Only two classes today, but the bad news was that I had to teach them without assistance. In one way it’s a good experience – I can try to handle the flow of a class without outside help. For the most part I do that for my first year classes anyway, but this was like working without a safety net.
My first class was really surprised when I told them I was the only teacher today. I’ve got a couple of really noisy students in that class, but I worked early on to make friends with them. That really pays off in situations like this – I can use them to help me keep the class under control. Surprisingly, this class ran better than some of my classes with another teacher in them – I explained everything carefully in English, I translated some details occasionally, but I’d say that it stayed about 80% English.
At the end of the class everyone was happy and smiling, and it was the most satisfying class that I’ve ever taught at my school. Some of the girls from the class stayed around afterwards to ask me some details about my girlfriend. They are really intrigued by the idea of me having a Japanese girlfriend, and they want to know her name, where we met, what we do on the weekends, everything. I chatted with them a little bit until they were satisfied, and then I went back to the staffroom for lunch.
Today was Matsumoto sensei’s birthday. He’s a new computer teacher that sits two desks away from me. He’s a really nice guy – very friendly, and as a younger teacher we always get along really well. He turned 31 years old today, and I only found out about it because the other teachers had bought a big box of cream puffs to pass out to everyone to celebrate. He explained to me that it was for his birthday.
I asked if maybe we should do the birthday song, and two other teachers overheard me and before you know it all three of us broke into ‘Happy Birthday’. I realized halfway through the song that I was the only one singing it in English. Half the staffroom turned to see what the hell was going on, Matsumoto sensei turned bright red, and I cranked up the volume to cover for the fact that there were only three people singing. It turned out nicely, though. Everyone was suitably excited and embarrassed, and I earned my cream puff.
After lunch I had my second solo class. This one was a little louder than the last, but the students stayed under control for the most part. Two boys started playfully hitting each other over the head with their cardboard namecards, and I had to take them away for the rest of the class. After class they came to get them and they both apologized without me prompting them – that was a surprise.
After school we did our ESS meeting, and I helped fix some of the wacky English that my students were writing. I didn’t fix it all, just enough to make sense. Translation isn’t easy, but my students did pretty well. Three or four of my second year students were asking me all about a CD that I had played on Wednesday for Maeda sensei’s class.
We did a music lesson on Wednesday, and so I played a new song by Coldplay that I had downloaded off the internet. Not only did I not pay for the song, they haven’t released the album yet. Today I tried to explain to the students that I couldn’t give them the CD quite yet, but soon the official CD will come out in Japan. The reaction to the song was really good in the classroom, but these kids were going nuts afterwards. They wanted to listen to the song again and again, and it was really cool to see them get excited about something like that.
I spent about an hour with Tsuji-san after school speaking in English and Japanese. She looked tired, really tired. I think her new job is wearing her out. We are trying to set up a time for her and her boyfriend to meet Kuniko and me for dinner. Not sure when it’ll happen, but she sounded excited about the chance to meet up.
Tomorrow is Friday, and I’m going to meet up with Komori sensei over at Donkey for a couple of Guinness. I’m also hoping to meet up with Kuniko sometime tomorrow evening. She’s got a busy weekend coming up, so it might be the only chance to see her for a while.
