Speech Contest
It was a very long day today. I started off work in the morning thinking I could take my time, but I really was in a rush. I couldn’t sleep well last night. I slept around 1am and had to get up at 6am. My body can’t seem to get ready like that anymore. I need about 8 hours of sleep usually. I think it’s weird that my body is turning against me.
Then I arrived at school around 9am. I couldn’t eat breakfast when I got to school because I arrived a bit later than I wanted to. So I ran into the gym to watch the first group do their speeches. I watched the speeches from the back of the gym so I could get a good view of the whole situation. They didn’t memorize all of them. It was disheartening to watch. They have spent a long time to write it and work to memorize it. They had a lot of practice with it too, but at the end, they just couldn’t do it. They really aren’t in the running to win a prize though.
The second group was better, but there were still big mistakes there too. They also had forgotten a few words and skipped over some paragraphs. But they were better than the first group. Some girls in this group did a very good job with it though. I was sitting in the front row because that’s where the judges were sitting and native teachers too. Because I arrived late, I didn’t know that. I also met the new English teachers that will start work at Yakumo next year. They seem very innocent and kind. They really have no idea what is in store for them.
The third group was good. They had all the words memorized, but lacked the expression they needed to put them over the top. They were good though and you could see that they were really trying hard to memorize it. During the break, I was talking with one of the new teachers to see how good their English ability was. They are ok, not as good as the teachers that we have now. I’m not sure about their grammar or anything, but conversationally, she could improve. She hasn’t studied abroad and that could be the cause of it. I think that it is pretty good for not studying abroad. I mean, what more could I really expect for someone who hasn’t lived abroad. I want to see how well they will fit into next year’s schedule.
The fourth group was the best of course. They did a very good job. They memorized most of the words. The problem was that some of the girls changed the way that they memorized it. They changed it so that it would sound better and lost points because they strayed away from the script or their original essay that they started with and being judged upon. The judges were stricter with fluency and pronunciation and not so much grammar. So that worked against the students who added their own words. During the break, I talked to another one of the teachers. They seem friendly. I was talking to the judges too to see how they were scoring the students and what they would pay attention to. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the last of the three new teachers, but I’ sure that there will be more time later for that. She is the cutest of the three, but seems most likely to quit. I think that it is bad that I think that, but I think that it is the truth. She seems like she won’t be able to put up with the demanding work load of being a new teacher. I mean the teacher that quit last year was a bit tougher than her and she took off a week after school started.
After the contest, I helped clean up a little. Then I went back to the office. Everyone seemed very busy for some reason. So I went over to the part-time teachers’ office and they were tallying the results. I wanted to see how all the students did. I didn’t know what they would do to count them and all. I wanted to see how the process went. It turns out that one of the students that I taught for Oral Communication WON!! I was so happy! I thought that she had a good chance of winning, so I was happy that she did. I was a bit surprised at who won for third place since she was very hard to understand with the bad pronunciation. She tried hard, but I didn’t think that she deserved third place. I thought I saw a lot more people do a better job, but I wasn’t a judge so I couldn’t have done anything about it.
I talked with them for a little while then returned to eat lunch. Then I decided to play tennis because I couldn’t meet with CHda to talk about Tuesday’s class schedule.
During tennis, I got very tired. Recently I haven’t had enough energy to work out like that. My arms and legs were getting sore faster and they hurt longer than they have before. I haven’t been playing tennis for a really long time. I was a bit surprised that I did play tennis today since I probably won’t again. I don’t want to over exert myself, when I don’t think that it benefits many people at all. But I wanted to get a good work out today, so I did a little more.
After tennis, I met with CHda and she was troubled by something. She was tired and couldn’t sleep. One of her students last year, is no longer a student at the school. She didn’t give her speech today and it was noticed by me and CP. We couldn’t get it all finished. So I decided that I would just start to work out my idea and just show her what I was talking about so that she could get a better idea of it. I know that she has been under a lot of stress recently. I didn’t want to keep her late since she still had a lot of work for something else. She never uses this much time to plan out how she will teach a class. I could understand that since most of the teachers simply don’t have any time. I left school around 7:30pm and had dinner at Matsuya on the way home. I was really really tired and sore.
I was very sleepy at home, but couldn’t go to sleep really. For some reason, I was tired and sleepy, but when I went to lie down on my bed, I just couldn’t sleep. I just laid there for like an hour before I think I dozed off. But it was an hour, and I didn’t have anything on my mind or anything. It was a very annoying moment since I know that I would need the rest since I would have a lot of things to do soon.
