a bit annoyed

I don’t really get annoyed easily or that often, but this week has been, well annoying. I had six classes today and it was really full.

I knew that I’d be fairly busy today, but I never thought that it would be as busy as it was today.

The first class that I had was with the 11th grade Ran. They had a listening test today so I had to start that today. I thought that it was very easy for them, which is bad since I needed to have this test to differentiate the top students from the lower performing students, and I think most of them got a perfect score which is really not good. But it’s because their English listening abilities have improved. I think for any of the other classes in the school, it would be a difficult test.

The second class today was with 11th grade Kiku and they pretty much had the same lesson as the previous class. They had a listening test today and then we worked on storytelling verbs to describe the movie using those terms. All the examples were there for them to work on.

The third class was with a 7th grade class, Ran. That’s a big jump to go from the highest level high school class to a lower level junior high school class. But since I wasn’t teaching this class, it wasn’t that big of a change for me.

The fourth period class shocked the teachers a little bit. It was the 9th grade Ran class. They are a very unruly group, but today, they were top performers. They really like to act and they did a great job today with the practice for the English drama for the cultural festival.

The fifth period class was where I started to get really annoyed. I wasn’t annoyed with the students; I was getting irritated with my working partner. This 10th grade Yuri class is usually a high level performing class, but they lacked the energy today, like most of my classes today actually, but my partner was just pushing them too hard on it. She wasn’t patient with them and kept rushing them and blaming them for things that weren’t in their control. She also let me know that she wasn’t going to give them a mid-term test because there isn’t enough time. Sure it’s partly the fault of the scheduling of the semester, but then I was able to pull it off with the 11th graders, so there’s no reason why they couldn’t be able to do it since I think they have the potential to be better than my 11th grader students.

I will make a new paragraph since I think it will be a lengthy venting session. During the break after the class, I had a little venting session with another teacher that was working with me in that class and she brought it up, which made me feel better because I wasn’t alone on it. She knows that my partner is out of place to do what she did, but we both can understand it too. She was pushing the students too much and doing a lot of blaming on them that they couldn’t do something but it’s our jobs as teachers to be able to give them the tools and guide them to be able to do it. She’s being too critical of them and of me. She always talks while I’m teaching. It’s like she’s a backseat teacher teaching from the back of the room. It’s not only distracting for me; it’s distracting for the students. It doesn’t only undermine me teaching, but it takes away from what I’m doing. It doesn’t show that she has respect for me teaching and if she’s the boss that everything has to be her way. I just know that I’m able to produce results and it’s clearly visible that they are able to do things that only a year ago weren’t able to do. But I guess it doesn’t seem to be enough. I understand all the excuses that she gives for the reason that she’s the way that she is, but for me, an excuse is an excuse and there’s no purpose for it than to be destructive.

The last class of the day wasn’t any better working with my partner. It was only the 7th grade and it wasn’t a high level class, but she just didn’t have the patience with them. It’s very dangerous I feel to be impatient with students. This Fuji class is a fun group, usually loud and unique in their own way, but they aren’t able to speak or understand English the way that other classes can, and I understand that. Each class needs to be taught in their own way or it won’t work. But what my partner does is to try to conform the class to the lesson plan, instead of the lesson plan to the class. I know that that’s what I do to conform the lesson plan to the class, and I know that not many teachers do that, but I think that’s what really makes the difference in teaching.

I was finished with work by 4pm since the girls for the English club cancelled on me today. So I decided to join my other club and help them out. They have a tennis tournament on Sunday that they really need to get ready for, but I didn’t think that I’d be able to help them much. I just needed to release some of my pent up energy with some hard serving and fast swings. I think it worked really well and my serve improved a lot today too.

I ended leaving around 6:30pm. I don’t know how I managed it, but I had a seat on the train from Yokohama station to Hongodai station. There was some sort of an accident and no one was riding the train. There were many delays, but I didn’t care because I got a seat and took a nap on the way home.

I got to eat dinner watching two more episodes of Everyone loves Raymond. I wanted to do more on the computer tonight, but since I’ve got a long weekend, I think I’ll enjoy just staying up late typing this entry and playing games online. It’s almost 1am and I’m a bit tired though. So I think I’ll just get some sleep so I could keep to my strict sleeping schedule. But this weekend might mess me up since I’ll be going on a little camping trip to the mountains with some co-workers.