An Odd First Day

Today was a rather strange day. I went to TJHS for opening ceremonies, but it wasn't what I expected. From what I had heard in the past, opening ceremonies usually involved everyone gathering in the gym and listening to speeches. I also thought that parents attended; one of the other ALTs mentioned that she got a good sense of what her students would be like when she saw what their parents wore to opening ceremonies. At this school, however, things were entirely different. They lined up the students (all 22 of them, haha) in a room, the principal said something about the new year, and they made me introduce myself in English and Japanese. Then it was over. It was very brief.

After that, I spent the rest of the day in the staff room. I mostly organized my materials and rehearsed my longer self introduction, trying to get a sense of how much time it takes. I didn't really know what was going on around me. At one point I asked the English teacher if there was anything I could help her with, and it turned out that there was. She gave me a stack of notebooks and told me to make a big red circle on each page. From what I could tell, the students had been told to copy out passages from their textbooks. Perhaps it was handwriting practice. In any case, I wasn't really grading anything so much as marking the pages to show that the work had been turned in, I think.

Once I had finished with that, I was kind of at a loss for what to do. I wasn't sure how many students were in each class or how much time would be dedicated to my self introduction, so I couldn't make specific plans. It was toward the end of the day that the English teacher gave me the class rosters (which she had thoughtfully written out in romaji for me) and told me how the lessons would be divided up. I have 20 minutes at the beginning of class to introduce myself, and 15 minutes at the end of class for a game. I'm kind of concerned about filling the initial 20 minutes. One of the most uncomfortable scenarios I've imagined is running out of things to fill the time and standing there at the front of the class with nothing to do. I think that time management is something that you also learn from experience. It's hard to predict how long an activity will take if you've never done it before. Tomorrow will be a sort of trial run for my introduction activities.

It's getting late, so I'd better get to sleep. I'm still nervous about how my classes will go tomorrow, but I'm also feeling somewhat resigned to my fate, whatever it may be. Wish me luck...