hi, my name is... [8/30/2007]

It rained this morning.  Luckily I was already at school when it started, in sharp contrast to the last time it rained.  I looked out the window of the staff room and saw rain just pouring down out of the sky.  Most of the kids were still out there playing their respective sports though.  I guess when it starts to rain like that by the time you would be able to get under cover you would already be soaked anyway, so you might as well just stay outside and play.  Later when I got back from my lunch, Nakayama-sensei shared with Umino-sensei and myself that he had no underpants on because they had become too soaked while playing soccer outside.  While this doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of my email, it did make me smile, which I think is certainly enough.

Classes start next week in junior highs, elementary schools, and kindergartens all across Japan and today I was finally able to speak to Kawaguchi-sensei, my supervisor here at Oshima Junior High, about lesson plans, the structure of the classes, and what her expectations for me are.  She explained how each class will generally run and helped me to understand the basic daily schedule of life here at Oshima Chu (middle school), since the schedule is obviously all in Japanese.  

More specifically, she explained how the third year classes (think 8th grade if you're american) will run, since Kita-sensei is in charge of the first and second graders.  I am feeling more comfortable overall though now that I have some idea of what my responsibilities will be.  My general schedule is four classes on Monday and two on Tuesday and Friday.

I will not be participating in any classes next week, however, at least not here at the junior high.  The kids will be too busy taking tests to have time for regular class, so I will start up the following week.  I do have a meeting this coming Monday at East Elementary to go over my proposed self-introduction lesson that I will be teaching next Thursday at the school, after of course introducing myself to the whole school during the opening ceremony, something that I will have to do at each of my school's.

I got curriculums from both of my elementary schools at an teaching workshop for English teachers in Saikai-city, held last Friday before the enkai.  Each Thursday I will alternate between East and West Elementary.  East Elementary even scheduled out which class I would be eating lunch with, which is good in a way because it saves me having to figure it out.  Basically it looks like I will be doing my self-introduction lesson for quite some time.  East Elementary specifically asked me to teach them about New Jersey culture, something that I was planning on incorporating for all of my self-introductions anyway.  Apparently Saikai-shi is famous for tomatoes as well, so that should be a nice little connection point.  I still don't really know what I am supposed to do with the kindergarten though.  Maybe I can stop by today after work.

I am getting a little less nervous as things get closer, but really it's because I am able to talk to people and find out more about exactly what I am supposed to do.  I am a little disappointed that I won't have any junior high classes next week, but I'll get my feet wet in East at least.

It's weird to have been here and not really done a whole lot of work.  One thing that I have done though is help out a third year student named Manami practice for an English speech competition.  She is at the stage where she has to record a pre-written speech on a tape and mail it in.  Even though we've only worked together twice, I have noticed improvement in her pronunciation and her inflection, which is really quite impressive I think.  We've got another practice tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it.

soon-to-be-a-real-teacher(?!) love from the FUTURE,

-greg.