Today I had two classes – one during first period and one during the last. My morning class was no sweat – doing interview practice with third year students. After that I wrapped up some lesson planning for later this week, and then did a little bit of studying through until the afternoon.
My sixth period class was with Mori sensei, and I think we’ve got a pretty good system working now. I can see that she is struggling with not being in charge of the classroom, but for now she is dealing well with it. The students in today’s class were a little shy, but there were some really sharp girls in the class – they responded well to my questions and weren’t afraid to speak out.
Continuing on that theme, after school we got a new cleaning squad, and so I cleaned my room with a couple of students I don’t usually talk to much. I like talking to the students in English, but I try to balance that with silence, too – I don’t them to be afraid to be in the same room with me for fear of having to do a full-blown conversation.
Afterwards we all gathered and signed off their sheet, and it was great to joke around with everyone. There are a lot of dynamics at work in these situations, some of which are the emerging recognition of the opposite sex. The hormones are starting to overwhelm the shyness factor. You can see a glimpse of it now in the third years, and it should be in full gear by graduation.
We had registration for clubs after school, so I went to the classroom where we were taking registration and hung out. The class was filled with some of the students that I’ll be teaching tomorrow, and I hung out with them chatting about this and that. After about 20 minutes ESS members started showing up. We had only two new first year students, but we had one new second year student and about ten new third years.
Most of the new third year students are interested because they will undergo English testing on their way to college. Hayashi sensei thought that they’d show up at first and then disappear once they take the test. I was happy to see that some of the regulars were there to support the club. They are the ones that show up every week, came to my wedding, and try hard to keep the club going. They may not be the most popular or cool students, but they are the heart of the club. I’m hoping that we can get some more like for the future.
One of the new first year ESS students came up and started speaking to me in English, and she was going for broke. She must have some experience speaking with another teacher or maybe at a language school. She was talking up a storm in English, and kept on speaking it even after I said goodbye. The other students I think were a little worried that this might amp up the pressure on them. I hope it does, to tell the truth.
Lastly, when I sat back down at my chair at the end of the day I there were two new first year students talking to their homeroom teacher, Nishikawa sensei. He urged them to talk to me a little in English so I chatted with them a bit. They said that they couldn’t possibly say a word of English. Nishikawa sensei asked them about the ALT from their junior high spoke mainly just in Japanese. Scary thought, but the board of education is paying someone to come all the way from some Western English-speaking country and the guy is teaching the class in Japanese. Ouch.
Tonight Kuniko is going to cook up dinner and I’m in suspense about what it might be. I’ll try to remember to post what it was tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ve got a full slate of classes… actually, they’ve changed my schedule this week so I’ll be really busy. I’m looking forward to it – I think I’m ready.
