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 | Coverage Day: Wednesday, November 4th
Schools Visited: ES3
The title of this entry may have set the tone a little bit. Well, that's not to say my whole day was sadness and melancholy, but I did have to go on throughout carrying some grief with me. I discovered in the first class of the day that one of my 4th-grade girls has transferred out of the school, as her family moved to Eastern Japan. She was someone I had only just starting to notice as an individual, and luckily I did manage to get in a little bit of fun with her before her departure by way of fun together at the Cooking Club meet I joined last week (a href="http://www.anime-source.com/banzai/modules.php?name=Blog&bop=display_entry&id=637">Chef GTX.
That loss I could have dealt with easily, since as I said, she was someone I had only spoken with marginally. What really pinched my heart a little more was finding out in the 4th-period that ANOTHER student was gone. The 6th-grade class is full of thirteen wonderful students. The loss of ANY of them would make me upset, though of course, I have contended with the fact that they will ALL be leaving in March. Considering we're near the 2/3 mark of the year, it's a bit of relief that I did get to spend the bulk of the year with this girl, but sadly, I must say that the newest up-and-coming potential Xeno Ranger is now gone. She didn't have a nickname yet, but she was the quiet, serious girl who would often run up behind me and poke me randomly, trying to be all ninja-like or something. She was also the girl who started the whole tape-sticking game when I was helping in the watermelon patch back in the Spring, and the same game again when we were making the Haunted House for the school festival. She was a lot of fun and a great student. I will surely miss her.
I'm a little mad that the schools don't bother to share this kind of information with me. Though I am not directly-responsible for them, these kids are still MY students, and the chance to say a proper farewell to them is something I think I am entitled to. I can understand that maybe the admins still consider it a "private" issue and if the kids themselves want to say something to me, they have that freedom. I'm sure the kids would want to, but they are never sure when the last time I will actually see them will be, considering the consistant fluctuations to my schedule. Sigh... oh well, whatcanyado?
Well, as sad as the news may be, there is little chance of being upset when the rest of the kids are around. This school has finally fully-accepted me into its community, and now I can't go 5 steps without someone running up to me for a high-five, arm-grab, RPS123 match, or "jump" or "spin" request. Often times, too, they'll want to show me something, which results in my being pulled from one end of the building to the other. And though the attention is usually evenly-spread amongst the whole student populace, one particular 3rd-grader was exceptionally "genki" (energetic) around me today.
Surprise, surprise... it was MopBattle-chan. This girl is usually ALWAYS set to "hyper-friendly," though with my schedule for October completely rearranged and her mood being more subdued as of late, it was a welcome return to the good-ole days where she would follow me around non-stop. Goofy faces, funny noises, impromptu games of tag, sudden whacks on the head, yanking my arms, tying a jump-rope around my torso... wait, no... hold on... none of those last few are fun. Maybe I prefer the days of her being quiet and subdued, heh heh.
But yes... jump-ropes. Apparently there is going to be a "jump-rope festival" in February, so now the students are spending their morning free-time practicing their dances in groups. Hmmmm... February is 3 months away... that's a LOT of practicing. Most of them are already good at it, so I wonder what is so incredible that it will require 3 months of training.
Well anyway, yeah, about Mop-chan, she kept showing me her jump-rope, which looks a lot of string-candy (licorice, perhaps), so I kept saying I wanted to eat it. Numerous times we ended up in tugging wars with it, but I didn't get too much into it since I would feel terrible if it snapped. I just pulled enough to make her strain and get worked up, then I'd losen my grip... hopefully not at an instant when she was putting her whole body into it, otherwise she'd go crashing to the ground, haha.
About the actual classes today, I had 2nd-period with the 3rd/4th-graders. We reviewed Days of the Week, and I was very happy that they could recall the info so easily since it had been two weeks since their last lesson. For the new lesson, we started on Months of the Year, and again I was impressed with their progress. We only needed to go through the list twice before they were able to recall the info freely. Of course, we did singing* and more practice to really drill the knowledge in, plus a "when is your birthday?" group activity. The teachers came up to me later in the day and told me how much the kids really enjoyed the lesson.
* most of the songs on the CDs I have aren't very useful because they are sung too fast. However, the "12 Months" song I use for this lesson is perfect. Good tempo, good beat, good vocals... and the students really really like this song. In my ES1 4th-grade class, often times when I want to kill 30 seconds as I'm preparing papers or something, I'll just sing "January, Febr..." and then let them finish the song. They never get tired of it**, haha.
** Related-story... since we came to this unit in all my 3rd/4th-grade classes, I knew already that my ES1 4th-graders knew all the months perfectly since I taught them last year. Earlier in the week, I had spoken to 4-sensei briefly about planning the lesson. He was a little hesitant since obviously learning 12 new vocab words is a struggle, but I just shrugged it off and was like "believe me, this will be like a 5-minute lesson." He was absolutely amazed at how impressively these kids were able to handle the lesson. Oh, and these are the kids that their teacher from last year always said were "slow." Comes to show any group of kids can achieve as long as their mentor believes in them. (okay, I'll stop being sappy now)
The 6th-graders and 5th-graders both did textbook work today. The lesson is on "What do you want?" using a clothing shop as the setting. The only really funny part from these two classes was when I was doing the "how are you?" warm-up during the 6th-grade class, one of the smart, funny girls was being her usual loud self, always talking in-between her classmates' exercises. When it was her turn, I threw in a little curveball...
me: "how are you?"
her: (stands up slowly, checking to make sure chair isn't going to trip her)
me: (thinking she's taking too long) "I'm..."
her: (pauses to think)
me: "I'm..."
her: "I..."
me: "I'm... I'm... I'm..."
her: (starts to giggle) "I'm..."
me: (moving closer and closer) "I'm... I'm... I'm..."
her: (laughing harder, trying to think) "I..."
me: (just continuing) "I'm... I'm... I'm..."
her: (turns to the side, laughing)
me: "come on!! how are you? I'm... I'm... I'm..."
her: "I'm sleepy and hot!"
me: "yay!" (hands her her namecard and walks away)
The class lesson itself was kinda boring, though the kids are always lively and energetic. Problem is that they're always talking in Japanese and they're talking to the main teacher, which gives me little to do during most of the time, save for a few moments of properly pronouncing new vocabulary... well, one joke I fit in was I said "koala" was "koalalackula" or something like that... oh, wait, but that reminds me something else...
One of the vocab words was "donut", but Japanese people always say it like "donuts"... as in "do na tsu." I explained to them that when you have one, it's "donut," but when you have two, it's "donuts." One boy yelled out, "three?" I responded truthfully, "donuts." Then another student yelled out "four?"
My response: "donutstststs"
heeheeheeheehee... I'm just glad that they all got the joke, evidenced by their immediate laughter. Smart kids, these ones are.
Or maybe they're really stupid. Heehee... according to the girls, the boys in this class are all "baka!" And I was informed of this after class ended. Since the 4th-period is right before lunch, there is the extended break-period once we're done, so usually I hang around and talk to the kids. All the boys were wrestling on the floor in the middle of the room, while some of the girls were telling them to cut it out. When they wouldn't listen, the girls looked at me and said "they are baka!" Hahahah... half-English, half-Japanse... I love it. One of the really smart girls, for whatever reason, came up to us and pointed at herself and said, "I am baka." We were all shocked and were telling her, "nooo, not baka!! Don't be baka!!!" It turned into a running-joke throughout the day where anytime I saw her, I would tell her "don't be baka!"
I don't know why, but for the school's Culture Festival later this month, the 6th-grade class is going to be performing a play all in English. The teacher wrote a pretty simple script and did a great job with the language. Why he didn't ask me for support or anything is beyond me, though I suppose it's kinda like "well, it's not included in his schedule (since it's after-school), so we can't ask him directly", but of course I'm interested in seeing this work out, so I offered to help with the rehearsals on the days I'm there. I applaud their initiative.
I spent a lot of free-time going around to different activities today. In the 3rd-period, I found the 5th-graders in the home economics room using the sewing machines. They were making cloth bags from pre-printed patterns. Not surprisingly, a lot of the prints had English on them, so of course they all wanted me to read it all to them. In the 6th-period, the 5th/6th-graders were starting their practice for their Culture Festival musical performance. There wasn't much I could do to help with this, so I wandered off half-way through. I found the 4th-graders in their classroom making pachinko boards... which is basically a flat board with pins sticking out. You drop a marble or pinball onto the board and try to get it into a target slot at the base. I guess the people of Japan get addicted to gambling at quite an early age.
At dismissal time, I found MopBattle-chan again. Actually, I also found her after lunch where she wanted RPS123 and to pull on my arms some more. A few of the 1st/2nd-graders pulled me away from her (literally), where I ended up outside to run around with the little kids (including Mayonnaise-chan*). After most of the kids were gone for dismissal, I joined the After-School Program kids who were playing soccer outside. There were 9 of us, including one of the helper-parents who was brave enough to be on goal, so it was somewhat of a decent game. Wore me out tremendously. I have to work off all that fat from eating at Mister Donut so much this week, haha.
* I learned today that her sister is the 4th-grade girl who has been addicted to me lately. Both of them have become extremely interactive with me over the last few weeks. I don't know what the catalyst was, but I'm sure it's no coincidence that they both started up around the same time. Makes me think they've been talking about me at home and comparing stories.
I tried to stay as long as I could today, but I was incredibly hungry, so I left around 4:30pm. I won't be back at this school for two weeks because of the postponed junior high school Culture Festival. I'm sad because I really like this school, but oh well... the day will come before I know it.
And now, the bloggin' be done. Time to relax and tend to my fields on FarmVille via Facebook.... my new addiction.
Until next time... see you! |
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Displaying comment(s)
| #1 | 
bluemage |
What a silly thing to do, calling yourself baka. =)
2009-11-05 10:27:09 | | #2 | 
xenocrisis0153 |
@1 - haha, I should call her "Baka-chan"... though that sounds mean. Maybe "BakaGenius-chan"... no, that's too long. Hmmm... I'll think of something.
2009-11-11 08:03:59 | | #3 | 
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2009-11-25 00:18:42 |
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