Official start of the work week: A few notes and observations

Official start of the work week: A few notes and observations

I just finished a short yet sweet welcome speech to all 700 students at Omagari High School. I officially start my work at the high school this week. By that I mean I am in the classroom, team teaching with other Japanese teachers, and working with the students. I am working with four other teachers in all. The last few weeks have been “summer vacation” for teachers and students. Now there are two reasons I became a teacher: To make a difference in the lives of young students and more importantly for the summer off aspect of American teaching. Here in Japan although the students are officially out of school, they come to school anyway for a couple hours each day to take classes, study, and participate in clubs. They have regular homework that takes up a great deal of their time. The teachers have it worse, they are expected to come to school during all vacation periods from 8am-5 pm. Some teach class, some coach, but the majority I think just pass the time idly.

Since I am a teacher at Omagari High, I am expected to do the same. So for the past few weeks, I show up at 8 and leave at 425. I mostly spend these days on facebook which is like computer crack. Once I am on fb there are always people to “chat” with and I cant force my hand away from the computer. I think I am getting arthritis from typing so much.

However I have gotten a few days where I am able to work with students on their english skills. This has meant mostly editing speeches and conversing with them in English. Let me just tell you how awesome it is to work with these students. One girl, who is a sophomore (Senior 2) is reciting Obama’s inauguration speech for a contest at the end of the month. Now this fifteen year old girl, who is speaking english as a second language is reading me this speech in near perfect English. Not only is it near perfect but the vocab in this speech is quite difficult and she is nailing every word.

There are three types of high schools here, academic, agricultural, and technical. Based on test scores students will attend one of these three. Omagari is an academic school which means the students are going onto university, which means their motivation to learn is greater, which makes my job easier and more gratifying. The students who I have worked with so far are extremely motivated, well behaved, and respectful. This is a stark difference to my experience teaching in the States. Now I love the kids at mt ridge but I cant see the majority of them coming in to school on summer vacation to study or spending their whole weekend doing homework. Literally these kids spend the whole weekend doing homework, anytime I ask them about their weekend, the response is “I did homework” I say to them you need to have fun, relax, hang out with friends, and they tell me that they are unable to do so with all their studies. Maybe besides English I can teach some of these students to relax a little bit and not take things too seriously.