I’ve already posted about
ichinensei classes (please see my essay Another Week, Another Lesson) but
there’s much more about life at school than classes! Maundy Thursday after school I went running
with the boy’s tennis team again. This
time I’m pretty sure they went faster than last time because I’m more in shape
and they kicked my butt again. I kept up
with them, though! I was wiped
afterwards, though. I used the time to
cool down outside and chat with new students.
I’m so surprised with how genki (energetic) they are! I talk with various groups of friends and
they feel comfortable in a pack outside of class and we had quite extensive
conversations in English. This year I’m
trying to learn student names by asking them when I meet them then calling them
by name when I see them again. If I
can’t remember, I ask again. No
pressure, I’m just doing by best to learn what I can. This frees my brain cells to actually
remember names as opposed to last year when I promised them I would know their
name after they gave their introduction.
I was so stressed and embarrassed that I didn’t know their names that it
took me nearly all year to learn them all (and even then I know about 150 of
the 200). I’d say that now I know about
30 student names and that will grow after I take their pictures and have a resource
to reference and review (and it’s only been about a week!). (More)
This year my schedule is full on
Thursday and Fridays, which is not ideal, but it will work out. I teach four classes on Thursday and Friday,
and on Thursday I have three in a row.
It’s not so bad, but I have to say I was a little bit sick of my
introduction lesson by the time I’d done it twelve times . . .
For the most part classes are
fairly good. Of course some are more
responsive than others and the English ability and interest level various quite
a bit. Of particular note, one half of
the 1-1 class (they group the classes by ability with 1-6 as the highest and
1-1 the lowest) had not a clue. They
were quite self-motivated in the speaking activity, but they were clueless with
the rest of my lesson. I made a note
that their English ability was almost null set about thinking of ways to
compensate for the next class. However,
the next week I was in for a great surprise. (More)
