My Debut

Third period was with 9th grade yuri and I learned that they are a pretty good class. It is mostly made up of people from last years R and Y class, so they are still pretty high level. They were strangely quiet today too. Many students had forgotten their books, and I guess that hasn’t changed much about them. I realized that they are my only 9th grade class that I teach this year. It’s sad I think. I think that if I have a chance when I’m back in America that I might visit them in Santa Barbara though. I think that most of the students didn’t really enjoy the class and it seemed like most of them were bored. I think the lesson is too easy for them. We started up with Expressways again and continued with lesson 10 on Fast Food. We had some pictures of In-N-out and of the girls ordering last year, so it was good to show them. They were really excited by that, so we are starting them up early on getting them all hyped up about the trip. They also had to write in their diaries, but nothing much was new.

Fourth period was with 7th grade ume was a new class to the school that we haven’t taught before. They were all shy at the beginning, but CP was being funny so they laughed and loosened up. All we did today was introduce ourselves and had the students introduce themselves. They had the opportunity to ask the teachers questions, most of which were directed to CP since she was the main person speaking. I was surprised that they didn’t ask me if I had a girlfriend or how old I was, although they did ask CP how old she was and if she had a boyfriend. She did answer them too and the answer sort of surprised me. She is 44 turning 45 next month and does have a boyfriend.

Fifth period was my debut as a head teacher without CP on my plan with the 11th grade yuri class and things went incredibly well. I really hit it off with them and got off on a good start for the semester. All of the students were really into it and all I did today was introduce a new textbook to them. We covered my little format of how I will run the class for the next semester. I taught them a few things to keep them quiet. And I gave them a little opportunity for them to earn extra points. Most of the girls in the class were made up of the Yuri class that I taught last year, so I was very familiar with them. I felt comfortable today in front of class, but before class, I was nervous as hell. I really don’t know why either. The weather has been strange recently. It was a bit hot today because of the humidity.

Sixth period was another 11th grade class fuji. They were pretty much the same group of girls from last year in the class. I went a lot slower for these girls, since they would need me to be a little bit more patient in here. I think the pacing was much better in this class than in the last class. I went much slower and covered things more in detail, which took up more time, but I think it was worth it because I wanted everyone to be on the same page as I was. I think today’s lesson was pretty simple because all I was doing was giving them an outline of what we will cover for the year and how I run the class. It was different for them and they liked it too, so I was happy about that. Some students were sleeping, but not because of me. It was because they were tired and probably from the heat, so I punished them anyways and had them go up to the front of the room and read the dialogue we were practicing in front of everyone. I wanted to let everyone know that I mean business. I will lay down the law if I have to, but otherwise, it would be enjoyable.

After school, I was working in the part-time teacher’s office with some of the teachers there. They were having some computer problems, so I was trying to fix it. Unfortunately, out of the two problems that were there, I wasn’t able to solve even one of them. That was a problem for me. I spent a lot of time working on it too, but I think that tomorrow I will give it another go. I had to stop trying because there was club today with two students.

We went to the LL and talked for quite a bit actually. We talked a lot about the 9th grade trip to Santa Barbara since one of the students is in the 10th grade now and the other is in 9th grade now. The 9th grade student is new to the club and was there only to check it out to see if she wanted to join or not. So I wanted to give her a good impression of the club. The 10th grade student is almost native in English, it’s very good. Well at least speaking and listening wise. So I think that it might have helped the younger one to join it. We were talking about a lot of different things from dramas to actors or talents as they say here in Japan. I wanted to bring up a lot of the Santa Barbara trip, so that I could at least get an idea of what was going on while they were there. What I found out was that if we get about 20 members in the club, we could also get a trip to go to Santa Barbara for the club trip. I didn’t know that. The price would probably be around $2,000 to $4000 though, so that isn’t the cheapest place to go, but we could do it. I thought that was pretty cool. The students didn’t leave school until 6:30pm and I didn’t leave till 7pm. I left with one of the new teachers to show her how to go the teacher’s way.

I bought some groceries on the way home and then watched some TV while I finished dinner and then went online. I talked to one of my good friends YSki online before I went to bed. We are supposed to go to Hawaii together, but we haven’t found a good time to go since she will have summer school. I’m thinking that if that is the case, we might have to go sometime during the summer in July. I was expecting to go in May, but since I’m not, I could use that valuable time to go somewhere else, so it’s not wasted or anything. I think that now I will have more time and money. I need to find a new traveling partner and I’ll be all set for a great trip, well actually great trips since I have more than one block of time off of work. We were talking for a little bit too, even though it was late for me and I was getting really tired.