another fairly good day

I couldn’t sleep very well last night, but I think that really didn’t matter to me too much. I got up early to get to work early today. I managed to get on the faster train to work today, so that was lucky. I mean I had to run from one platform to another to get there on time. I really didn’t need to get on the faster express train, but since I usually always miss it, I wanted to try to get on it today. I left the house later than usual, but still managed to get to Yokohama station with enough time to get on the Express train. I arrived at my station much earlier than I thought that I would get there.

I guess that I don’t really need to run next time, but then I hate to waste time at the station too. I got to school early enough to get lunch and breakfast before I got to school. I made it before some of the usual teachers too who are their early.

My first class of the day was with the 11th grade yuri class. They had a listening comprehension test today. We started with this test since I wanted to get it out of the way. All I had to do was just press play and it would just do everything for me. They understood the rules of the test and it’s very simple. I think the test was a bit too easy for them, but I think that it will be difficult for the other classes. This is a high level class and I didn’t really give them too much preparation time for it, so I think that they will do fairly well on the test. The test was meant to differentiate the top students from the lower performing students. After the listening test, I had to introduce them to the three parts of a story bit. They were a little confused and then I realized that if the highest class can’t get it, I need to drop it and go with something simpler. I decided to go with, just explain the movie to me. We only had 20 minutes left I the class, so I made them do it for homework and to bring it next week.

The second class was with 8th grade yuri and we just did something out of the book and from the raps book too. I’ve noticed that we’ve been using the Raps book too often lately. I mean I think it’s a bit much. It’s a good exercise and something to get the kids interested, but I think if we do it too much, it’ll lose its effect and won’t be so interesting the next time that they hear it. They did one that is called American Cousin. It’s about the singer, who is from Britain and his cousin living in America. It’s to get the students interested in learning British English since they will be going to British Hills next week as part of the school trip. I thought it was good to get them going on the rap, but I think that they got a little confused or a little bored with it after all the work that went with it.

The third period class was with 10th grade fuji in which we did another activity using the Raps book. I like the book as a teaching tool, but I think using it this much in one day isn’t very good. I’m starting to get annoyed with it a little. Since we’ve been talking about sports last week, we did the Active Rap today. It was a good activity, but I think that since this class is a lower level, they were struggling through it. They were having a lot of trouble with it. They really weren’t able to figure out what some of the blanks were and they don’t have the thought processes to link things together to get the answer. That’s something that if I had the chance to, I’d teach them how to do it. But since I’m not leading this class, I really can’t do much about that. I do have a chance to do it for Friday’s class though, but I think they are a higher level too, so that should be different. And they have fewer classes. Something that I brought up to the other teacher was the fact that the lessons aren’t building anything. There’s no point to them other than to learn about past tenses. It’s important, but that’s not our jobs at Oral communication teachers to work and focus on grammar. I brought it up that last year we were focusing each lesson on preparing for a test and an oral presentation so that they would actually pay attention to what’s going on and study harder. I mean, last year when I was leading the 10th grade, we were working towards a demonstration speech at the midterm point and then a final debate for the exam. It was a bit rough and things weren’t very smooth, but that was only my first teaching experience. But I don’t see any progress on that, and I don’t see where the lessons are going to teach anything beyond a scattered objective of nil. So I’m worried on behalf of the students because both the other teachers that I’m working with will be leaving in March of next year, while I’ll be around till August. So when they advance to the next level, I’ll be expecting them to do well on tests, even though I know they haven’t been prepared for them.

Fourth period was my break and it was short lived since we have only 40 minutes today because of an open school event after school. The lucky thing about this is that it’s the class right before lunch so I had an extra 40 minutes tacked on for lunch. More students started talking to me today. I thought that was good, because they wouldn’t before. They would only talk to the teacher that sits in front of me. They were asking me if I loved her, which is an interesting question to ask since she’s married. Then they continued to ask if I loved other teachers. I kinda knew where this was going, but the other teachers told them to go away and to leave me alone. These are two of my students that I teach in the 8th grade kiku on Tuesday.

Fifth period was with 9th grade kiku and we were supposed to do the play today, but we didn’t. I thought that we’d fall really behind on practice for the cultural festival if we didn’t practice. I didn’t think that was a good idea. I had mentioned it to the other teacher that we should be practicing for the school play, but she brought up that they practice enough with the other teachers that it would be a waste of time for us to do it in Oral communication class. We did the rap again and then a worksheet that went along with it. It was for preparation for the English Fun Faire and to get them going and educated about occupations. I didn’t really like that idea about blowing off the English play since it was actually printed on the lesson plan sheet that was approved before the semester started. The reason being was that the other teachers decided that and that my partner decided to change it because she thought that they get enough practice for the play. But I think that she didn’t understand that they actually don’t have enough time to practice with the native speakers or English teachers for that matter. She doesn’t understand how busy the teachers are, so I needed to step in and remind her.

Sixth period, because I was leading the class for 9th grade fuji, I decided to change and do half the class on the rap and the other half working on the English drama. There are a lot of mistakes in the text since they made some changes. I felt bad because I should have looked for them earlier before they started to work to memorize their lines. I think that it was my fault for not catching those mistakes earlier and I take the responsibility for it. I think that will set back the students for another week to re-memorize it and there isn’t that much time left before the cultural festival at the end of the month because they have a lot of events going on this month. We did get a lot of practice finished and I think we went through it half way before class finished. It was a tight schedule because classes were only 40 minutes today. I’m happy that I decided to take things into my own hands and take charge of what needed to be done. At first my partner didn’t agree, but I had to let her know that she was mistaken about when the plays were to be done and how much practice the students get. They actually have 15 days before the school festival and many of those days are filled with school trips, weekends, and days off. So there really isn’t enough time. I’ll have to come to school on my days off to get them extra practice.

After school we had English club. We were booted out of the Language Lab today because they had an after school class from an outside teacher teaching English. So we needed to move our operations to CHda’s home room. We only occupied a little corner and all we were doing was the decorations. It was a lot of cutting of cardboards today and we made letters for decorations. I think the club might need to scale back the plans a bit to make sure that we could get everything finished on time. I realized something tonight too. One of the students that never comes is really good at breaking the ice. We need to keep her in the club more and to get her more involved. She’s a good student, but not the sharpest tool in the shed. The reason why she doesn’t come is because her grades are very low that she doesn’t qualify to be in a club. But she came today and I think it helped out a lot. She was talking to the 7th graders and it was good. She really knew how to break the ice and to get the girls talking, even if it was only in Japanese, I think that the 7th graders had a good impression of her and I think that they will come back more often. I know the other girls too, even though I don’t teach their class. They are from the painfully quiet class.
I had the finish the New England clam chowder for dinner and watched an episode of Everyone Loves Raymond.