I'm a Teacher?

This is the front entrance to the school. There's a lot of
construction happening right now though, so it's a bit messy.

Well I've successfully completed my first week as a teacher. People keep calling me "mister" or "sensei," and it's really frigging weird. I keep telling them to stop. I had nine classes between Monday and Friday that I either taught or helped teach. I went to a hoikuen on Friday, which is like some sort of preschool daycare thing. Those kids were so cute! My middle school has three grade levels that I think correspond to 7th, 8th, and 9th grades back home. Each grade level is divided into three classes, so there are 9 classes, plus a special needs class for 10 total here.

My 1st years are secretly my favorites. Don't tell the 2nd and 3rd years. The 1st years are way into English class and really seemed to enjoy my self introduction lesson. The 2nd years weren't there last week, so who knows, maybe they're awesome. My 3rd years just did not give a crap, though. I have a number of questions with prizes throughout my lesson to keep the kids awake, but it just did not work with the 3rd years. One of the 3rd year classes was actually pretty good, but the other two were either almost or actually asleep throughout most of my lesson. Oooohhhh weeeellll.

The bike ride to school is really pleasant.
I pass through a ton of rice fields.

I covered a few basic things about myself like my name, age, height, favorite food, and where I'm from. I talked about the redwood trees and beaches in Humboldt County, plus some local events like the Kinetic Sculpture Race. I broke it up with some American and Japanese media I like and tested the kids to see which they knew. If they answered my questions correctly they got a super-awesome American Pokemon card.

The school is pretty big. It's two buildings, each three floors. For whatever reason, 3rd years are on the first floor, 2nd years are on the second, and 1st years are on the third. I do a lot of stair climbing as I trek back and forth between the staff office and the classes. I also need to change shoes quite a bit, since you're supposed to have different shoes for indoors and outdoors. I come to school in one pair of shoes, change to a different pair when I go inside, then if I go to the gym, I have a third pair of shoes. I think you're actually supposed to have even more pairs for various other occasions but I don't have enough room in my bag for that.

Various awards displayed prominently at the entrance, of course.

The staff has been super great too. There are three JTEs here (Japanese Teachers of English), and they're preeetty much the only people here other than me who speak English. I'm getting by pretty okay with my so-so Japanese though. Everyone keeps telling me how good I am, but I still have a ton of trouble understanding people, so I don't feel like I'm that good. I want to take the Japanese Language Placement Test every year I'm here and move up by one level each time. We'll see if I can actually accomplish that. The test goes from level 5 up to level 1. I would guess I'm somewhere between 4 and 3 right now, but I don't really know.

In addition to my self-intro lessons I've helped the JTEs with a couple of standard English lessons. The kids are learning basic stuff like "I like," "I have," and "this is." It's really surreal seeing like the inverse of all the worksheets I was doing when I started learning Japanese. Now all the directions are in Japanese and the questions are in English. I've also taught the special needs class twice now. It's a really small group and they're pretty mellow so that class is a nice break from all the high-energy 30-student classes.

This is the hallway right outside
the staff room. You can kind of
see my desk.

On Friday I went to the preschool and played a ton of games with the kids there. I was just there for an hour, but in that time we played 4 Corners, Simon Says, Duck Duck Goose, Blob Tag, I gave a little intro, the kids asked me a ton of questions, and they introduced themselves. Everything happened really quickly. I didn't think I'd like being around little kids so much, but they're all so happy and curious. They asked me the most adorable stuff like what my favorite animal is and if I like strawberries. I think I said giraffes for whatever reason, and yes I like strawberries.

I'll be at that preschool every other Friday and at an elementary school on the other Fridays. I've already started in on my second week of work over here. This week the 3rd years are gone, and the 2nd years are here. I'll report in on all things 2nd year next week.

A quick note about photos of the school though. I'm not supposed to take pics of the kids, particularly if I'm going to put them online, so school pictures may be a bit barren. Sorry 'bout that.

As always, thanks for keeping up with me, and if you like these posts, please like them, share them, and/or comment on them. I love getting feedback. Let me know if there's anything you want to know and I'll try to cover it next time. Until then!