A regular Tuesday

Nothing really special happened today. I only have 4 classes today, so it was a nice day too. I only lead half of them, so it wasn’t too much work either. During the rainy season, the weather is ridiculously hot. I’m not used to the weather and as you’ve noticed from reading my journal, I talk a lot about the weather. It’s the variable in my life in Japan. Coming from San Diego, one would tell you that weather would not be much of a factor in what you wear or what you do, because it’s always the same. But the weather here changes so much and so drastically that it’s hard to plan out and even harder to do.

Anyways, back to the school day.

The first class was with 8th graders. We are really getting them to write down what they will do for their show and tell presentation that is coming up soon. We were focused on having them start composing since not many students know how to do this well. I started it with the 11th graders, and now it’s gone to the 8th graders. I think that it’s good for them to write something down and have the teachers correct it with them, so they could see why it changed and how their errors can quickly become remedied.

The second class was with another 8th grade class, and we pretty much did the same thing. I had to go much slower and give a more definitive demonstration so that they would be able to understand what I was talking about and what I expected from them. We included more details when we wrote on the board what the main points the students needed to add to their composition.

The 7th grade class did an activity with counting beans. We played a little game with them and they had to guess how many beans were in a jar and then we counted them. We broke up the class into groups and they had to count a certain number of beans in a cup and to distribute them to another group once they were finished counting. It usually takes up the whole period so it’s a pretty easy day of just counting.

The last 11th grade class gave their final speeches. They did fairly well in my opinion, and since I’m giving the grades, my opinion does count here. I would say that they are the lowest level class, but that’s based on effort. They really don’t care that much. I mean it matters since it’s their grade, but other than that, they really don’t give a rat’s ass about English or any other subject for that matter.