As of recently, I have visited both of my junior high schools. TJHS is up in the mountains, about half an hour away from the center of town. I'll have to take a taxi each time I go there. YJHS, my other junior high, is accessible by bus. However, my supervisor thought I should learn how to get there by bike, so today Tyler showed me the way. It ended up being about an hour's ride from my apartment, with some of it up steep inclines. At one point I lost my balance, almost ran into a wall, and lost all of my momentum, so I had to walk my bike up from there. There was no getting started from a standstill on that slope. Needless to say, I will be taking the bus.
TJHS is a very small school; there are only about 22 students in all, so each of my English classes will be very small. It should be an interesting working environment. The previous ALT was very proactive and established a role for herself in the classroom, so the teachers at this school will probably want me to be very involved. Which is great; at some schools, the teachers barely use the ALTs at all. I've also been told that the students at this school are very good kids.
YJHS is a medium to large school, and apparently the students can be troublesome at times. It isn't the worst school in Kochi, but it isn't one of the best, either. (Side note: Elizabeth has the worst school in Kochi. She has seen desks thrown out of windows in the middle of class. I'm praying I never end up there.) The staff I met seemed very friendly and welcoming. At that school, I'll even have my own desk in the staff room. The class sizes will be somewhat larger, so planning activities will require a different approach than at my other school. I'm going to have to learn some classroom management skills, and fast. As ALTs, we aren't allowed to discipline students and rely on the Japanese teachers to do it for us. However, in Japanese schools, students are never kicked out of class. The underlying principle behind this is that all students have a right to learn. So, no matter what they do, students are never sent out into the hall or to the principal's office during class.
Visiting my schools has made my situation a bit more real to me. So far, I've mostly been sitting in the office, killing time. It's sort of like being in limbo. Intellectually, I knew that I was here to teach English, but for the time being it felt like I was on some strange kind of vacation. Today I finished laminating the pictures I'll use for my self-introduction, and holding the laminated sheets in my hands made me realize that I would soon be in a classroom, attempting to lead students in a lesson. To know that I am the subject of the first lesson is also kind of surreal.
In related news, I'll soon be starting Japanese class. Tonight we all went to the Kochi International Association to get sorted into classes. Before starting the beginner class's first lesson, the teacher asked us all a few questions. Once she found out which of us had studied Japanese before, she conducted mini interviews to see what level of Japanese we had. Much to my delight, I was placed in the Level 2 class. I was worried that I would have to start from the beginning, which would be frustrating and not very interesting. Kathy and Nelson, two other new ALTs, will be in Level 2 as well. Our class doesn't start until the beginning of next month, but I'm looking forward to it.
Since we were more or less kicked out of tonight's class, I ended up biking to Aeon Mall to pick up a few things. I wanted to get the soundtrack to Karigurashi no Arrietti. It's some really beautiful harp music by Cecile Corbel. While I was at the mall, I also admired a dresser that I've got my eye on. I have the money and the space for it, but I still need to figure out how to get it delivered to my apartment. Sometime when I'm feeling courageous I'll attempt it. I also found a stuffed animal to make my apartment look a little less bare. It's a seal dressed as takoyaki (a fried dough ball with octopus in the middle). I debated between that one and one that was dressed as Tokyo Tower, but chose the takoyaki seal in the end. Somehow, my apartment feels more my own now.
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