A bit out of place

Today had been bit different for me. Since this week is the sports festival week, all the classes are 40 minutes long and I didn’t want to be late so I came to school a bit early. I wanted to make sure that I had everything ready for my classes. I only teach 2 classes today, but I’m usually ahead of the game and also get things ready for the next day so everything is always set before I start and so I don’t have to worry about it.

The first class started at 9:40am, but I arrived to school around 9am. It was weird because that time seems to go by so fast. Before it would go by very slow, but I think that it was because I was feeling good. My first class today was with the 8th grade Fuji. They were good and loud as usual. They did what they were supposed to do, so that was good enough for me. We just did a chapter in the book about weekend plans. Since this weekend would their sports festival. We did a little bit of the dialogue then we did a September, September chant with has something to do with the sports festival so it’s something about the topic.

The second class today was 8th grade kiku, which is the one that I lead. We did pretty much the same thing, but this time the class is quiet and unresponsive. It’s very interesting to see this year when everyone is always just looking at me like I’m some space alien or something. They just don’t respond to me anymore. They used to and the ones that didn’t respond before are the ones most likely to respond now. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I really don’t like it. The loudest person in the class wasn’t here today, so that might have been the reason why it was so quiet, but I think the other reason is that the students are so tired from all the rehearsals and practices for the sports festival that they just can’t concentrate and get with it. It’s very discouraging, and I had a lot of help from the Japanese English teacher today too.

The third class today is with the 7th grade kiku. They are a pretty good class and they participate a little or at least enough so no one is falling asleep. That’s a good thing since they are in their first year at the school and I don’t want them to be picking up some bad habits already. We did a little thing with the topics of family today. We went around asking how many members are in the family and if they have older or younger brothers or sisters It’s good practice for them for the English Fun Faire which will come up this November. The other thing that we did in this class was sports since sports are coming up. We did a little activity with sports today and which sports they liked. We split the room up with students who liked sports and those who didn’t and then we asked who liked which sports. We only did a little of this since the classes were shorter today. I believe that we did a little September, September chant for them to get used to the language. I’ve done it so much that I’m a bit sick and tired of it already. CP believes that it’s a good exercise for the students to pick up fluency and it emphasizes the stress in the English language, but I just don’t like it.

I was feeling a bit sick during lunch today and didn’t eat lunch during lunchtime. I opted instead to get the copies ready for my next class and get all the paperwork that I needed for it. 11th grade Fuji is a tough class and I just happen to have many classes with them this year. It’s something that I’m not too enthusiastic about, but then it’s better for them that they have more English classes because they need it. I needed to get copies for the Gone with the Wind listening comprehension that we would do for the day. I’m usually good with getting things done beforehand, but for some reason, I’ve been falling behind on it. The class ended up going great and I was happy with the result. I guess I was all worked up and worried about nothing. They were responsive and they enjoyed it I think, so that was even better than I had originally thought.

After this class I had a break until after school. During this extra time after school or during 7th period I had my lunch since I started to work up an appetite burning a lot of energy from all the classes even though I had felt sick for most of the day. I think that after I ate, I felt much better. I just sat around and helped the 11th grade kiku girls clean up the teacher’s office by doing a few things. I’m working up my rapport with them, not that I’m not already their favorite teacher, but it never hurts to build extra points with them.

Soon after that I headed to the Language Laboratory to get the computers set up for the club and for CP to use. I was able to fix the laptop that wasn’t working before, which is really a great accomplishment since it’s all in Japanese. I figured out that the reason why the internet wasn’t working before was because windows had automatically configured itself to be the one to hooked up the wireless internet settings, I just set it to manual configure and it worked. Stupid windows mess up everything. Later in club, I was teaching the girls how to use the computer and to print and everything. I’m surprised that they didn’t know how to do it previously, but then I’m happy to be part of a teaching process. So I think for next year, I would be making more of my lessons focusing on the computer and technology. I think that everyone will enjoy it more and it will be more of an enriching experience.