Sutorenjaa In Japan

The sweet smell of … failure?!

So, today wasn’t the first day of school. It’s not the first day of festival either… but somehow I feel like this is my crappiest day so far. I get to school, running late and on 5 hours of sleep ( I can’t seem to get tired before 2am these nights). Just in time for a meeting I don’t understand and then I am told that today the students will be outside practicing for their sports day on Sunday. Did I already mention that it is Friday but everyone is coming in on Saturday for last day of practice and then Sunday is the sports festival? Good bye weekend. Then Monday and Tuesday are the last days of festival and we get Wednesday and Thursday off. Eh.
Perhaps I should explain a few things before I go off on other stuff…
The school I teach at is an academic high school, which is pretty much like a college prep school. The only difference is that they only have grades 10-12 here (I think). They call it grade 1,2,3 (3= seniors). Their uniforms are all pretty much the same but it’s kind of interesting how orderly they make them look! As I mentioned, the kids do get inspected but in their gym clothes they are even more unified, only into more specific groups. The first grades are red, second grades are green and third grades are yellow. They have these colors on their arm bands and on their shoes so that you can easily point out what year they are in. And then the boys have blue shorts while the girls have black. It’s human filing!!! Oh how I love the organization of it all! One of the other teachers was telling me how he found it (the conformity) depressing and how the cheers sounded like brainwashing propaganda. Haha silly, free-thinking teacher. Who could get brainwashed by a cheer and school colors?
GO BRUINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So we stood in the ungodly heat and humidity for 3 hours watching the poor kids practice walking from one end of the track to the other, hollering their cheers and practicing a ‘folk’ dance. I nearly fell over just standing so I really felt for those kids. Haha being in high school stinks! It makes me slightly appreciate HS in the states (can you imagine trying to get Agoura High together for cheers and a folk dance?! It is to laugh.)… but only slightly. OK well, I know I hated school then but I hope these kids don’t feel too similarly. OR at least I hope that they like my classes.
Speaking of that… onward. So I had to sort of come up with a lesson plan today. I thought it was OK as I wasn’t really sure what they wanted. I came up with 2 games (20 questions and BINGO) for warm up and then I thought I’d introduce meself and then have them write a little something about themselves. Well, I went in and I think my ideas were completely shot down. The games would take too much time, they already know how to introduce themselves, they’ve done it a bunch of times, etc. BIG FAT BLAH! What to do?!? I’m a little bad a on the spot improvisation so when all my ideas were shot, I didn’t quite know where to go. It was such a wonderful feeling to humbled so quickly and so blatantly. They then came up with something sort of similar (the students will write about themselves but write it to me and draw pictures of themselves which will help me remember them) but I had the feeling they didn’t think I contributed much. I guess I didn’t. They didn’t really agree with what I suggested. It’s kind of rough as my predecessor was here for 2 years and apparently was a great and creative teacher. It was also a weird feeling… I would give them a suggestion and then they would think about it and then discuss in Japanese and occasionally mention my predecessor. I guess I just have to get over it and accept that I’ll be compared or thought of as her inadequate replacement! Bah.
Can it be that I’m already thinking… “this was a mistake”? I’m really missing everyone now and the comforts of home, but I will try (desperately) to overcome and not let it get to me yet. This is what I asked for right? Trying something that is a challenge. Sorry about all the griping this episode!!! Starting to sound like “dear diary…” kind of stuff. Oh well. This is the time everyone can write back and tell me how I’m going to be fine and I can still be great… GO BRUINS.

posted by KidBach @ 10:30 AM