Thursday

Woke up at 7:10am, rice for breakfast, then drove to school. I have to be really careful when 1st graders are around, because they keep forgetting that my right wrist is fractured and will just grab onto me! A pretty full on day today with 4 classes in a row, and then an office day in the afternoon. First up was 4-1, and we did the same flag quiz lesson as 4-2’s lesson yesterday. They were dead quiet while working on their flag quizzes – it was adorable because they would whisper “Jaime-sensei” extremely quietly if they needed help, and then proceed to ask their question in the quietest voice possible. We had a bit more trouble getting people to present, since 4-1 kids are much more shy than 4-2’s kids and less likely to put their hands up and volunteer. We still got through a decent amount of presentations though, and at least there was no shortage of people putting their hands up to answer the quiz. Next up was 1-1 and it was just another high-energy class. I noticed their homeroom teacher nodding off a few times, but I don't blame him with his super energetic class that he has to deal with! I was very pleasantly surprised that they were actually able to remember some of the family vocab, so I guess even though it seemed like they weren’t remembering anything in last week’s lesson, they were actually able to retain some stuff! For today’s lesson we just went over the vocab and did a lot of revision to help them learn the vocab more. Then I got them to draw their own family portraits to help them remember the vocab more – I thought the vocab would be more relatable and applicable for them if it were their own family. It was pretty hilarious though cause they were all like “Can we draw our pets too!?” since my family photo that I showed them as an example had my dog in it.

1-2 in period 3 and I was super happy and impressed because they had remembered all the family member words! I was going over the picture cards during revision time, and they were able to say all of them without me saying them first! Not quite sure how that happened actually, cause they were really struggling with the vocab last week. 1-2 was even more hilarious with the family portraits because they were all asking what they could draw (pets? ALL my grandparents and cousins and aunties and uncles??) and their homeroom teacher was like “learn to think for yourselves guys” haha. 1-3 in period 4 and they were pretty impressive even though it was their first lesson hour in the family unit (since they’d been away on quarantine). I think what helped was me saying the Japanese word, instead of only using the picture cards for understanding – so I would point to the grandma card and be like “おばあさん英語では？” and the kids would follow up by saying “Grandmother!”. There was one kid in 1-3 wearing hay fever glasses today which I found very interesting cause I’ve never seen them before. I had a quick lunch by myself in the staffroom since I had an office day to go to straight afterwards. I heard that some ALTs didn't even get to eat lunch because their schools were like “no you need time to go to the office day!”.

The office day was pretty standard stuff, there were a few interesting presentations, but I fell asleep in some of them so woops! The best presentation was the one that was on how to successfully hold meetings with your JTEs/homeroom teachers, and it was just super interesting because the presenter had actually (with the help of the BOE) conducted a survey that asked questions like “How often would you like to hold meetings with your ALT?” and “How often do you actually hold meetings with your ALT?” and things like that. Although the answers were fairly standard and expected (e.g. most people want to have meetings with the ALT once or twice a week, and then accordingly most people actually do have meetings with their ALT once or twice a week), it was still interesting and just refreshing to hear about HRTs and JTEs opinions and thoughts, cause we never really get the chance to hear them. A presentation like this was just much more interesting and actually quite helpful, compared to all the usual presentations we get on team teaching and improving lessons, which can get pretty repetitive and boring, since we know everything already. The other interesting presentation was the one where the presenter was just sharing some of the games he uses in class, and so we actually played those games in the presentation time which was fun.

After the office day ended with some admin stuff, I went straight to the physio for my post 10 day checkup. The doctor just looked at it real quick and pressed my wrist, but it didn't hurt! I was super glad for that, since I guess that means it’s healing steadily. After the checkup I went to the rehab room and used this oxygen machine thingy that helps to reduce swelling, and then the ultrasonic machine thingy again. After that ended I picked up some things at the nearby Daiso, and then drove back to Takasaki station for dinner at a chicken place with a group of friends! The chicken was super delicious, but each order was only 2 pieces so we had to keep ordering more haha.