I fretted about it a bit for the rest of the day. Not knowing if my bike would still be there when I got off, but luckily it was. And so was that Japanese school girl's bike. Either way, I have heard of people having their bikes stolen or towed away from the train station. So maybe next week I’ll just bike the whole way to school.
Yesterday I taught four classes, two 5th grade classes and two 2nd grade classes.
They went fine I’d say. (All my classes yesterday were about my self introduction. They lasted a full 45 minutes with picture and such.) My poor teachers had a bit of a tough time explaining some of my pictures, such as, why I have two mothers in my graduation photos. I think one of my teachers told them that my dad beat my mother, so now he has a new wife. I tried to explain that they were not married anymore, but still friends, but sadly some things are still lost in translation.
My 2nd grade classes went fine. The younger students are very excitable, and will set off at anything. In my last class of the day, the teacher filed the 2nd graders into the room and without any introduction or anything at all just said, “Okgo!” It was a little weird I guess. Normally the teachers like to do their own daily warm ups. But I winged it none the less and jumped right in. This class was pretty rowdy. Generally I’d pass my (laminated, thank goodness) pictures around while I’m talking, but these students just yelled and semi fought over the pictures, so instead, I put them up on the blackboard. That class also had a semi-special needs student. I’m not sure exactly what the deal was. At first I thought she was just rambunctious. But instead the teacher had to devote all her attention to keeping this student sitting, and not running around the room, hitting things, hiding behind the blackboard, or jumping out the window. I guess she was a bit of an ADD student. In the future, if I can, I’d like to involve her in the class doing something productive, such as, giving everyone a handout, holding a picture really high for everyone to see, and so on. I think her running around crazy energy is what’s causing the rest of the students to have a hard time concentrating too.
(the 200 steps!)
Today I spent the first half of my day at RyoJyo Middle school. That’s the school on top of the mountain. Today was a bit cooler, but not enough to make a big difference by the time I got to the top.
Today I taught two grade 9ish classes, a grade 8 class and grade 4(?) class. I’m beat! In my first three classes I did roughly the same lesson. I made a bingo sheet where the students chose words from a list and made their own bingo card. Then, as I was doing my introduction I'd say some of the key words and they’d check them off on their bingo sheet. This worked pretty well once the students understood what they were doing with the bingo sheet. Luckily the Japanese teacher helped me explain. These kind of games are nice, you only need to teach the instructions once. If a few weeks from now we have new vocabulary, I can give them a similar sheet with different words and they’ll understand what to do.
In my second grade 9 class, I gave out Canadian Pennies as prizes for bingo players. In my grade 8 class, I only gave pennies to the students who got two or more bingo lines. These made the pennies worth so much more! Suddenly the damn penny was a coveted item! One girl after class was really admiring a shiny penny, so I gave her one, even though she didn't get a Bingo. She was so excited! Like, “for me? Really!? A..a…..thank you!” Afterwards she even found me on my way to the staff room to say thank you again. Kids here are cute :)
Today there was a typhoon warning sent out. September is typhoon season here in Japan. the edge of the typhoon will just be brushing Kure, so it's nothing to be too concerned about, unless it suddenly changes coarse. Should it change course, I wont have to go to school tomorrow! yay!
A few minutes ago, the sky opened up with rain. The heavy cloud cover has actually made it a bit cooler today. I was still sweating bullets by the time I got to school this morning, but coming home was nice. I was rained on for the last few minutes of my bike ride, which cooled things down.
Lastly, I'd like to leave you all with two songs! These guys are the Yoshida Brothers. A few years ago they came to Victoria to play, but I was unable to see them. The Yoshida Brothers have mastered the Japanese Shamisen, a traditional instrument that is probably one of the most difficult to play.
This song is the first on my playlist of Yoshida Brothers. Every morning I bike to work staring my day with this song. It's very moving!
This one is just another jazzy little number! Plus you can see the music video for this one!
Re the Yoshida brothers: And they're in the 3nensei textbook! :D
ReplyDeleteI think one of my teachers told them that my dad beat my mother, so now he has a new wife.
ReplyDeleteO_O
Oh gosh.
You seem to be enjoying yourself! I hope things keep going well for you! (And that nobody steals your bike.)
Do you use one of those bike locks that's like a handcuff with a number pad? It seems like people could really easily move bikes like that just by picking them up, but I guess they don't?
ReplyDeleteAlso.. yeah what Shannon said.
And your penny story reminds me of grade 4 for me. One day I got kicked out of class for being too badass and I was sitting in the hall. There were some Japanese teachers on a tour of our school and they stopped and gave me a yen coin. I thought it was awesome because it had a square hole in it with blue ribbon. I was stoked, and no one else got one because they were all in class learning. That was about the time I realized life wasn't fair and behaving is for suckers! Two important life lessons there. Who knows what it was worth. Excellent work spreading the Canadian coins!