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September 12th, School Part
9/12
OMG my first classroom lesson!
Going to school on a Saturday was weird, but kind of fun because it’s different. I plunked a giant suitcase into my bicycle basket so I could excite the students. It was the day the middle schoolers could scope out our high school and I wanted to pretend I’d JUST arrived from the States. I wanted to impress them, so I also brought nattou (fermented soy beans), which most people outside Japan hate. I can eat them, but I don’t like them. Still, I wanted to introduce the point, “to try new things,” and I wanted to impress them a little, so that was that. Though I pretended to like them while I was in class, the experience really reminded me that I hate nattou. It’s slimy and mealy and it tastes like the feet of an old man. Not to mention it’s got strings that float behind it and stick to your face.
No, I don’t like nattou.
I spent most of the morning making robots for my 2nd grade lesson with The Canadian on Monday. I thought about doing Mr. Potatohead, but they were really learning body parts, not face parts, so I decided to make robot body parts so the kids could build their own robots as we dictated which parts to pick. Before I knew it, I was doing it in a grand scale, with 4.5 robots worth of parts, all in brightly colored markers and mounted on cardboard to make them more substantial. I covered my skirt in cardboard schnibbles in the process and I had to scour the basement for discarded boxes when I ran out of cardboard. The other teachers were fascinated by my project lol
I taught the middle school lesson that afternoon with K-Sen. The students were very intelligent, one might argue more intelligent than my high schoolers! It was cute to see them walking around and gawking at me. In the lesson, they were kind of quiet, especially at first, but I quickly made friends with the vocal ones and the rest followed suit on the confidence coattails of their chatty friends. Our activities went really well. I played up my personality a lot, which again was difficult because they’re so subdued, but I decided to keep trooping. They didn’t really look at my props while I gave my self-introduction because they were so busy writing the answers as I spoke, and they don’t really respond to jokes, so it’s difficult to tell if they’re entertained by you or not. Still, it went well and both K-sen and myself were happy.
After I walked around school on the high of open houseness. I ran into Chikka, attending some meetings on behalf of her younger son, and I stopped to talk to Nana from the art club, while she was hunting for new art club recruits (she’s the student who loves Johnny Depp). Nana’s got a lot of personality, and it’s cute how cool we think the other is just for being herself. Even the classic awkward high school girl behavior of “omg let’s link fingers while facing each other” is becoming more natural when I see her lol I also ran into my smartest student (who is also a member of the international club) while she was attending an info session on a prestigious university. She is only a first year and she’s already checking out universities she can attend in order to become a diplomat! What??
Good times.
OMG my first classroom lesson!
Going to school on a Saturday was weird, but kind of fun because it’s different. I plunked a giant suitcase into my bicycle basket so I could excite the students. It was the day the middle schoolers could scope out our high school and I wanted to pretend I’d JUST arrived from the States. I wanted to impress them, so I also brought nattou (fermented soy beans), which most people outside Japan hate. I can eat them, but I don’t like them. Still, I wanted to introduce the point, “to try new things,” and I wanted to impress them a little, so that was that. Though I pretended to like them while I was in class, the experience really reminded me that I hate nattou. It’s slimy and mealy and it tastes like the feet of an old man. Not to mention it’s got strings that float behind it and stick to your face.
No, I don’t like nattou.
I spent most of the morning making robots for my 2nd grade lesson with The Canadian on Monday. I thought about doing Mr. Potatohead, but they were really learning body parts, not face parts, so I decided to make robot body parts so the kids could build their own robots as we dictated which parts to pick. Before I knew it, I was doing it in a grand scale, with 4.5 robots worth of parts, all in brightly colored markers and mounted on cardboard to make them more substantial. I covered my skirt in cardboard schnibbles in the process and I had to scour the basement for discarded boxes when I ran out of cardboard. The other teachers were fascinated by my project lol
I taught the middle school lesson that afternoon with K-Sen. The students were very intelligent, one might argue more intelligent than my high schoolers! It was cute to see them walking around and gawking at me. In the lesson, they were kind of quiet, especially at first, but I quickly made friends with the vocal ones and the rest followed suit on the confidence coattails of their chatty friends. Our activities went really well. I played up my personality a lot, which again was difficult because they’re so subdued, but I decided to keep trooping. They didn’t really look at my props while I gave my self-introduction because they were so busy writing the answers as I spoke, and they don’t really respond to jokes, so it’s difficult to tell if they’re entertained by you or not. Still, it went well and both K-sen and myself were happy.
After I walked around school on the high of open houseness. I ran into Chikka, attending some meetings on behalf of her younger son, and I stopped to talk to Nana from the art club, while she was hunting for new art club recruits (she’s the student who loves Johnny Depp). Nana’s got a lot of personality, and it’s cute how cool we think the other is just for being herself. Even the classic awkward high school girl behavior of “omg let’s link fingers while facing each other” is becoming more natural when I see her lol I also ran into my smartest student (who is also a member of the international club) while she was attending an info session on a prestigious university. She is only a first year and she’s already checking out universities she can attend in order to become a diplomat! What??
Good times.