stressful week finally over
mmmm... i like fridays. especially since they`re half days for me now, yeeesssss.... ^-^; so glad that i made it through this week because it was pretty rough. x-x;
wednesday was the demo lesson at Otsu with one of my JTEs. things didn`t go perfectly, but atleast they went decently. the poor JTE, man... D; but anyway, as i kinda mentioned earlier, we had been preparing for this demo by doing a test run of the lesson plan on another class on monday (which went fairly badly, to our dismay), then by tweaking the lesson plan a lot with input from other teachers annnnd thheeenn by practicing a game that was to be used in the demo with the class who would be part of the demo in 4th period, the day of the demo. that went well, so that helped us feel a little better doing the real thing in 6th period, but of course we were all pretty nervous. D; like 8 English teachers from other schools came and were standing in the back of the classroom the whole time or working the THREE camcorders that were recording things from around the room.... plus other teachers from Otsu plus a parent or two crowded the hallway outside the classroom, watching through the windows.... D;
talk about stress! i never want to do that again! D; and worse yet, the resulting video of the lesson will be played at a prefectural conference for English teachers!
GAHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh!! >_<;;;;;;
*dies just thinking about it...*
...but atleast i wont have to attend that conference, unlike the poor JTE. D; BUT THEN, after the demo, the JTE had to meet with the observers and listen to praise as well as criticism about how things went, THEN she had to report all of that to the entire staff of the school during the following staff meeting and THEN she had to listen as fellow staff critiqued the lesson as well. and you know what one of the criticisms were that was discussed for like 10 minutes...? the students not making groups with their desks properly.
...........POOR N-SENSEI *cries sympathetic tears*
i had to leave during the meeting without having gotten a chance to talk to N-sensei even once since the lesson ended. :[ she looked so stressed/depressed sitting at her desk (which is next to mine) listening to all the criticism that i decided to write her a "cheer up, you did great!!" note and left it on her desk without her noticing before i left. D;
man, being an English teacher in Japan really sucks ass sometimes. i`m not saying that just based on this experience/observation, but based on many. hell, being an ES/JHS teacher of anything in Japan probably really sucks ass sometimes. am i sure i want to be a teacher when i go back to America...? that probably really sucks ass sometimes too. >_>; teachers have to put up with/go through so much crap in Japan....
...moving on to Kera, which is my new JHS that i taught at for the first time yesterday. my first day and first (second?) impressions of Kera...
got their early because i like getting to places early rather than barely getting there on time, entered the staff room with the usual "おはようございます" ("good morning") and was met with dead silence and maybe one face turning my way briefly. this was an immediate turn off. >_>; as every ALT in Japan should know, when you enter a school`s staff room and say "おはようございます", far more often than not (if not always) you are greeted back. this is just how things are. always are! even when i visit an ES i enter with a greeting and get greetings back, and if i dont get greeted back then things get awkward. so that`s how it felt yesterday, but i just went to my seat and sat down. the only reason i even knew where my seat was was thanks to having been shown around by the school`s previous ALT a week ago. so, a few mintues after sitting there one of the JTEs notice me and comes over to greet me and give me my class schedule for the term.
....my class schedule for the term. for the whole term! D; i was like whoah~. i`ve never gotten a class schedule for more than a week in advance before, so this was impressive to me.
so anyway, i was scheduled to teach my first class for the day with her, so she told me what she`d like me to do: 20 minutes would be reserved for a test, during which i could stay in the staff room, and then the remaining 30mintues would be all mine for my self-introduction. spent 1st period printing worksheets that i`d need and going over my intro, then came the first class, which went alright. had a little time left over, but i was able to improvise. the class was unusually small (only six 3rd year students) and the students themselves were alright, especially for 3rd years. all but one was very shy and quiet, which is probably the reason they were in the class in the first place, but they all listened contently to my intro. yay. they didnt care for the worksheets, though, as is and will always be the case. anyway, it was an alright first class. the following period was my second class, this time seven 3rd years with a different JTE but with the same lesson plan. again, the intro went as would be expected (ie. decently) but i was able to time this one better partially thanks to the JTE actually interacting with the class. i was suppose to have another 3rd year class with the same teacher the following period, but that ended up being canceled (woot).
outside of my 2 classes, i sat at my desk in the staff room doing whatever with only 2 people attempting to communicate with me the entire day. i wonder, for various reasons, if this is going to be a school where i question my own existence occasionally while sitting at my desk... oh well, i guess it`s still far too early to be able to tell that. the two people who did talk with me seemed nice, though. one was an old lady who was amazed at what limited Japanese i had spoken in the staff room (damn forced self-intro during the morning staff meeting) and my "skill" at using chopsticks. the other was this guy who sits at the only occupied desk next to mine. at one point he talked to me about Vegas and then at the end of the day we walks into the staff room (having gone on some errand i guess) with his laptop case in hand. he then goes to his desk, takes it out and pops in a DVD on fireworks shows throughout Japan and tells me to watch. D; he even goes and finds headphones so i could listen too. so of course i`m like "k" and i sit there watching the DVD as he sits there watching it headphoneless. all the while i`m like "??? why are you showing me this??? D;" but of course, i can`t and wouldn`t complain. atleast he was being friendly. :x maybe he really likes fireworks. i didn`t ask.
so anyway, yeah... that was pretty much my day. various students attempted chitchat with me throughout the day, which to me is impressive since it was their first time seeing/meeting me. atleast some of the students are immediately receptive of me even if the staff arent. i also noticed something that i found interesting. D; among some of the students, especially 3rd years(?), there was a visible sense of fashion... which equates to cliques and students who are breaking school rules by sporting such fashion. at Otsu there are only 3 students like this and at Ikku, my previous JHS, there was a little more but noticeably less than at Kera. some people reading this may be thinking why this is even worth noticing or mentioning. to me it`s interesting (a) just because it is and (b) it means that i`ll get to observe how teachers here deal with such things, which always interests me. Japan being how it is and all.
this month i`ll only be at Kera a total of 3 days! next month i think is 4. i wont be visiting Kera on a normal, regular basis until the end of October, when the term is already almost over, so yeah... i wont be "settled in" at this school for a while yet, which sucks in terms of getting more acknowledgment from the staff, but oh well. we`ll see how things go.
... *yawn* i typed too much.
wednesday was the demo lesson at Otsu with one of my JTEs. things didn`t go perfectly, but atleast they went decently. the poor JTE, man... D; but anyway, as i kinda mentioned earlier, we had been preparing for this demo by doing a test run of the lesson plan on another class on monday (which went fairly badly, to our dismay), then by tweaking the lesson plan a lot with input from other teachers annnnd thheeenn by practicing a game that was to be used in the demo with the class who would be part of the demo in 4th period, the day of the demo. that went well, so that helped us feel a little better doing the real thing in 6th period, but of course we were all pretty nervous. D; like 8 English teachers from other schools came and were standing in the back of the classroom the whole time or working the THREE camcorders that were recording things from around the room.... plus other teachers from Otsu plus a parent or two crowded the hallway outside the classroom, watching through the windows.... D;
talk about stress! i never want to do that again! D; and worse yet, the resulting video of the lesson will be played at a prefectural conference for English teachers!
GAHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh!! >_<;;;;;;
*dies just thinking about it...*
...but atleast i wont have to attend that conference, unlike the poor JTE. D; BUT THEN, after the demo, the JTE had to meet with the observers and listen to praise as well as criticism about how things went, THEN she had to report all of that to the entire staff of the school during the following staff meeting and THEN she had to listen as fellow staff critiqued the lesson as well. and you know what one of the criticisms were that was discussed for like 10 minutes...? the students not making groups with their desks properly.
...........POOR N-SENSEI *cries sympathetic tears*
i had to leave during the meeting without having gotten a chance to talk to N-sensei even once since the lesson ended. :[ she looked so stressed/depressed sitting at her desk (which is next to mine) listening to all the criticism that i decided to write her a "cheer up, you did great!!" note and left it on her desk without her noticing before i left. D;
man, being an English teacher in Japan really sucks ass sometimes. i`m not saying that just based on this experience/observation, but based on many. hell, being an ES/JHS teacher of anything in Japan probably really sucks ass sometimes. am i sure i want to be a teacher when i go back to America...? that probably really sucks ass sometimes too. >_>; teachers have to put up with/go through so much crap in Japan....
...moving on to Kera, which is my new JHS that i taught at for the first time yesterday. my first day and first (second?) impressions of Kera...
got their early because i like getting to places early rather than barely getting there on time, entered the staff room with the usual "おはようございます" ("good morning") and was met with dead silence and maybe one face turning my way briefly. this was an immediate turn off. >_>; as every ALT in Japan should know, when you enter a school`s staff room and say "おはようございます", far more often than not (if not always) you are greeted back. this is just how things are. always are! even when i visit an ES i enter with a greeting and get greetings back, and if i dont get greeted back then things get awkward. so that`s how it felt yesterday, but i just went to my seat and sat down. the only reason i even knew where my seat was was thanks to having been shown around by the school`s previous ALT a week ago. so, a few mintues after sitting there one of the JTEs notice me and comes over to greet me and give me my class schedule for the term.
....my class schedule for the term. for the whole term! D; i was like whoah~. i`ve never gotten a class schedule for more than a week in advance before, so this was impressive to me.
so anyway, i was scheduled to teach my first class for the day with her, so she told me what she`d like me to do: 20 minutes would be reserved for a test, during which i could stay in the staff room, and then the remaining 30mintues would be all mine for my self-introduction. spent 1st period printing worksheets that i`d need and going over my intro, then came the first class, which went alright. had a little time left over, but i was able to improvise. the class was unusually small (only six 3rd year students) and the students themselves were alright, especially for 3rd years. all but one was very shy and quiet, which is probably the reason they were in the class in the first place, but they all listened contently to my intro. yay. they didnt care for the worksheets, though, as is and will always be the case. anyway, it was an alright first class. the following period was my second class, this time seven 3rd years with a different JTE but with the same lesson plan. again, the intro went as would be expected (ie. decently) but i was able to time this one better partially thanks to the JTE actually interacting with the class. i was suppose to have another 3rd year class with the same teacher the following period, but that ended up being canceled (woot).
outside of my 2 classes, i sat at my desk in the staff room doing whatever with only 2 people attempting to communicate with me the entire day. i wonder, for various reasons, if this is going to be a school where i question my own existence occasionally while sitting at my desk... oh well, i guess it`s still far too early to be able to tell that. the two people who did talk with me seemed nice, though. one was an old lady who was amazed at what limited Japanese i had spoken in the staff room (damn forced self-intro during the morning staff meeting) and my "skill" at using chopsticks. the other was this guy who sits at the only occupied desk next to mine. at one point he talked to me about Vegas and then at the end of the day we walks into the staff room (having gone on some errand i guess) with his laptop case in hand. he then goes to his desk, takes it out and pops in a DVD on fireworks shows throughout Japan and tells me to watch. D; he even goes and finds headphones so i could listen too. so of course i`m like "k" and i sit there watching the DVD as he sits there watching it headphoneless. all the while i`m like "??? why are you showing me this??? D;" but of course, i can`t and wouldn`t complain. atleast he was being friendly. :x maybe he really likes fireworks. i didn`t ask.
so anyway, yeah... that was pretty much my day. various students attempted chitchat with me throughout the day, which to me is impressive since it was their first time seeing/meeting me. atleast some of the students are immediately receptive of me even if the staff arent. i also noticed something that i found interesting. D; among some of the students, especially 3rd years(?), there was a visible sense of fashion... which equates to cliques and students who are breaking school rules by sporting such fashion. at Otsu there are only 3 students like this and at Ikku, my previous JHS, there was a little more but noticeably less than at Kera. some people reading this may be thinking why this is even worth noticing or mentioning. to me it`s interesting (a) just because it is and (b) it means that i`ll get to observe how teachers here deal with such things, which always interests me. Japan being how it is and all.
this month i`ll only be at Kera a total of 3 days! next month i think is 4. i wont be visiting Kera on a normal, regular basis until the end of October, when the term is already almost over, so yeah... i wont be "settled in" at this school for a while yet, which sucks in terms of getting more acknowledgment from the staff, but oh well. we`ll see how things go.
... *yawn* i typed too much.