an 11 hour workday

Now that’s a long time to be at work. I started work this morning at 9am, which is much later than usual. Actually I suspect that tomorrow will be the same and might even be longer.

I only mention it because I was very hungry as I left work today at 8pm. I wanted to go home so I could get some rest from today’s work. I think that I needed to get some rest because I was sleepy from this morning and not getting enough sleep.

I had four classes today that seemed to go by really fast. That’s something very odd for me. We are on 40 minute schedule this week so classes are shorter, but you could really feel them go by really quickly.

The first class was 8th grade ran. They were loud and not really paying attention like usual. It’s a bit frustrating to have to deal with this week in and week out, but that’s the kids’ attitudes at this age. We worked on the textbook today and focused on horoscopes. They had to finish up the communication goal and then they needed to make their own script for a speech they will give in the next class.

The second class was 8th grade kiku. They were better than the last class with attitude and some of them really get involved. You’ve just got to push them the right way and they’ll do it. They are by far the lowest in English ability, but they are the highest in effort shown. At the beginning of the year, no one would have guessed that because of the students in the class. The big shock in this class was that we didn’t have to tell them a lot for them to already know what to do. They already knew what they had to do for the speech writing. They started to compose their own sentences instead of just filling in the blanks, which is what most of the lazy students have done over the past year. So there is an improvement from last year to this year.

The third class was 7th grade kiku. They worked on the hobbies paper from before. They got a new one today and we were going over it in class, but ran out of time near the end and they ended up just copying it. They didn’t really get to understand any of the information that was discussed on the board.

The last class of the day for me was the 11th grade fuji. They were pretty good today. They needed to get more work done and weren’t as loud as before. I wanted to cover what will be on their oral test on November 8th. I needed to be very specific with what I expect from them so that they know what I’m looking for. But I know that most of them won’t change anything after I’ve told them what I expect. It’s one of those things that I know I’m going to try, but I already know the natural given response.

I stayed for the 7th period class, and watched the Wizard of Oz in the gym on stage. They were pretty good, but they need some work. They have to work on some of their lines and to slow down a little bit. They have some of the attitudes necessary to make it a good performance, but it’s a bit hard to understand their English. So that’s my job to fix it.

English club was a bit long today too. This was the reason why I couldn’t leave till late. They were working on decorations today. Some of the students were working on reports. I ended up doing both. I had to help with making ships because one of our movies is Pirates of the Caribbean. Then I help to make a family tree chart for Star Wars Episode One. It’s not very complicated and one of the few things that was in English so I was able to help with that. I also helped a couple of 10th graders in my Friday class with some computer issues. I’m glad that I was able to help them because the laptops at school are all in Japanese, but I was able to figure it out and to actually be of some help to them.

I had dinner at Yoshinoya today because I know that I would get home very late and not get to bed as early as I wanted, so I needed fast food. When I came home, I talked to one of the teachers at my school. She had called me to talk about something. It was a bit strange, but we’re friends so it was nice to talk to her. We talked for about an hour and I found out some news about some teachers that I was completely oblivious to. So now I’m enlightened by the information. I really enjoy my conversations with her. I kind of wish that we would have more of them though.