After bad days it is pretty common to have a good day. Your bar is set pretty low at that point, and almost anything is an improvement. Today I had a really great day at work.
My first class is a noisy class but their hearts are in the right place. They are easily distracted, and today I did a new thing where if they got really noisy I would start counting in English. The students would hear and start paying attention – I never mentioned any consequences, but I had some in mind. Next week I will explain what those consequences are, and that should do the trick. It was nice to get some success, although it was completely unexpected.
My second class was with my oldest elementary school students, and I enjoyed that one as well. We did a normal class, I helped them get ready for a recitation contest we’ll do next week, and then I did an English newspaper word scavenger hunt. They really got into that, and it was hard to wrap up the class at the end because they didn’t want to put down the English newspapers.
The last class was with newer students. They have only had me as a teacher, and they are generally well behaved with the exception of Hayaki, who can get out of control sometimes. Today we had a student come with her mother and (tiny) little brother to observe and participate in the class, and decide if she wants to join. If you remember I had that same thing happen in my younger kids class last week and it didn’t go very well at all.
Contrast that with today’s events. The other students realized that they had a guest, so they behaved really well. Since the new student didn’t have a textbook Ryoka shared with her, Hayaki kept things under control, and we did lots of vocab review and played vocabulary memorization games to really drill it in. The new student did her best and although she was really shy I think she would fit in with the group. Her mother seemed to have even more fun with the class.
At the end she said that she really wanted to join, so I hope that I see her in class soon. We lost two students last month for various reasons so this new one will help make up for that.
Kuniko beat me home again, and she had made Chinese food for dinner. We had a homemade mabodofu and an egg dish that I forgot the name of. Both were good but the mabodofu had extra heat in it because we like it spicy. Afterwards Kuniko did some serious exercising and I retreated to the cooler bedroom to do some reading.
This week is wrapping up and I’m already looking forward to the weekend. We’ll be going out to dinner for our anniversary (the paper one, not the ceremony one) in Kobe at the restaurant that Antoine and I visited last weekend. Can’t wait!
