A five class day

It’s not so bad today because I only have 5 classes as opposed to 6, which I will have another one on Friday. Surprisingly, I woke up before my alarm again. I mean I was dead tired this week so I wouldn’t imagine that I would wake up early and not late. Even though I woke up early, I still left late. I was checking e-mail and the news and just was going really slow and ended up leaving late. I got ready really quick and was out the door. I was lucky enough to catch a fast train to school. So I wasn’t late.

The day started off ok since I had to teach the 11th grade for the first class. I really enjoy teaching the 11th grade; I think it’s my favorite grade level and probably because it’s the highest level and I’m in charge of it. But I’m really able to be able to teach what I want and do it in the way that I want to do it in. Even though there are still restrictions since teachers have to watch me, but today CP was absent for first period. So I felt more relaxed than usual. There was also a student teacher in the room watching over me, but I really didn’t mind them being in the classroom since they probably didn’t speak much English to begin with. This class went by pretty quick and they had something easy to do. I learned that Japanese students usually don’t learn things step by step. They are just told something and they just have to know it. I think that’s why they don’t understand methods as much as they just know things. That’s why something that seems simple for me like answering one question for a week for a span of a few weeks seems so hard for them. And today, they would have to compose it all on a test paper combining all that they have learned in the past few weeks. I didn’t think that they understood it in the other classes, not sure if that was my fault or if the students simply misunderstood what I meant. But I think that I probably made some errors while teaching the lesson.

CP took over for the second class today for the 8th graders. They were a bit tired and uninterested. I think that’s because the heat was setting in and the heat was almost unbearable. This was still in the morning too, so I don’t know what’s going on with this weather. This class had some parents watching us too. We just went along with the book and we started the chapter on telling time in the Expressways book. IT was a bit difficult for them, I think because the format isn’t the same as all the previous chapters. It was difficult for me to teach before too when CP was absent, so I could understand.

Third period was with the 10th graders. It was the first time for me to teach this class, but I’ve been going to this class, just not leading this class. It’s not like Yuri, but I do enjoy it as well. I think they like it too, when I’m teaching since it adds a little flavor in their education.

Fourth period was nice because I had it off and that went right into lunch. So that was a nice hour and a half break before we had to teach again. The next two classes were 9th graders. We were doing the chapter on taking the Subway in the expressways book. I think that the first class, the one that CP was leading was a bit tired and out of it. They didn’t seem to want to be learning or doing anything for that matter, which didn’t help us in front of the parents. They are at a high level, so I’m just wondering what was bothering them to behave like that. I thought that was weird from them.

The 6th period class made me seem like I am a great teacher. Before the class had started, they wrote on the board in big letters LET’S STUDY ENGLISH. I thought that was good since the parents were already in the room before I even walked in. They all participated and got all the right answers too. So I think that was really good. They at some parts weren’t able to understand, but it’s more at the high school level, so I could understand why. I didn’t punish them for it, but I finished the lesson faster than I would have wanted or hope for. I’m not sure why my classes seem to fly by with the lesson that I have prepared, when CP does it just as fast and it takes it up to the last few minutes of class. That’s amazing.

After school, I hung around for a little bit. I didn’t end up leaving till around 7:30pm, which is quite late since I’m used to leaving earlier. I was correcting the papers that I collected today from the 11th graders. It took a bit of time and I realized that I had made a mistake when I was teaching and being punished for it because I was correcting that on all the papers. But it’s ok, I didn’t mind too much, but it shows me how I will explain it for the last class. I think that I’ve fine tuned it all now. I was half asleep and half awake as I was slaving to finish grading it. Obviously it took me a bit of time if I started at 4pmish. I also was helping some students with the recitation contest and getting the last few touch ups ready. And I spent about an hour talking with another teacher which has given me some inspiration on what I will do for the September school trip with the 11th graders. She’s good at that and I like talking to her and her husband. I have come up with a good activity for 144 students and breaking them into groups of 12, so that would be 12 groups. I think it will seem similar to something that I did with the 9th graders on their school trip, but I’m making it a bit harder. So I think that after the oral exam, I will get them to prepare for that and to think on their feet. Then after I finished the details for that, I was talking to another teacher who loves to talk about her husband. There’s nothing wrong with and I enjoy talking to, but it was a weird conversation that we were having. We were talking about my tie and the soccer game.

I came home and watched the soccer game between Japan and North Korea. It was an exciting game, even though I only saw the second half. I saw both goals by Japan and see them clinch a place for the world cup competition in Germany next year. So that was exciting.