not very challenging and pretty much all the other 9th grade classes could do it, but they just seem unmotivated. I’m not sure how to motivate them to become better too. But I’m not leading this class, so it’s not in my charge.

Then fourth period, I had a break. I was the only one in the teacher’s office though, so it got a bit boring. I didn’t like being the only one in the room.

5th period rolled around and it wasn’t too bad. I enjoy teaching this 10th grade class. I was leading this class at the beginning of the semester, but it seems as if I’m not even teaching the 10th grade anymore. I really like to teach at this grade level because they are more motivated and they get into it when I teach. I felt as if I let them down, by not taking the charge and just teaching them. But hopefully things will change in the coming months. I think the Japanese English teacher wants me to take charge too. We are good buddies and she’s been my supporter since the beginning of me working at the school.

Here was another thing that bothered me today; no one told me that classes weren’t 40 minutes today and that there wasn’t going to be a 6th period today. The students needed to practice for the chorus competition so they cancelled 6th period today. I wasn’t the only one that wasn’t told because my partner CP didn’t know as well.

I hung around school for a little bit working on the plan for next semester for the 11th graders. I was torn with what I want to do for them since it’s their last semester of oral communication in high school. I want it to end with a bang and don’t really want to follow the format that was already formatted. I think that there needs to be improvement and to get them really working on building the language to carry on with them for the coming months and years.

After that we had a practice for the chorus competition for the teachers too. I have to sing a chorus song in Japanese, for which the Japanese teachers say the song is hard. I believe that the statement is correct.

I didn’t end up leaving till around 7pm which is really late actually. I wanted to leave earlier, but it was so hot that I didn’t feel like walking in the scorching hot weather.

When I came home, I was enjoying dinner with some music station. I was shocked to see the Backstreet Boys on the program. Then I started watching Star Wars, Episode one. It was showing on a TV station, not sure which one but it was channel 4. They will play Episode 2 on July 8th right before the national debut of Episode 3 in Japan. But I will see the third episode tomorrow. I’m excited about that. I’ve been waiting for years to complete the prequel trilogy.

After the movie, I was flipping around the channels and found another program that I think I’m going to like. On Friday nights, they have a program called our music on Fuji TV. It starts like at 11pm, which is really late for me and goes till around midnight. So I watched it this week because it had Kiroro. I really like that singing duo, so I stayed up and watched it. After the show, I started finishing up this entry.