An interesting Tuesday

I really didn’t have many classes today so the reason why I came home so late really didn’t make sense to me. Things were normal in the beginning and everything seemed to be going as well as usual.

The first class I had third period was with 10th grade fuji. The students weren’t like last week and were very loud during the whole class. They were very bad actually. First of all, when I walked into the room, I found out that the door to the room was broken. In the school we have doors that slide and roll, but this door didn’t roll. I had some trouble getting in and out when class started and finished. But that was only the beginning. I think that last year, these girls also had a broken door, so I think that there is a pattern. We wanted them to play the 100 yen game that we had from last year and we wanted to focus on past tenses, but they didn’t even want to play. They all claimed that they didn’t have 100 yen to play with. That was a big problem and you could tell the attitude of the students right away. They eventually went along with it, or at least pretended to go along with it. They were very resistant to it and really didn’t care for it. We had to call on some students to do it in class out loud other wise we probably wouldn’t have known if they could have done it or not. After that game, we passed out another paper that dealt with unscrambling the sentences and putting it in the correct order. The thing that I noticed was that they were all able to do it and that they all did it. They were pretty quick with it too. It was really quite shocking actually. They finished it and just started talking again. But at least they did it.

The fourth period class was with 11th grade ran. At this time, it was beginning to rain, and when I mean rain I mean cows and horses. The cloud turned to black and there was loud thunder and lightning. I made some jokes to keep their attention because I knew that eventually they would be distracted by it and they were. We started off with the vocabulary quiz and then we let them have some time to look up the new words. Then I had my Japanese English Teacher partner give them a little lesson on English grammar from the dialogues so that they would be able to use them. I think that the explanation was very clear and they were able to understand it. It went a little longer than in the other classes though. That took more time that I expected it to be. The next thing that I wanted them to do was to use the vocabulary that they learned and the grammar that they just learned and to use them together in the practice section of the book. I think that many of the students really didn’t understand because they used the grammar, but didn’t use a lot of the vocabulary. I had some students come up and speak, they were given the chance to earn some Bryan Bucks, but they elected not to volunteer, so I had to call on them. I gave them three chances, but no one took it. I finished with the reading and let them think about the writing a letter to the city government. They didn’t have much time to get started on it, but they did get a chance to look at it.

The 5th period class today was with 8th grade kiku. We worked only on their self-introduction speeches. They were introduced with the dialogues and then the example self-introduction speeches in the book. After they heard all of that and then were able to pass the listening practice part, they got started with writing their own. That’s all we did in the class today.

During lunch today and much of the afternoon, I was entertained with some guests from the 10th grade kiku class. They came into the office and went to where my desk is and started talking to me in English. I had to usher them out of the office and into the hallway because they were being too loud in the office. They just wanted to speak English. And even in the hallway, they were very loud and everyone in both the full-time and part-time teachers’ office could hear the conversation. They were extremely funny though and their English was very good. I was really impressed. Today I met more of the students in the 10th grade kiku class. The group leader or the one that I was talking to the other day had brought all of her new classmates to meet me. They were all surprised that I was American because they all thought I was Japanese. They said that I looked like a Mister Tanaka. It was very interesting.

After school, was much of the same thing; I was talking with my department chair about the English club and what happened last week with the new students. I think that it was very clear that one of the girls likes me. Everyone knows it and even I know it. They always come into the office to talk to me and even hunt me down if they can’t find me. Today I was in the hallway between the teacher’s offices and talking so I was having a conversation with them in front of the English club advisor. It was very good for us and we were trying to get them to join the club. They said that they couldn’t because they were studying a lot, but we were pushing them to learn English and at least come once a week when they had time. I think it would be better to have more members regardless of how committed they are.

I was also talking with CHda about the English performance script during 6th period, which is my off period on Tuesdays. We were casually chatting and the students from 10th grade kiku interrupted and asked us if we knew Math. She was able to, but I chose not to be a part of that. I didn’t want to be responsible for their math ability. We talked for quite a bit of time. It was fun and we both stayed late after school.

The next task that I had to do today was to get the new scripts for the recitation contest recorded on the computer and copied onto CDs for mass production. I showed two other teachers what they needed to do and how to do it, that way next year when I’m not here they will still be able to do it. That took a long time for some reason because I had to set things up and I interrupted the personal computer club in the process, which is a bad thing. I didn’t want to, but we had no choice because it was in the LL and that’s the only place we could do all the things we needed to do. I stayed at school till around 7:30pm working on that and telling one of the teachers the wonders of technology and computers. She was shocked because she still uses Windows 95. I mean that was the new thing 11 years ago. She’s a little bit behind, but she will get a new one during Golden Week, or so she says.

I left school soon after that and I met a part-time teacher that is new to the school and found out that she lives in the Ofuna area. That’s only one stop away from my train station. We talked for a little bit on the ride home and it was pretty interesting. She’s an art teacher, which was a surprise to me. I didn’t know that, and she will only be working here till August, which is a total of 4 months. The other art teacher that left two years ago will come back, and I assume that she was pregnant and had a child and that was the reason for her not being here.

I was starving on the way home so as soon as I got home, I started cooking up a storm and got eating. I was watching a drama on TV that is interesting. After that I was very tired and did the usual before I went to sleep.