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.