Many new things happened today at school. For starters, I taught my first two classes of the semester, and I taught with Mr. Yamamoto who is new to the second-year teachers. I hadn’t ever done team teaching with him and he hadn’t done team teaching for two years or so. The lesson went pretty well, but you could tell that he was nervous. I had taught all these students last year, so I had no trouble.
Another first was that we taught in the student’s classroom rather than my classroom. That was actually kind of fun. You definitely get a feeling that you’re on their “turf” when you walk in, and Mr. Yamamoto did a good job showing that he was the boss right off the bat. Whenever students come to my class they are thrown off by the different seating layout in the new room.
Between my classes I joined two of my ESS students to make a short speech to the new first year students. It’s a measure aimed at recruiting students into our club. The first year students had to listen to speeches from all of the clubs, and they got to listen to a performance from the band, as well.
We had practiced the speech earlier, and we watched as students before us went up and talked about volleyball, baseball, and various other clubs in a bored, scared monotone. Many of the first years were watching me to figure out why I was among all the students, and I was hoping that might make a difference in getting some new recruits. Our speech was pretty good – half in English and half in Japanese. Satomi and Mayumi both did a great job.
After school we met up in my classroom to greet any first years that want to join, but unfortunately nobody came. I had kind of anticipated this and did some shopping for snacks and fun stuff to kill time while we waited around. It was a little demoralizing, but we still had a pretty good time.
I had a long talk with Atsuko, the newest member of the club. She is still pretty excited about English, and she told me her dream job – she wants to work in the United Nations as an aid worker. It’s an ambitious goal, but she seems determined. She’s picked a college in Tokyo that has a sister school in California. I gave her plenty of encouragement – it’s rare to find one of my students actually wants to leave Japan. We talked about the Japanese people that had been kidnapped in Iraq, and Atsuko seems determined to go on despite being a little scared. She said that she wants to help out in the world – whatever she can do to promote peace rather than war.
It sounds like a lot of peace, love, and sunshine but there is something about the determination in her expression and attitude that makes it seem possible. She also sees what I am doing as proof that someone can work outside your own country, have fun, and be successful. It’s a scary feeling to be a career role model.
Tomorrow we are lounging around the “clubhouse” again, so this time I promised to bring some cards. We are going to play a few hands of “Old Maid” to kill the time.
