Today I had a full schedule, with four classes, two Japanese lessons, and lots of papers to grade. The classes went just fine, with a pretty good mix of boredom and enthusiasm from the students.
While grading papers one of my students came in with a late assignment for me. He is having a tough time. I’m getting this all secondhand, but apparently he was diagnosed with some kind of rare disease, and he’s slowly losing his hearing and some of his vision. It started over summer vacation, and he’s missed lots of school since then going to various specialists around Japan. The topic of the assignment was about summer vacation. It was a very sad essay to read.
You could feel the frustration from the student as his life is turned upside down by something that he doesn’t really understand. He wrote quite a bit in broken English and I could feel his anger. I was surprised that he did the assignment. Here his life is falling apart and he still sat down and wrote an English essay. It was the best essay I’ve read since I’ve been there, because it was full of real feelings.
This evening I tried to relax a little, since I was running full speed all day. I’m going to do a little studying before I go to bed. I’m tired out and it’s only Monday!
