It was a bittersweet day today. It was my last lesson for Maeda sensei’s second year students, and Oshita sensei’s second year class. Maeda sensei’s class is by far my favorite. The lesson went well – we practiced giving a farewell speech, and I had them fill out an evaluation in Japanese about how my class was.
The evaluation is a new thing that I came up with – I want to be able to get some new ideas and hear about what things didn’t work this year. Maeda sensei’s class wrote some excellent comments – they were still writing when the bell rang and they didn’t want to stop. I said goodbye at the end and the students all waved goodbye with a big smile – I felt like Robin Williams at the end of “Dead Poet’s Society”. Not really, but it was cool. On our way back to the staffroom some students chased us down and gave us Valentine’s chocolates.
The students had the day off on Valentine’s Day, but that didn’t deter anyone – they were passing out homemade chocolates to their friends and favorite teachers. We were lucky to get some, and by the end of the day I had a pretty good collection. Some students were patrolling the hallways looking for me – it was a nice thing for them to do. You can tell who the popular teachers are by the pile of chocolates on their desk at the end of the day. Since my classes are so easy I got a lot of chocolates.
We had an ESS meeting today – we’ve changed the day to accomodate some students that have a conflict on Thursdays. We watched the second half of “The Incredibles”, and exchanged chocolate there too.
It should be a quiet evening tonight and tomorrow, and then Kuniko has three parties in a row – Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Lucky, lucky!
