Well, it’s hard to believe that almost another week has gone by! It’s good that the week doesn’t drag since it means I’m not bored or tortured at work, but it also means that this year is going to fly by!
The week started out rough due to my lack of sleep and exhaustion from climbingOkay, so my shirt had a few spots that weren’t wet from sweat or rain . . . I looked like a mess and Naito sensei told me she would take notes at the meeting for me. I felt terribly irresponsible even though I had a good excuse. I should have planned better for getting back to work after the crazy weekend. I changed but was still a mess until about second period, so it was a good thing my first class was third period. My mind wasn’t there, the classes were bad, I got frustrated at having so much to do and being behind and having a messy desk and not feeling that I have enough information to plan lessons especially with such different abilities in each class. ICC (English club) seemed to go okay, though I was still kind of out of it. Even though I had work to do before the morning I knew I wasn’t in much of a state to do it well so I went home, took a shower and a nice, long bath (my bath is so deep it comes up to my shoulders when I’m sitting! My muscles felt much better after that, and my mind did, too. I debriefed with Mark over the Fuji climb and wrote the short update and was off to bed by 9pm, I think.
Tuesday (Sept 6) the rain didn’t soak me but my sweat did because the rain gear doesn’t let my skin breathe. I’ll figure it out someday. I had to change shirts and let the one dry out. I had to quickly finish the papers for Sasaki sensei since I failed to come into school early and she also asked me to do my self introduction for her other 2nd year class. Of course I said I would and it was fine. I passed out the papers I’d commented on and did fairly well with the names. Apparently saying the name “Takayuki” as “Takayaki” is very funny (it was HIS bad handwriting). At least they had a good laugh.
My classes
didn’t go so well, though. I felt bad
and frustrated and even more so since I let my frustration show a bit while I
was in class. That’s not good because
I’m frustrated at myself but the students might read it as frustration with
them. After class with Sasaki sensei (I
found out later that Tsuchiya liked the class – we have very different ideas of
a good class!) I talked with her about it.
We managed to come up with a solution to change things, though it didn’t
go as smoothly as possible because I was making things difficult. I pulled myself together and we ended
well. I just had a lot of work to do to
revise the class. That was at the end of
the day and my next class with her was 1st period so since I was
staying after school to talk with Shimizu sensei about her classes I decided to
come in early the next day. My talk with
I can’t remember what I did for dinner, and I think that was the evening I talked with Mom and Dad, but I can’t remember . . .
Wednesday (Sept.
7) it was nice to get to school early so that I had time to cool off and get
myself together before everyone came. I
managed to get my work done and classes went much better, in my opinion. I stayed after school to help Naito sensei
conduct interviews for those students who want to go on the trip to
I made
pasta with shrimp and a salad for dinner and wrote up the
Today (Thursday, September 8) I was still quite tired in the morning because I haven’t been able to catch up with sleep. I went to school just 20min early and it made all the difference. I think I’ve found the solution. Thursdays are hard because I teach 1st, 2nd, and 3rd period, but then I have the rest of the day. Class went pretty well and I worked well with Tsuchiya sensei this time, which was great. I used the rest of the day to create and finish the lesson plan for next week, which was good. I took a walk during lunch break and bought myself some ice cream . . .
I stayed after again for another round of interviews. Some people are not bad at all, which is encouraging.
When I came
home I could see
Love,
Janet