KONNICHIWHAT!?: September 2012

Cause for celebration; I've made it through parent observations at all three of my schools! Yay! I'm applauding myself, you just can't see it. It's been a pretty stressful, exhausting last three week. Pretty much all of my classes had parent observations aside from a handful of grammar classes that I teach. This time around I prepared a Colorado quiz for the students to take with their parents before the lesson starts. It's just something a little different that they can enjoy and also learn a little more about where I'm from at the same time. It seemed to go over quite well and most of the kids enjoyed doing it. The way the lessons went during P.O.'s were a bit like this: the usual check in, introductions from myself and the school's JT, mini-presentation from the kids to their parents, Colorado quiz, and then the lesson as normal. There were a few times where a student wasn't actin' the fool in front of everyone and those times are especially frustrating and embarrassing since the parents are watching. They're basically watching to see how you'll handle it. It's amazing how little the parents involve themselves while your lesson is going on, even if their kid is being disruptive. However, after three weeks of this, I pretty much walked away unscathed. Today was the last day of it and I'd say the classes were even downright pleasant. Today was the last day that my JT for this school and I would be working together. We had a nice lunch before classes started and it's been a really great year working with her. She's moving on to (hopefully) bigger and better things in Fukuoka. Sitting at the station waiting for my train after classes, I realized how much I'd miss her and how well we worked together. I'll see her again, just not in a co-worker capacity. Change is the only constant. How's that for profound?

Along with the end of P.O.'s, today also brought upon sudden cold weather, complete with rain. It feels like only a week ago the sun was blazing and I was sweating from the humidity. It felt like winter today, but with no transition into the next season. I'm hoping today was just a one-off type of thing and we'll retunr to some normal, cool weather next week. I have tomorrow off, bu then it's back to business as usual on Monday, starting bright and early with a staff meeting in which a fellow NT and I have to make a small presentation on safety in the classroom. I don't really have anything planned other than an open-forum discussion and possibly some role-playing. Should be a mess, but I've always been pretty good at faking my way through things like that. Next week I also have two team-teachers, one on Wednesday and the other on Friday. So I'll have another NT coming to my school on those days to take a class off my hands. I love it when that happens. I just hope my kids are good to the visiting NT. I feel like it would reflect poorly on me if they weren't.

In other news, it's been over one year since I came to Japan! I didn't even realize the date had passed because I'd been so busy and caught up parent observation classes. When things started slowing down, I realized that I landed in Japan on September 10th of 2011. It's amazing to think that it's already been that long and that some of my fellow NT's are packing up and saying goodbye because they only wanted to do the initial one-year contract. It's strange to think that could be me, had I not signed on for longer. There have been moments where it felt like time was simply flying, but there have also been those moments where I felt like a certain week or month would never end. I've gotten quite used to my way of life here but that doesn't mean I'm fully convinced I want to say here that much longer. I haven't quite figured out how long that necessarily is. Right now, and this is probably because I've taken notice of the one-year anniversary, but I'm going through a homesick phase. I miss my family and friends a lot and being in the States. I just hope everyone knows that I'm here trying to handle business and sort stuff out, not because I want to be far away from them.

Oh, and this is completely random but I wrote this post while listening to the new Green Day album, "UNO!", which is surprisingly rad. The single they released, "Oh Love", is still terrible in my opinion and I stop the album early (since it's the last track, thankfully), but yeah, that's my two cents on that.

Shakey's Pizza Parlor made it to Fukuoka? Whoa.

Fukuoka.

Canal City, Fukuoka.

Korean idol group being interviewed in Canal City.

Sizable crowd.

Ramen museum, here we go.

The halls of the ramen museum.

Bonafide.

Chow time.

Here am I, chillin' on a Sunday after putting week one of parent observations in the finished column. I told you guys in my last post that I was going to be dealing with P.O.'s this month and I just wrapped up a week at my Usuki school. As I predicted, it was a lot easier on me this time than it was when I first started and got thrown in P.O.'s right away. I knew what to expect and I've gotten used to seeing a majority of these parents whenever I'm sending their kids off at the end of the lesson. The only thing that made me anxious was that I have a few classes with some difficult children. My biggest concern is having a kid act up and the parents eyeballing me to handle it. It's a delicate thing to discipline someone's child in front of them. However, here in Japan you're expected to be the boss and disciplinarian in the classroom...even if the parents are watching. Most of the time the parents won't do anything to discipline their children in a classroom environment and rarely say anything. They believe that the classroom is your (the teacher) domain and it's up to you to run things properly. That's a weird switch to flip in my American brain. Some parents have told me to go ahead and smack their kids in the head if they act up, and all I can think is, "back home, that's a lawsuit". So it's a mental exercise for sure. Back to my school specifically, most of my classes went well and the Colorado quiz that I had prepared for the students to take with their parents went over quite well. They enjoyed taking the quiz together and the kids really got excited if they answered something correctly. The only class that made me sweat heavily was on Thursday. This particular class has about 12 students and requires me to set up 4 tables. Believe me, this is a large class and it's rare to have numbers this high. It is the way it is though and with the parents there, it was a packed house. There's a large number of boys in this class who love rough-housing and even though they were more well-behaved than normal, they were doing a bit of pushing and shoving at one point and I knew all eyes were on me. I had to stop the activity we were doing in order to separate them, but afterwards, order was restored. This class had me sweating because it's so big and it's difficult to keep an eye on everything, but the trick is just to conduct your lesson as usual and act as if the parents aren't even there.

One school down, two to go. I get a little bit of a break this week, as it's my office week. Tomorrow (Monday) is another day off, Tuesday I'm team-teaching with my former boss, Wednesday I'm team-teaching with another teacher and Thursday I'll be observing my JT's lessons. Friday is my birthday (yay!), and it's an office day, so maybe I'll buy a small cake at the convenience store and eat it in the classroom by myself.