a busy Wednesday

Today was very hectic and almost too busy for me. I didn’t end up leaving school till around 7:30pm and that’s really late since I have to get up at 4:30am tomorrow morning. I had to get up at 5am this morning to get to work on time. I was lucky that I actually made it early since I left my house late. I did a fast walk to the station and got on the right trains to get me to work on time. I had noticed that from the first class, things were very different. One of the teachers that I work with, actually one of the Japanese English partners that I have won’t be coming back anymore. At least if she does, she won’t be teaching with me in the Oral classes. That’s a bit sad, but I’m happy for her and their family.

First period was with the 11th grade yuri and we covered the movie verbs. Usually when I did this lesson, there was a listening test right before it. But today that didn’t happen so I had to drag what normally would be a 20 minute lesson into something longer. But the students weren’t really participating so I had to give them more time to work. So I did that and then had them present a little at the end of class.

Second period was with 8th grade yuri, and we had a substitute for the Japanese English teacher. We did the rap for American Cousin practicing for the British Hills trip for the 8th graders tomorrow, but some of them didn’t seem interested. They were quieter than usual and I think it’s because of our substitute. She’s a bit strict and doesn’t seem very friendly. She is nice to me though, so I have no problems, but I could also understand the students. She’s usually yelling at the students to not run in the halls. She’s been at the school for a long time and actually was a student at the school back in the day too. We finished the lesson with a paper for British Hills.

Third period was with the 10th grade fuji and we started a new topic on weather. The class was very dead today. I mean there really wasn’t any reaction at all. I’m glad I wasn’t leading the class, although my first two classes were very quiet too. I didn’t think that the lesson was all so exciting myself, I mean how much fun could talking about weather be right? But they were really too quiet even for me. After that, we tried a little wake up with the Weatherman Rap. It was a bit too fast for them to catch most of the words but they were able to do a little bit of it and at least get exposed to it.

Fourth period was off for me, so I did a lot of my grading during this time. There was an open school session, so people were walking in and out of the office. My goal with the grading was to finish it by the end of the day so that I could get it back to the students and that would be more stuff off my desk and it would give the students a lot of time to finish it too.

Fifth period was with 9th grade kiku. We just started working on the English drama and this class is doing the Wizard of Oz. They didn’t get a practice in last week because of a mix up on the schedule with the other teacher. I felt like we were wasting a bit of time making a lot of corrections in this class and it was too late to change things because they already started memorizing them. So I thought it would have been better just to go with it. But I’m not sure my partner thought the same way. She was pushing it too hard as if it was easy for them to snap out of it and to change it really quick. But they were on target and did a fairly good job. It was the first time that any of the teachers got to see them perform and they were pretty good.

The sixth period was with 9th grade fuji. We worked on the English play for Annie today. They were great today, but they hadn’t gotten any of the changes that we made last week since the teacher was absent and hasn’t seen the class for a long time. Last week, I just had them go through it, but I didn’t do any correcting. Since today we had a new teacher join us too, it was better for them to go and then fix things after the scene. I wanted to make some changes to some lines and only squeezed in part of them. Some students openly accepted the changes, while others said it was impossible. I’m glad that it all worked out and it went smoothly. I really enjoy teaching this class, so it was all good. Their song was wonderful too. Although I personally like the somewhere over the rainbow song better, the students in this class sung better.

After school I was working on finishing up the grading. Then I started to alter my class schedule since the teacher will be leaving, a class went from Friday to Monday, which completely changes the dynamic of my syllabus. So I needed to make a new one. Then for English club, they were working on their things. I helped cut out some batman symbols. It wasn’t very good at all, but at least it was fun.

It took a long time to figure out the schedule and to get everything order, since I was on my own to do it and I just figured that it would work best to keep it close to the old one, but just alter a few things here and there. It worked out with only having 2 extra classes instead of 5. But that won’t come until 2006, so there is plenty of time to figure it out then, since I feel the schedule will change again.

I had dinner at McDonalds tonight. I haven’t eaten there in a long time. Come to think about it, I haven’t eaten at a restaurant in a long time either. Then I came home and started packing for the trip to Iseshima. I was talking to my friend CNto for a little bit. We were mostly talking about a mutual friend of ours and their situation with someone. It’s a bit difficult, but I think that in the end everything will work out fine. It’s almost midnight and I have to get up in a few hours so I’m going to get some shut eye.