88. Back to Work
There’s a teacher here who likes to micromanage to a ridiculous extent. Sometimes she has a point, but she often comes off as being really bossy. At one point two of us had to deal with 1) last year’s “shapes” lesson plan for the kindergarten visitation in August being too easy for the prospective Y1 cohort (although this is also good news, thanks to K.’s hard work with them) and 2) my Life class holiday homework being too hard for the current Y1 class. I think what threw her was that it was a blank page with instructions to draw a map of their house, which D. and I thought was an appropriate follow-up to the maps of the classroom and the school that we did in class. D. told me in all the time he’s been here that he’s never seen a piece of holiday homework rejected until now.
So tonight I stayed until 8:00, past many of the Japanese teachers. Even without having to change my home map assignment into a classroom map assignment (complete with word list and a carefully-drawn diagram with blanks) and subsequently glue it over the old page in 28 homework books (this put a damper on any enthusiasm I might have had for this having been the last teaching day of the term), I would have had to stay behind. This has been happening a lot lately, and it’s not like I don’t get work done during the workday - I don’t know how on earth everyone else manages to leave when they do without letting some things slide (which I suspect they do, albeit in a more adroit manner than I am capable of).
There are times when I really don't like educating children. There are just too many limits. People in general, OK. "Men must be taught as if you taught them not" is an easy enough maxim to put into practise. But children? Sometimes the experience can only be described as
Today it was also unbearably hot - it was 30°C in the classroom this morning - and unbearably noisy - the crews were back with their screws and drills and air compressors the size of Smart cars. Yeesh. To top it all off, we have to move everything out of the staff room tomorrow afternoon, as there are renovations waiting to be done to it, too. So much for having a few days to recover from the term and get things organized. But I guess it’ll be okay - it’ll have to be, and perhaps even for that reason alone we’ll manage.
And two weeks from now, I’ll be somewhere on Honshu. I’m really looking forward to it, even though I sort of just had a holiday, I’m always in the mood for more. =) Among other things, I can’t wait to march into Lloyds TSB in Tokyo and ask why those deadbeats haven’t sent me my welcome kit. Yeah! That’ll show ‘em.
So tonight I stayed until 8:00, past many of the Japanese teachers. Even without having to change my home map assignment into a classroom map assignment (complete with word list and a carefully-drawn diagram with blanks) and subsequently glue it over the old page in 28 homework books (this put a damper on any enthusiasm I might have had for this having been the last teaching day of the term), I would have had to stay behind. This has been happening a lot lately, and it’s not like I don’t get work done during the workday - I don’t know how on earth everyone else manages to leave when they do without letting some things slide (which I suspect they do, albeit in a more adroit manner than I am capable of).
There are times when I really don't like educating children. There are just too many limits. People in general, OK. "Men must be taught as if you taught them not" is an easy enough maxim to put into practise. But children? Sometimes the experience can only be described as
Today it was also unbearably hot - it was 30°C in the classroom this morning - and unbearably noisy - the crews were back with their screws and drills and air compressors the size of Smart cars. Yeesh. To top it all off, we have to move everything out of the staff room tomorrow afternoon, as there are renovations waiting to be done to it, too. So much for having a few days to recover from the term and get things organized. But I guess it’ll be okay - it’ll have to be, and perhaps even for that reason alone we’ll manage.
And two weeks from now, I’ll be somewhere on Honshu. I’m really looking forward to it, even though I sort of just had a holiday, I’m always in the mood for more. =) Among other things, I can’t wait to march into Lloyds TSB in Tokyo and ask why those deadbeats haven’t sent me my welcome kit. Yeah! That’ll show ‘em.