Making elementary school lessons is incredibly easy compared to junior high school lessons. I spent the last two hours figuring out what the じごくjigoku to do this week with the junior high schoolers, since I am going to the school where the JTE essentially puts the class planning entirely in my lap.
I don’t like this “actual work” thing. Although, to be fair, I’m only supposed to be working 35 hours a week and this qualifies as overtime.
On the other hand, everyone in Japan who works full-time puts in quite a bit of unpaid hours. There’s also, however, the little fact that they also happen to get regular bonuses not based on performance, something I’m not privy to via JET.
This week is nice because today I had an extra day of elementary school. Usually I go to an elementary school on Monday, then three days at a junior high, and a half-day Friday at another elementary. Today, however, all the junior highs had えきでん ekiden, a relay race tournament so instead I went to the same elementary.
For two days in a row I’ve participated in a highly lax-on-the-rules yet very fun soccer game involving all of the male teachers, including the principal. Now that the kids are used to me and in fact rather enthralled, the third and fourth grade class that gave me a little attitude the first time around was much better. The younger kids follow me around like a little fan group. Thank Armani they aren’t carrying cameras.
I planned out the lower grades’ classes while the vice principal, very experienced in English teaching, and homeroom teacher for the fifth and sixth grade class as usual made their itinerary. The fifth and sixth grade class always goes a little rough because they are significantly more shy and, I think, less interested in me and putting effort into English studies. They have trouble telling times like 10:45 in English, which isn’t so much shocking as it is just difficult to figure out how to better teach.
Back to junior high school lesson planning, I was looking through my tub of resources from “20 years of JET history” on the island and found some good stuff to use, but not before I looked through an older activities book. This book clearly showed its age, published in 1994 but showing fashions that at first I thought were 80s until I remembered what the early nineties were like. I really hate fashion before the 2000s, when everyone started bothering to try to be chic in an easy-on-the-eyes, these colours actually match, and this actually complements my figure kind of way, not the opposite. (*snap*)
