A note I wrote on the night of Thursday, Sept 1st.

"One day down, one more to go until the weekend.

Yesterday I spent nearly 10 hours at school after a frustrating morning where I was nearly late!  But everything was OK, and then after some chatting, we got started on the opening ceremony!

This involved everyone going to the gym, where all the students sat down on the floor and teachers gave short speeches.  Then it was my turn to go to the front of the room and deliver a short speech, half in English and half in Japanese.  It was dead silent in the room, but I didn’t mess up too much, even if my Japanese isn’t very good.  Soon after, we all left the gym and headed to the main building to clean and get ready for classes.  In Japan, the teachers and students clean the school instead of a janitor.  I think this provides a greater incentive for students not to mess up or trash the place since it’s on them and their peers to clean it. It’s a great time to bond as well, since you can have unconstructed conversation with the students and get to know the teachers better.  But, none of this happened, because I was soon whisked back to the teachers’ room to prepare for my first lesson.

My FIRST LESSON!  With no teaching experience under my belt, I was given access to 30 middle school students and 50 minutes to do whatever I wanted.  I certainly don’t any of the tricks or methods to get kids interested, or to go about creating a lesson plan, but the one I had wasn’t so bad.  I introduced them to America, and got them to repeat my name and city.  They had trouble saying “Pennsylvania” and “Philadelphia” but they were at least showing interest!  Overall it was a very energetic class.  They were happy to participate and ask questions.

The second period went much like the first one, since they were both second years (7^th graders). 

Then, there was school lunch, which wasn’t too bad.  In Japan, teachers and students eat the same school lunch, so it has to be filling enough for adults too, which in fact, was bad, because it was TOO MUCH food: an egg omelet, curry and rice, salad, apple jell-o, a carton of milk, not to mention all the candy that the teachers passed around the teachers’ room all day.  I studied some kanji on my Kindle at lunch since all the teachers seemed to be eating quietly at their own desks and not socializing too much.

After lunch came the 3^rd years, AKA eighth graders.  In Japan, eighth graders have the added pressure of studying hard to get into high school.  This results in a mostly apathetic class, although I think lunch and time of day also had something to do with it.  This is a trend that seems to be sweeping the nation, unfortunately, seeing as how the exams they study for basically determine the rest of their life… it’s definitely a lot of pressure.  After this class, there was some more free, then more speech contest stuff… the contest is on the 30^th, so the students are really pushing hard these next few weeks.  

The one thing I noticed with any sort of certainty was that it would easy for a teacher to dedicate his or her whole life to this job, even weekends.  Many teachers remained at work until 7, for no apparent reason other than to do paper work.  It’d be easy to stay at work until 8 or 9, go home and go to bed, then get up around 6 and do it all again.  So you essentially would have no real life other than work… which I guess is why people say that in Japan, you are your job.  It’s just hard to believe… and the 48 hours you get on the weekends are the only hours you can do what you like.  It’s an interesting system…"

Well, onto bigger and better things!  It was a very good start and the days after have been fun as well, but work really is a serious dedication of time.  But hey, what else would I be doing anyway? 

That's what I'm here for!!