class 3-3 [9/04/2007]

I had my first class today, much to my surprise.  From what I was told my first class was to be tomorrow (Wednesday) when I visited the kindergarten, but instead I had my first class with Grade 3 Class 3.  There is exactly one student in 3-3.

Sometime last week Imamura-sensei had asked me if I would be willing to help her teach the special needs classes, since she doesn't really speak English.  I readily agreed.  So today at about 9:27 or so she came and asked me if I could help her teach and English class the next period.  I consulted my schedule and found that the next period began at 9:30.  So right now then?  Okay.

In Japan the students have their own room and the teachers are the ones that move around, going from class to class according to their schedule.  As we were walking to the classroom on the second floor Imamura-sensei explained that there was only one student in the class and that he was a third grader.

One of the saddest things that I have ever seen was walking into his classroom and seeing him just sitting there quietly by himself.  In between periods the students usually talk, unwind, good off... you know, normal junior high school stuff.  But there is NO ONE in the room with him.  Granted, I don't know how the other kids interact with him or not, or if they do what it's like, but I feel like it's not too likely that they are going over and saying hello, especially when the other third grade classes are on the first floor and he is on the second.

We all went into another room that was cooler and played a matching game.  There was a deck of cards with letters of the alphabet on it and a deck of cards with lots of vocabulary words.  It was a Memory game but we also said the letter and the word of each card that we flipped over.  After the first game we just played again, but this time if there was no match we were supposed to use the word in a sentence... in Japanese.  I kind of refused to do this, although not directly, by pretending that I could not make any sentences at all, saying mine in English.  I'm an English teacher right?  And this is English class, right?

Imamura-sensei explained that Ryusuke was much more shy than he normally is, which I would imagine was my fault.  However I feel like maybe he can do more than he is presented with right now, and I am really looking forward to working with him.

One other thing: later in the day I looked up at the board and checked the breakdown by grade, class, and gender of all the students and there indeed was Ryusuke's 3-3 with just one male student.  I guess if they want to keep the special needs kids separate that makes sense, but then I looked at the second grade breakdown and saw two classes with just one student, one with a boy and one with a girl.  That doesn't make any sense to me.  Maybe their abilities are vastly different and so they can't even have class together?  I wonder if it was two boys or two girls would they be put together?  I guess this is part of why I am here too.

the future doesn't always make sense,

-greg.