First day of school

Finally.  I get to start my real job!  This past month I haven't been doing much except sitting at my desk, looking over lesson plans, filling out forms, and following my supervisor around doing various errands. As nice as it was to have a laid back first month in Japan, I'm glad I finally get to leave my desk, stand up, and interact with students.

My first day of school was at the middle school in my town, a quick 5 minute bike ride from my apartment.
Arriving super early so that I wouldn't be late, I settled in to my new desk (which I will unfortunately spend more time sitting in when I am not in class) and met some of the teachers (for a second time).

There was a short meeting at the beginning where the teachers reviewed the day's schedule, I gave my self-introduciton (again), and the principal and head teacher gave a few encouraging words.  In Japanese schools, the principal (校長 head of school) doesn't actually do very much outside of ceremonial speeches and things like that.  The head teacher (教頭) does most of the work in leading the faculty and student body, but I don't think he has a specific class he teaches.

Anyway, the day started with 'cleaning time,' when everyone in the school, including teachers, stops what they are doing, busts out some vacuums, brooms, mops, clothes, etc.  and cleans every inch of the school.  Really.  They did this at the town office where I worked this past month too.  They even sweep up leaves and debris outside, even if that means picking out leaves and twigs from the grass and bushes.  I swept the entire teacher's room, and two students + the head teacher got on their hands and knees and wiped the floor with little clothes.  I would love to see an American school try to do this.  I'm not sure which would be harder: getting the students to cooperate in cleaning the entire school, or getting the teachers to do it too.

Soon after cleaning was over, they had the 2nd semester opening ceremony (remember: Japanese school years start in April), which included my 'welcoming' ceremony.  This was it.  The big one.  Of all the self-introductions, this one was supposed to be the most important.  Here I was in my suit and tie, facing all of the students and teachers I would be working with for the entire year (excluding all of the grade schools, where technically I'll be spending more time), holding two little pieces of paper with my most formal introduction written on it.

Luckily, my speech went very well.  No problems there.  The parts surrounding it? Mmmm, not so much.  There were a few botches like when I went up to the podium to early (cutting off the principal from introducing me first), almost left the stage too early (didn't know there was going to be anything afterwards!), and sort of sat awkwardly rather than standing during the student greeting, in which a single student came up to the stage and stood in front of me and welcomed me to the school.  WOOPS.  Oh well.  Fortunately the school is very small, so I didn't feel too embarrassed about making a fool of myself when I didn't know what was coming next.

Lunch time:  Japanese schools have a very calculated, nutritionally balanced meal system that everyone, including the teachers, partake in (yet another thing that would never happen in American schools).  An odd little tradition that I didn't know about until today is that the principal, head teacher, and some other important guy will eat the school lunch first, before any other students and teachers, to test and see if it is suitable.  Probably a tradition left over from the days when there was often problems with food being fresh and edible and whatnot.  Very interesting.   Also, these planned lunches 給食 have like half of your daily calorie intake; in the past it was even higher, because it wasn't assumed that the kids coming to school had any other meals in a day except the school lunch.

The last 'first' of the day: my first class.   Was everybody going to be super excited to listen to me and bask in the educational splendor of my instruction?  Well....not quite.  As was told to us before, our middle school teaching experiences will be quite limited because the Japanese Teacher of English, or JTE, plans almost everything, including what you do.  Of course, you can work with them to build lesson plans, and I did suggest something that we did do in class, but for the most part JETs can sometimes end up being walking tape recorders and not much else in middle school classes.  Given that my JTE accepted my one idea about how to do my question and answer session, I was satisfied that I found out my JTE will listen to me and consider my ideas (and sometimes accept them).  After my Q&A session (of course I was asked if I have a girlfriend or not), my JTE went over a test they took before summer and handed out review sheets.  All I did was walk up and down the aisles and help kids with their worksheets.  OK, OK.  Not exhilarating, but I did help some students, and it was good to figure out who was good at English so I can use them later...hehehehehe.

How I wish I had time to share about my first day teaching at ELEMENTARY school.  Let me just say it was 10 x as much fun as teaching at middle school because a.) I got to do what every I wanted and b.) the kids were 10x more adorable than the middle schoolers (actually, most of the pre-pubscent middle schoolers do not qualify as 'adorable;' sadness). They also had a swim meet in school, which was amazing. Guess you'll just have to check my blog tomorrow....