Thursday was three more classes full of new students eager for a look at the new teacher. All three classes were fun – the students today didn’t seem shy at all.
One thing I’ve learned early on is to keep my lesson plans flexible. Today I had a class with four boys, and they loved playing “I Spy”. They caught on really quick, and before long they were each trying to pick things out for the rest of us to guess. We must have played for almost half an hour.
Another thing I’m learning is that the students don’t mind repetition – even though I think maybe they are losing interest in a game, actually they are just gathering steam and getting comfortable with it.
My last class went really well – the students were really interested in my picture album. They pored over the pictures, and one girl pointed at almost everything just to hear my English explanation.
Usually I don’t get any feedback from the students – they sit through the lesson, participate, speak some English, and then at the end they stream out the door. Today I followed them outside to get some fresh air and was around when all the students met their moms who came by to pick them up. The students were all saying how much fun it was, and how they liked English – it was right out of a commercial or something.
This evening Kuniko and I had some veggies and rice for dinner, and then stayed up a little late watching TV and reading. I had to stay up to answer an email from the mother of one of my students. She had forgotten to send her son to the class today, and wanted to know what to do about it. I’m pretty new at the job, so not only did I not know which student and what class he was in, I had to guess at the name because the kanji was really hard to read. Then I spent a lot of time writing a very polite email in Japanese and sent it back. It was serious crunchtime for my Japanese skills. I got a nice message back from her, so I guess I did OK. Or she’s just really polite.
Tomorrow is Friday and I have only two classes – the early class is an open slot right now – it might get filled later on. I’m going to head in a little later for work.
