Lately things have been a little different at my junior high schools. At the large one, YJHS, they've started giving me more responsibilities. And at the small one, TJHS, I've been less busy than usual. All in all, I feel like maybe things are a little more balanced now.
At YJHS, the teachers have started letting me come up with and lead activities. I still need a great deal of help from them to make the activities actually work in the classroom, but I have more control than usual over what we're doing. This week, I was responsible for making a Jeopardy game that took up most of the class period for the first graders. The teacher told me what kind of categories she wanted and I came up with the rest. It turned out to be pretty fun, though the students were still fairly unmanageable. And I was entirely in charge of the first grade special education class this week. She didn't even give me a topic; it was up to me to do whatever I wanted. We did some coloring and handwriting sheets about the weather. There's only one student in the special education class and he's very easygoing, so class went smoothly.
At TJHS, I haven't had to make so many materials lately. Usually the teacher asks me to make about five things at once and I kind of stress out about getting it all done, though I pretty much always manage to. But I guess things are winding down as the end of the school year approaches. Today, we helped the third graders make yearbook-style placards. Before class I glued the students' pictures on the placards and wrote their names, as well as a title. All the examples the teacher gave me were suitably cheesy and exaggerated, so I made up my own. I went with "[name of school]'s Best and Brightest". Which is fairly true; on the whole, they're very smart kids.
During class the students wrote messages to each other in English, checked them with us, and wrote them on each others' placards. They also decorated them with drawings. The girls added anime-style portraits of each person, whereas the boys came up with stranger things. One of them, a rather sly kid, wrote the message "Be a good boy/girl. I'll be right here" accompanied by an arrow pointing to drawings of such things as a boxing ring, a graveyard, a cliff, a telephone pole, the moon, and the screen of a Gameboy. Another one wrote to one of his friends, "Please make new friends. Forget me!" In several messages the students admonished each other not to play too many video games. One of the boys wrote, "Don't play games but I play games." They crack me up.
Next week will be my last class with the third graders, and the teacher has asked me to come up with some games and songs. I'm going to miss these students a lot. At YJHS I barely know any of the students, and I haven't gotten to work with the third graders all that much. But at TJHS I worked with them every week. I know all of their names and have a good idea of their personalities. I think I may have come off as fairly reserved, so I don't know what they think of me, but I'm really going to miss them. Today when I started thinking about the fact that they were leaving, I nearly started crying. I bet it'll be a shock to everyone if I actually do cry next week. I'm hoping that won't happen, though. Who knows, maybe it will end up being a completely unsentimental day. There have been days where I've felt completely blocked out of the class; it usually happens when the teacher holds lengthy conversations with the students in Japanese.
At that school, I recently acquired a seating chart of the staff room with everyone's names on it. Well, by "acquired" I mean "made and forced the English teacher to label for me". I've already started remembering most of the teachers' names. It was pretty easy to attach names to the teachers who have clear identities in my mind, but there are a few female teachers who are still kind of indistinct to me. I don't remember their faces unless I'm looking at them. Those are the teachers who aren't seated near me in the staff room and who don't talk to me. Anyhow, today I had a nice conversation with H-sensei, the young male teacher who comes in the afternoon. I had printed out some pictures of winter things like skiing, sledding, and so on. I was looking through them, and started to wonder if people in Japan made snow angels, so I showed him the picture and asked. He didn't really know since Kochi doesn't get snow (duh), but he seemed pretty entertained by the concept. We went through the rest of the pictures and talked about them. Most of it was in Japanese, but toward the end of the conversation he started speaking in English. I think he knows more than he lets on. Maybe at the next enkai I'll get to hear more; people are generally more willing to try out their English when they are drunk. But after the end of this school year, I may not be seeing him again.
All in all, things have been pretty good at my junior high schools lately. I feel like I'm finally settling in, which is kind of horrible when I consider that it has taken me until the end of the school year to get this far. I really hope I can stay at my current schools. I don't know when I'll find out my assignment for the next school year, but I think I may ask my supervisor the next time I'm in the office. If it has been decided, I'd really like to know.
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