End of the 2017 School Year

Jaime Wong
Mar 26, 2018
3 min read

Woke up at 7:15am, had rice for breakfast, stopped by the convenience store on the way to work to get some lunch (no school lunch since it’s spring break!). We had the closing assembly for the school this morning (kids are on spring break starting from tomorrow), and the teachers who are being moved to other schools also said some mini farewell speeches, and received flowers from the students. The assembly was quite cute because they gave out certificates to kids who had participated in club activities, solved the most questions in class, and borrowed the most books from the library! After the assembly ended my JTE and I had a discussion about some things for the new school year. We listed up things to do for the spring break (making new picture cards, checking English materials are up to date in each classroom, etc.), and also questions about the new textbook/materials for me to ask at tomorrow’s office day. We also talked about making some changes to the way we start English lessons (no more “Stand up!” “ Attention!” “Bow!” and instead just getting straight into the lesson) and also trying to implement more “classroom English”. This mini meeting helped to pass some time, but before long I was stuck again at my desk with not much to do. Can’t really work on any lesson planning until we get the actual new lesson plans from the BOE, so the real work will probably start after tomorrow’s office day.

We had our lunch break at 12:30 on the dot, some teachers even went out for lunch! spent the rest of the afternoon just doing random stuff. Got off work at 16:00 and went home. Drew up a card for the special needs teacher since it’s her final day today, and the last time I’ll see her! Headed out again at 17:50 for my school’s end of the school year party, and it was at this lovely little church quite near my house. The interesting thing about these “churches” are that they aren’t a church in the traditional Christian sense, but they’re more like restaurants and event/wedding venues here. The design was very lovely, a wooden triangle church with it’s own fenced in little garden, and the inside was set up as if it were for a wedding! The food was super delicious – we had like 5 courses, and the serving sizes were all very generous, not the usual tiny serving sizes multiple course meals are usually associated with. We played a few games as well. The first was guessing what beer was which just from smelling and tasting it (our team just randomly guessed cause we all had no idea, but we got 2 right!). Then there was the one where you had to use a stopwatch to guess 10 seconds without looking (I got 9.53 seconds, so close!), and then a second round of the guessing drinks game, except this time it was with coca cola! We all figured out which was Dr. Pepper super fast, but it was practically impossible to tell apart normal cola, coke zero, and the new white coke that I think only Japan has (though I think it’s just another version of zero sugar or something like that).

The party ended fairly early at 20:00, and some teachers stood around outside to chat a little more before going home. I feel like my school’s parties are always very calm and low-key. The party stories I hear from other ALTs are always so crazy! I helped drop off a teacher at the station so she could catch her bus (since I don't drink), and then went home myself.