(no longer) LOST IN JAPAN

ワーー！シンド！

What a morning!!! It was crazy... Today, first period, was the 2nd year prefectural English Listening Test. I was the one who did the recordings for his exam with James and Linsey so I was really excited to hear it and see the students reaction... So we did the sound check yesterday evening after school to make sure it would work today. The PA system wasn't being cooperative at first but after about 25 minutes, we got it to fixed. I must have listened to James read Huck Finn about 30 times...

Mais ce matin... the test is supposed to start at 8:55, at all the senior high schools in Nara. So I went upstairs and waited for the test to come on the speakers. 8:55 comes and what happens? NOTHING... there isn't even a humming from the speakers... 1 minute passes... 2, 3... 7 minutes go by and still nothing. So I went downstairs and all the English teachers were freaking out. We tried frantically to get it to work but still nothing. At 9:15, we were running out of time. We thought it might just be the connection from the tape deck so we tried a live broadcast from the mic... which didn't work either. Up and down the stairs, everyone was running around like headless chickens. The test is 10 minutes long so we needed to start the test by 9:25 and the PA was showing no signs that it would finally give up and cooperate. So all of the English teachers (even Kinoshita-san, the student-teacher) took the test script, went to a ninensei classroom and read it out loud to the students... It was so ghetto... We laughed about it after but everyone was so stressed out... And that was just first period.

Second period... moment of weakness... I have never gotten mad at the students. Even my Class of Doom (last year's 1-8A class), I managed to never flip out on them (because I knew that even if I did, it wouldn't make a difference since my JTE was useless and wouldn't back me up). Today though, the students (ironically, this year's 1-8A class) really made me mad. I didn't yell at them though... I just stopped talking. How am I supposed to have an Oral Communication class is the students refuse to communicate orally!?!?! It's just so infuriating! So I took a chair, sat down in the middle of the classroom and told them exactly that. And my JTE, who I adore, translated everything I said. Hopefully next time will be better but I don't think I've ever been so frustrated. I love teaching, which is probably why I hardly ever get mad but this class totally did my head in. Thank God for my JTE though because without her, I think I would have sent the students back to their classroom without giving them the lesson... too bad for them come midterm.

I had class third and fourth period too but lucky for me, the class right after 1-8A is one of my best classes so I felt much better. And then after that, lunchtime eikaiwa wth the sannenseis. But I'm done teaching for the day so I finally get to sit down. Sitting is nice... Tonight I start my cooking lessons again so I get to be the student and not the teacher for a change. And tomorrow, Tom arrives from Belgium. Hopefully he'll make it to the train station without too many problems because I wasn't able to get time off to pick him up at the airport... Ganbare Tom-san!

posted by Samantha @ 12:01 AM