Fridays

I enjoy Fridays, and not just because it's the last day before the weekend. The last day for us native teachers that is, the Japanese teachers and students often have school on Saturday. I like Fridays because I have two junior high classes that are a ball to teach.


My first one, the first period of the day are really smart, attentive and energetic. There are no personalities that really shine out more than the others, but they are all sweet. One girl is tiny, about the size of a small seven year old. What she lacks in size she makes up in energy and has an infectious smile. Today in class, the students were doing an exercise where they had to interview many of their classmates. One boy came to tell me that he was finished, he had filled the paper. I told him that was great and asked if he could go and help some other students. He happily said yes and then I got a series of bows from him as he walked backward to the other students and said thank you many times. I can't imagine getting that from a twelve year old Australian student.


My second junior high class is in the last period of the day. It's my favourite junior high class of the week. It's funny really, I start, first thing Monday morning with my least favourite class and finish, last thing Friday afternoon with the best. The dynamics in this class are great. I put it down to the fact that the alpha male lived in America for a number of years and has excellent English. All the other boys want to be just like him, so they work their butt off and compete to do better than him. It really makes my job easy. One boy, H, is a little strange, but keeps us all amused with his antics. The girls in the class are a delight and we often laugh at how crazy the boys are.

In between the two, I have a high school class. They are mostly great except for one girl that gets on my nerves a bit. She talks the whole way through the class.

I'm tired by the end of the day though as my last two classes are back-to-back and are on opposite sides on the campus, so I always have to dash to make it in time.

Adrianne teaches one of my students from last year. I remember him fondly for just how truly dense he could be. In an interview test he produced "My mother.... my mother.... my mother cooks eat me" to the question "What club do you belong to". At the time he was so proud of himself for getting out the reply. Well today, Adrianne showed me a piece he had written about medicinal foods.

"I would like to try ginger. Because, I want to do a lot of poop and I want to make my poop a good shape."

Ummm... thanks for that information......