Classes!

There’s another JTE here. She’s only part time, and no one ever seems to know when she’s going to show up. Also, her English is horrible. I have no idea how she manages to teach the subject. They track the English classes here, so Kae takes the more advanced kids, and Hoyuri takes the slow ones.

In the middle school classes, I don’t really have much to do. I say good morning to the students, wait for Kae (or Hoyuri) to finish their spiel in Japanese, then they tell me what to read or say. Sometimes its reading new words and having the students repeat, sometimes its doing listening exercises, and other times its explaining and conducting a game (for the advanced kids – the slow ones can barely say “my name is”). Its pretty easy.

Kae lets me come up with games and warm-up activities for class, which is good. She’s really open to new ideas. I have a feeling that by the end of the year, she may even let me run a couple classes (teach grammar lessons and stuff). Hoyuri is part time, so she doesn’t really give a crap about anything. If I showed up and said, “I want to play this game,” she’d let me (less work for her, right?). But she’s also just as happy teaching right from the textbook and treating me like a human tape-recorder – just telling me to read this or that (which she can barely even communicate).

Kae already has me grading papers. I graded the 8th graders summer assignment, and the 7th graders fifty-word quiz. That quiz… oh boy… I feel bad for these kids trying to learn to spell English words. But some of these kids… oh man, I got some “herro”s (instead of “hello”). “Table” was the most frequently misspelled word, and “father” was an absolute disaster. Most of the kids left that one blank. Two of the kids’ (who, Kae latter told me, have learning disabilities) I didn’t even grade – I just felt too bad.