Fairly average Friday

I had 5 classes today, which is pretty tough to do these days. I started off the day with 11th grade Kiku. They were a pretty good class today. They didn’t give me any trouble this week and they understood the assignment pretty well. It was a bit difficult for them still, but I think that after they got started, they started to understand more and what they had to do for the assignment. I introduced the 4 questions to them and had them look at the pamphlets. This was all after the listening comprehension test. I thought the test was a bit hard, but they are the lowest level, so I didn’t expect them to do so well on it. Actually we hadn’t even gotten the answer key finished, so no one really knows how they did. It seemed that the class was running a bit short today and it was the last for this year. The next time I will see them is in 2006, which is a weird feeling since it’s still only the beginning of December.

The 3rd period class was with 7th grade ran. We had the chance to go to the gym and practice Beauty and the Beast. The girl who was Belle was really good. Everyone else was just average with their lines. There wasn’t anything that stood out above the rest, but that’s also very typical of Japan.

4th period with 9th grade ran was a test on shopping. I knew that this would be a struggle, but I didn’t know how much of a struggle it would be. Some students did ok, while others completely bombed on the test. They didn’t do very well, but that was mainly because of their bad attitudes. There was one student that I had to give 5 points out of a possible 25, which is pretty sad.

5th period was another test, I guess today turned out to be a test day, but I’m not sure that we wanted it to work out this way. They didn’t do very well either, but I think that it was mostly in the preparation part and it would be my fault and not really the students’. 10th grade yuri is a very capable class, I would say the second highest in the 10th grade, but they didn’t do very well on the test either. It was something that they should have gotten since we have covered it since they were in the 7th grade. So partly it was their fault for not understanding the question that we’ve been asking them since they were in the 7th grade. They should have done more preparation work to get ready for the test, but I’m not sure they knew what was going to be on the test.

6th period was with 7th grade Fuji. They didn’t get a chance to go to the gym and practice so we did a mini-rehearsal in the class. They performed with the line up that they have to do on the 10th. They were ok, nothing really special about their performance today. They need to memorize more and add more emphasis on a few things. They joke around too much and aren’t serious about it, but they are in the 7th grade, so that’s a bit expected of the students. I’m not getting on their case for that, but I would like to see them do better on stage next week. Since this will be the last time I see them this calendar year, I’m not sure how well they will be when it counts.

I also did an after school test. It was pretty quick and simple. I finally finished all the tests for the 11th grade, which made me pretty happy. I thought she would do so well, even though she had an extra 3 weeks to prepare compared to the other students, but her level is pretty low and I thought that she got a good score for her ability. She did make some mistakes, but I let some of them slide and some I didn’t.

After that I heard from some of the teachers that my student for tomorrow’s class will be absent, so that would mean I don’t have any class for Saturday. That’s two weeks in a row that I didn’t have my Saturday class, which is a good and bad thing at the same time. I like it because it’s my class, and there isn’t any influence from any other teacher on this class and I can do it exactly the way I want and talk about what I want to, which is personally tailored to the student. But since we don’t have many classes this semester, I think that it’s also a bit of a waste because I want to give her all the information that she requested and in a way that she’d be able to understand and to be able to use in a constructive manner.

I then decided to leave school early. I also decided that since I got off of work early, I should try to get my cell phone purchased. I went to Yokohama station and cancelled my Vodafone. I thought that was a bit weird that I cancelled first and then I went to look for a new phone. But I thought that if I left that go on for a longer time, that I wouldn’t end up getting a new phone, so I pushed myself to get one.

I went to a store near the Ishikawacho station. They were selling the W32H phone that I’ve been looking at for the past few weeks. It was at the best price I could find. It’s a $200 phone, but I bought it for only $25 since it was on a special listing, for some strange reason. But I ended up with a good deal. Things didn’t work out at first though; I ran into some trouble when I tried to buy the phone. I had the right ID and most of the forms, but I was missing just one more thing, which was proof of address. I needed to bring a bill that says I have been living in Japan and that I’ve been living at that address. So I was lucky that a seat next to the younger teachers.