Teaching Highs and Lows

Usually my class with the socially challenged class is my least favorite, but Wednesday I had kind of a special experience. There is a girl in that class who supposedly has ADHD and sometime does no work at all during class. This day I was asked to work with her, which rarely happens. The last time I did so, back in the first term, she quickly got frustrated that I wouldn’t speak Japanese to her. This time though, she was much more willing to make an effort. I think one thing that helped me was that first thing I immediately asked her how she was, and tried to respond appropriately to her answer with another question or sympathetic nods or whatever. Afterward, she easily made it through her assigned worksheet and then we talked. First we talked about ways to write the number seven, which she obviously enjoyed. Then I asked her about zero, and she didn’t understand but was so interested in my question that she called my co-teacher over to translate. So that was nice that a student would try so hard with communicating.

Thursday was exhausting even though I only had three classes. The city supervisor came, and seemed to ignore me the whole day. I didn’t directly address her because she was constantly talking to someone, but there were at least two times where I approached her and it would have been natural for her to acknowledge my presence in some way, but she didn’t do so. My first class was okay, but in the second I made a mistake which cause me to lose focus, and I ended up needing to be saved by my JTE. I also later realized that the reason I was missing one of the flashcards was probably my fault.

I had three periods off, which should have made my day easy, but then in the last period we had a late start because my JTE forgot that we agreed to have a special start. I should have just started without her. Then in the end she wasn’t satisfied with the progress of the lesson (which was at least partially my fault), so she had to rewrite the next day’s lesson and was feeling stressed about that as well as by the feedback from the city supervisor.

Today after my first class the teacher came to me and told me that the teachers here want me to stay another year. I really appreciated that, and I also told her that I was grateful for the opportunity to come to the classrooms. Of course I told her that I was going home next year, but anyway, the exchange did make me feel better. But even if I were going to stay at the same company, I wouldn’t have stayed in this position. I am glad that I got to witness three more Junior High School teaching styles from last year, so I think it was probably a good decision, but generally I think that working in a Junior High School is not for me, unless I find a teacher that I work really well with.

Last night I wanted to relieve some stress so I tried playing Mass Effect again. I even dropped the difficulty to casual, but still I died several times without making any plot progress. Shooting games really aren’t my thing, so I’m going to give up for a little while. I even had the urge to read Steins;Gate, but in the end I finished a Worm fanfiction and felt too tired to do anything after that. I haven’t studied Japanese these past two days, but on Wednesday there was a meeting so my primary focus for one hour of that day was listening to Japanese. The day after tomorrow is the test. I think I’ll be able to study tonight, maybe by reading Steins;Gate.

Finally, a Liberty update. I sent a query about my missing transcript yesterday but haven’t received a response yet. I remembered that my plan before I realized my missing content competencies was to take three classes each semester and then only student teaching in the final one, which would be the most economic and probably least stressful schedule. Now I know that I need to take two more classes, and those two have to be done before student teaching. I also wanted to take that electricity course. So if I keep this schedule, I’ll take three classes in the spring, three + 1 community college classes in the summer and fall, and the electricity course in the summer or fall as well. If one of my old classes doesn’t transfer, I’ll have to do it in the spring with student teaching.

Present work and future grad school

Today’s morning thoughts were primarily consumed by a theoretical forum post that I would write in reviewing my employer. Why did I decide that I needed to draft this post? I have no idea. What I should have been thinking about was the essay that I had to write for my first period class, which I had been unable to finish the day before. Up until just before I arrived at school, I was planning to write about John Milton, but I knew that doing so would require the explanation of many difficult words. Then I had the idea to write about Thomas Jefferson. I arrived at school almost fifteen minutes early, but the computer took ten to get to the point of being usable, so I ended up writing most of the draft on a piece of paper while waiting. I barely finished in time, but really I wrote quite fast considering the care I was taking with the words.

I woke up at 3:30 from sneezing and congestion. I went back to sleep about an hour later, and it was okay because I went to sleep early in the first place. Then in the middle of breakfast I had another attack and decided to take some medicine. I find it incredible that I’m still experiencing allergy symptoms when it’s nearly December.

I’ve also been thinking about asking for a change in my Wednesday classes. As they are now, unless I grab a quick bite at a convenience store, I’m always rushing home, gobbling dinner, and rushing back to work to make it to my first class. Plus, I’m tired of teaching that first student. The student himself has some difficult points, and then his mother frequently attends class with him, which always makes me uncomfortable. I’ve taught him for a long time too, so I think maybe it’s time to share the pain. On the other hand, I could really use all the money that I can get, so asking to decrease my salary is not smart. But in the end, I think I will need the extra time and lack of stress, so I’ll probably talk to my boss about it in the near future.

Yesterday I got an email from Liberty about my transcript saying that it wasn’t in my file. Considering that I received notification of my order’s receipt and another that my transcript had been sent, I find it most probable that the transcript simply was not put in my file rather than that it wasn’t received. So my next step will be to contact the registrar or someone at Liberty and request a search for my transcript.

I’ve also figured out that I will need to take two undergrad classes. They can be taken at ACC, but the composition class seems like it would be important, so I’d like to take it from Liberty if possible. If I take the graduate school version, it focuses on how to teach composition, which seems very practical. On the other hand, if the financial impact of another graduate course is substantial (more than $1k), I think I’ll probably stick with ACC. I’ll have to run the numbers again.

Brainstorming about my hero

Although I outlined my goals well yesterday, in the end I spent too much time on an idle challenge. It’s only supposed to take about ten minutes if I’m in the right place, but it took 30 minutes for the easy version and an hour for the harder version (which is what I want to do, but it only gets harder from here). I thought about cheating, but I realized that the challenge is probably my most important goal, so cheating would be almost as bad as using infinite points to make myself strong enough to beat everything. So I decided to not cheat and instead do another week of normal grinding in the hopes that things will be easier next weekend.

It was a productive day though. I spent almost two hours reading Japanese light novels. It would be better to read newspapers, but it’s a whole lot better than reading only English like usual. Also, I’m pretty sure I know what topic I will discuss in the meeting—classroom routines. It’s something I wish I had more control over, but it’s also something that everyone has experience with and they can probably contribute to a discussion about it. I did make a start with programming, but quickly found a new topic that I needed to research—error handling. I could copy previous code that I’ve used, but I wanted to feel like I understood what I was writing and why, so I decided to research it more before using it. I even made a start of reading about it.

For tomorrow’s first class at the junior high school, I have to write an example essay about a person that I like or respect. I need to write about three to four good characteristics of the person. My dad is always a good choice, but I’d like to make it a little more interesting if possible. I thought about doing something silly, but I don’t think that will go over well with the teacher. She is much more open to humorous English than any other teacher I’ve worked with, but I could potentially jeopardize the whole writing project which no teacher would appreciate. If I could pick anyone in history, John Milton is my go-to hero, but I feel like he would be quite removed from the students’ experience. It would be much better for me to choose someone that they know about. My knowledge of Japanese history and the extent of Japanese students’ knowledge of Japanese history is very sparse, so that’s probably a topic best avoided. But that only leaves famous modern people, most likely from Japan, which I don’t really know about.

Why do I like John Milton? He wrote great poetry and knew about so many things. He could speak and write in ten languages. He travelled a lot. He was uncompromising in his political beliefs. He was a teacher. He became completely blind, but continued to write via scribes, and in this manner he wrote his greatest poetry. Now, can I find a modern Japanese person that shares any of these traits? Hah, unlikely. Alternatively, I could search for stories about inspirational people.

The beautiful breakfast

I’m thinking more and more that it’s important for me to start writing before noon, preferably between 10 and 11, if I’m going to actually record my thoughts. I still have some thoughts, but most of my morning musings have been lost by noon.

Yesterday I spent a ridiculous amount of time on the idle game, mostly hacking it. I also worked on my memory program, though it was really difficult to focus while I was working on the structural aspects of the program. Once I got into the actual programming though, it went pretty quickly. By the end of the day I made an important method and a corresponding test, and was satisfied with its functionality. I didn’t manage to clean the bathroom, nor did I read Japanese, so it was not the most productive day.

One of my thoughts from yesterday was once again to confirm how important it is to write my thoughts down. I’m really glad that I’m doing it, and I hope I can continue doing it regularly. But I’m skeptical that I will, because I was also really glad about going to the gym and felt completely convicted of the necessity and benefits, and yet I’ve now skipped over three weeks and have very little drive to return.

Oh, I went to Tsuruya yesterday and finally bought matcha capsules for my coffee maker. I drank the tea this morning, and it was even better than I had hoped. Furthermore, I made blueberry granola, and that blue with the matcha green was beautiful. Maybe in the near future I will take a picture of my breakfast, with eggs and tomatoes and maybe an orange. Very colorful.

After work today I’m going to try to finish my file IO methods and their associated tests in my memory program. I’ll also read some Japanese, and maybe send an email to Liberty about my transfer credits. Of course I’ll continue playing my idle game, but hopefully its days of capturing most of my attention are numbered.

Ouch

I went to the party on Friday night and had a great evening. The meat was fantastic--it was high-grade beef which we dipped in raw egg. The seafood was good too, especially the squid sashimi, but some of the sashimi was a bit too fishy for my taste. After the restaurant, we went to a "snack bar". It's closest American equivalent would probably be a karaoke bar, but I've never been to one so I'm not sure about that. Snack bars have a seedy reputation, but the one we went to was pretty classy. I sang some karaoke songs, but I think I was a bit too far in my cups to do a good job. But anyway, it was one of the best, most comfortable parties I have ever attended.

However, we ate a lot of salty meat and fish without carbs, and I drank a lot of beer without water. Usually if I think I'm going to drink a lot, I make a rule in my head to match my alcohol with water, and then I have no problems. But this night I completely neglected that rule. Actually, I've never been to a drinking party with Japanese people where I drank more than a few beers, so I let my guard down. Plus, no one else was drinking water either--I wonder if they had as rough a time of it as I did. Because as a result, I learned how terrible it is to have to clean vomit off fabric, and worse, to do it with a headache and nausea. I couldn't keep my lunch down yesterday, but I felt almost normal by dinner time, and today I'm fine. Still, I'm going to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Incidentally, I was worried about my transportation before the party. I ended up walking there and then one of the teachers acted as DD and dropped me off near my home. I kind of wish I had walked home--it might have saved me from laundry purgatory.

So yesterday was more or less a write-off, but I did get a good bit of Japanese reading in. This morning I was thinking back on the week--what did I even do after work? Monday was productive because I got a health check and haircut and went shopping. Wednesday I taught classes. Friday was the party. Tuesday and Thursday? I suspect that I'm spending way too much time on my "idle" game, so it's time to put an end to it. With that in mind, I looked into buying my way to victory, but it turned out that $20 would at best get me three nice features that probably would probably take weeks to even make a difference. Thus, I turned to application data editing, or "cheating". Hopefully it will speed up the process of my becoming bored with the game. I also played Mass Effect for about two hours yesterday, but I died about five times in combat and gave up. I'm consistently amazed by the depth of the game, though.

Today my primary goal was to get all my laundry sorted and finishing cleaning up from the weekend. At this point all I have left in that is the bathroom. My other big goal is to make a few junit test cases for my memory program. It is a beautiful day though, and I kind of need to go to the supermarket (again), so we'll see how that works out. Tomorrow my goal is to write an email to Liberty requesting a transcript evaluation, and from then figure out my topic for next week's city meeting.

Emotional

I’m feeling really emotional today. It might be because I woke up from a dream in the middle of the night. I went back to sleep quickly, but I still remember the dream because the emotion was so strong. I was wandering through campus at Grove City College, and remembering all the great memories, and feeling sad, even desolate because the possibility of having these experiences was gone forever. To be honest, in my waking mind, I don’t feel like I made that many good memories in college—most of them were in the first semester, and that was probably because so many things were new and exciting.

Anyway, it made me theorize that some people feel certain emotions more strongly than others, depending on the person. I think the emotion I feel strongest is nostalgia and loss. I don’t really get angry, and I can’t think of a time that I was extremely happy or excited, and as mentioned before I don’t feel a strong sense of love or lust.

I thought that before school, but since being at school today I have felt some strong anger. I’m really frustrated at the lack of instructions in my job. Part of it is my fault, because I don’t seek enough clarification, but the teachers are busy and I feel like I’m imposing on them already by giving them the expectation that they must speak English. Furthermore, I don’t understand the purpose of my work some of the time, which makes the instructions more difficult to follow, and also causes me to feel like I’m not really accomplishing anything. I’m also annoyed because Japanese people are always asking for comments, but I don’t even know what that means. Upon asking for clarification, I was told, “your feelings”. But in general my feeling today is frustration, and I’m not going to tell that to the students.

So I’m also frustrated by the expectations of English proficiency in Japanese schools—they want their students to know so many grammatical structures and formulas even though most students struggle with the most basic sentence. By the third grade (ninth grade equivalent), most of them have maybe 100 words in their vocabulary—how can they do a debate, or even communicate effectively when they are so limited? But for the sake of tests they are expected to form the conditional clauses and participle phrases. It’s because the Japanese way is to teach it like math, because that gives correct answers and relies a lot on teacher-imparted information. But in math you only have to memorize the numbers and then at most a couple of characters for each concept. With a language there is so much more involved, you can’t possibly expect to progress in formulas at the same rate! Ugh, consider me triggered.

In first period the third graders had a debate. First of all, the topic was rather vague—living with robots, is it good or bad? The debaters couldn’t decide on the definition of a robot, which (I would think) should be the most fundamental step. Several students couldn’t speak clearly, and frequently the other team didn’t understand what was said. Then I checked a bunch of essays in which the majority of the students couldn’t write “His name is __” correctly. I’m really discouraged.

Tonight I have a drinking party with the male teachers at one of my elementary schools. Unfortunately it isn’t near Shiojiri station, and it’s supposed to rain tonight which makes cycling unpleasant at best. I’m not supposed to cycle anyway if I drink alcohol, but I could cycle to the restaurant and then walk the bike home if it isn’t raining. Google says it’s a 45-minute walk, and with the temperature as cold as it has been lately, that sounds a little miserable. But that’s probably what I will do.

Sleepy

I was too busy yesterday to write, and I ended up being short on time this morning so now I’m writing in the afternoon and feeling very sleepy. My most common thoughts in the morning recently have addressed the transience of autumn. It’s so beautiful and yet so short, especially this year it seems.

This week I’ve been turning off the computer by 9:15 and gone to sleep around 9:30. I tend to wake up around 6, so I should be getting enough sleep—why am I still so sleepy?

I've continued to play Mass Effect at a reasonable pace. Tonight I will only have about an hour of free time, but tomorrow I need to either go climbing or work on a project--most likely my memory project.

Arduino Weekend

Obviously I failed my goal of writing over the weekend. I should have been able to write on Saturday morning, but shortly after noon I received my Arduino kit, and before that I was anticipating it too much to concentrate on anything. The Arduino kit is a circuit board with many electrical components that can be set up for many functions. I heard about it many weeks ago, but after looking at some of the projects online, I decided that it wasn’t practical enough to invest in. But then last week one of my coworkers mentioned it in response to my announcement that I was interested in embedded programming, so after looking at it again I decided that I couldn’t really consider myself interested if I didn’t give the Arduino a shot.

So over the weekend I built 2/3rds of the included projects. It is fun and interesting to make things, and gratifying that I can revisit my C++ skills, but I’m still having some difficulty thinking of actually practical applications for it. In the end though, that’s not the reason I bought it—I primarily wanted experience with this type of programming, and I think I got it. To really get my money’s worth out of it, though, I would like to find a few applications.

I didn’t play a lot of video games this weekend, but I did play a bit of Mass Effect and found it less frustrating than before, and even fun, and the story really sucked me in, even though parts of it made me cringe in the same way that most movies do, with unrealistically fast changes of opinion.

Last week I spent a lot of time programming, and even after being fully accepted to Liberty’s MAT program I felt no enthusiasm, and even considered giving up on it. But thinking about it more, I have made my resolution to get a Master’s in education even more firm. I’ve enumerated several reasons before about the value of a Master’s, but furthermore it’s a safety net. I get and lose interest in a lot of things, including programming, but I’ve managed to stay in education for nearly ten years so I know I can stick with it, if nothing else. So now that I’ve decided this, I’m not going to waver on it any more.