Just a long ass day

I had a total of six classes today, which meant I had to get up very early like usual. This is a tough week for me because I’ve had to get up so early all the time and it’s been getting cold.

The first class was with 7^th grade Fuji and we worked on the animal naming game. They needed a lot of help with the dictionary more than the other classes. They worked on it, but it was a bit slower than the other classes. They were able to do it though and that is good. Most of the students were almost able to finish the paper, but they all needed to find an animal for N.

The second class was with 11^th grade kiku and we worked on the test paper for their final next week. I gave out the test papers for them to work on. They went by so fast last week, but were still behind that I decided to hold back on this. They did fairly well with just moving things back onto the new paper. I explained to them what would be on their test and what exactly I would be looking for on their oral exam. We worked on large numbers with millions and thousands.

The third class was with 7^th grade ran, and they did the animal game too, but they came up with entirely different animals than all the other classes that I’ve worked with. They were very creative which was very good. They had a lot of exotic animals that weren’t found by the other classes so far. They were pretty good though and it does express that they do have their own originality and they have their own spunk.

The fourth class was with 9^th grade ran, and they were horrible like usual. Most weren’t prepared and most didn’t even care about the assignment or what was going on. We introduced food and restaurants handing out the menus for the restaurants that they will go to in Santa Barbara. They really didn’t care so much and didn’t really even look at them. They were talking and in their own world. Most of them didn’t have their school trip book or any other of the materials that they needed for class. They needed to decide what they will eat when they go, but I don’t think that many of them even looked at the menus.

The fifth class was with 10^th grade yuri and we were working on the environment topic. The problem that I had in this class was that CP was telling me how to teach the class, while I was in the front of the room, teaching the class. It’s very disrespectful that she does it in front of all the students and that she changed the lesson from Wednesdays and todays. They had an extra paper to fill out more than the class on Wednesday and that was the difference. At first since I didn’t see the paper from before, I was a bit lost at what was going on. I thought at first that I had received the wrong copies for the class and was wondering what was going on. That’s a bit bad since I was already in class and needed to know what I was doing. It really is hard to teach a class without preparation and I was doing my best to wing it and being criticized at the same time. Which to be honest with you, really sucks.

The sixth class today was with 9^th grade kiku. We worked on food and restaurants and they got to look at the menu and the school trip USA book that we have prepared for them. We started with looking at the menus first. We saw two menus in this class, while all the other classes only saw one of them. They needed to decide what they would order, but many of them were just talking amongst themselves and not really writing anything down. I think that they could have been working more, but I think that to start with something and then go to the book gets them distracted and they are bored. They have to build up to the excitement and not go the opposite way. But I think that is a difference between our styles of teaching. It was ok and I think that they understood the point of the assignment.