Wednesday - Hello November

Woke up at 7:00am to brilliant weather again this morning, had rice for breakfast, and drove to school. It’s getting cold real fast though! Today’s low was 9 degrees so I wore my puffer jacket out since I’d be staying out late tonight for an ALT friend’s birthday! Only had one class today in period 3, so I just spent the spare time cutting out leaves for my English board. Had class with 5-1 in period 3 and it was pretty fun, but they were a bit noisier than usual. The keyword game is very popular with the kids here so I’m glad they like it. It’s a fun way to remember vocab as well so there’s a lot of learning going in too! Pronunciation is still hard though – they were struggling with “cap” and “cup” in particular. Their homeroom teacher came in at the end and was asking them how they say “frying pan” and “cap” and stuff like that and was laughing at them cause of their cute pronunciation. Had a quick lunch with 3-3, wolfed down the food so that I could leave on time to go to another elementary school for the office day thing. The kids in 3-3 were being funny though – they knew I had a business trip to go on, so they were like “HURRY JAIME-SENSEI YOU HAVE NO TIME” and were boasting how they could drink their milk in 20 seconds and the like.

Left school at 12:55 and I needn’t have worried as there was hardly any traffic, and since the school I was going to was the one I played badminton at every Tuesday, I was familiar with the roads there. I arrived earlier than the designated time (13:20) by 4 minutes! There were people guiding you to the parking spot in the playground so that was nice and easy. It wasn’t only ALTs coming to the observation today, but a whole lot of Japanese teachers too. Like a LOT – I’d say there were around at least 60 Japanese teachers? So first we registered our attendance, then we ALTs waited in the meeting room on the 2nd floor. It was really interesting to actually be inside the school instead of just the gym at badminton nights. This school was so new and modern and clean! Most elementary schools have ancient wooden floorboards that creak on every step, but this school had shiny new floorboards that were actually solid. At 14:00 we headed into the gym where the class would be held. The “classroom” was set up in the gym so that all the attending ALTs and Japanese teachers could observe. It was actually a bit weird. You have the classroom and the kids in the middle, with like 100 teachers crowding around staring at them (and a lot of the Japanese teachers were taking videos and photos). It felt like a team of scientists observing their guinea pigs or mice to be honest. Felt a bit sorry for the kids to have all these people staring at them like that. The lesson was absolutely perfect really. The other ALTs were ALL saying how it must have been rehearsed, and I agree that it was rehearsed, but the kids must still be pretty good normally to be able to perform like that. But then I was also wondering whether they were THAT well behaved because there were so many teachers around observing them. Another interesting thing was that the ALT who was running the lesson, was the most assistant-y ALT I had ever observed/heard about. We are technically supposed to be “assistant” language teachers, but most of us are the main teacher in the lesson since most Japanese teachers aren’t confident in their English. But for this observation lesson, the ALT was only "used" by the homeroom teacher when English needed to be spoken, otherwise the JTE would do all the explaining and prompting in Japanese. The kids were really great at English – they were in the last hour of the “Let’s go to Italy” lesson unit, and they were all really good at introducing their countries (“You can eat paella” “You can see the Eiffel Tower”) and the most stand out thing was their responses. They were all being like “Wow nice!” “Cool!” “Looks yummy!” and some were even responding back with further questions like “Do you like bread?”. Too good.

After the lesson ended at 14:45, we went back to the meeting room to discuss the good points, and points of improvement for the lesson. Most of us all agreed that there hardly any points of improvement, because the lesson was seriously so perfect, but we all nitpicked so that we could have some points to share. A lot of the ALTs wished we could observe a “normal” lesson (one that’s not so rehearsed) so that we could actually have better discussion afterwards, and also so that we don’t see these perfect students and lessons and wonder why our kids/lessons are so bad in comparison. A lot of our good points were similar – the ALT didn’t use ANY Japanese in the lesson, the kids had great English responses, we all liked the mini reflection they did halfway in the lesson (so they could improve on their conversation for the 2nd half of the lesson), and the demonstrations done by the ALT and JTE were really good. Points of improvement included having less Japanese from the JTE and more English from the ALT – things like having the ALT explain the activity in English first, and then if the kids still have trouble understanding, only then would the JTE step in with a liiiittle bit of Japanese. Lots of the ALTs were commenting on the JTE’s tendency to swoop in and feed the kids the answer, instead of letting the kids think for themselves, or letting the ALT give hints in English. It was still understandable that it was probably like this because the lesson was being observed by so many. After the discussion finished we had some announcements from one of our CIRs (prefectural advisor for ALTs) and then were allowed to go home. I went to a nearby patisserie to buy a birthday cake for ALT friend tonight since we were all going out to eat okonomiyaki! This patisserie’s cakes were gorgeous and a little more expensive than the ones I’d been to before. I’d like to come back again to try their small cakes (I bought the standard strawberry shortcake birthday cake today) since their ones looked really fancy.

I then drove to another ALT friend’s house to hang out, since the dinner wasn’t until 18:30, and there was still a lot of time left. This ALT’s house was huge!!! It was still an apartment, but she has so much space!!! But accordingly, her rent is also on the higher end BUT it's actually the same as mine because I’ve got my rent + the parking space fee. But her place is so much bigger with the parking space included, so her place is still way more worth it. Her kitchen is huge, her bathroom is bigger, she has an actual living room and separate tatami mat bedroom! She had a predecessor in her apartment before that had sold her a lot of the furniture. Apparently it was quite a lot of money, but the stuff was nice so she just agreed to buying it. She has a reaaally nice kotatsu + kotatsu futon + mat thingy. I don't think I could even fit her fluffy mat thing in my Leopalace room because the mat is so huge and my room is so tiny! The kotatsu futon felt so nice though, it made me rethink about whether I should get a kotatsu or not (since I had decided not to). We popped over to Daiso (which was actually right in front of the okonomiyaki place!) to get some things first before going to dinner. The okonomiyaki place was actually a 食べ放題 so that was really good! We all stuffed ourselves with okonomiyaki and monjayakai (and they ordered fries on the side too!). Finished at 21:30 and then went home. Did some laundry tonight since I really don’t like that food smell that lingers on your clothes after you go to a BBQ or something like that.