Tuesday morning a couple of other Assistant Language Teachers in my area came to watch me teach, supposedly to get ideas about teaching for their own schools. Our lesson was supposed to be a normal one, nothing special, ignoring the visitors as much as possible (previous shadowing experiences have included the visitors as subsitute teachers […]
A teacher I met at an enkai told me she works at a small alternative high school, for kids who didn’t make it in the regular schools for whatever reason. After the structure and uniforms and delineated student-teacher relationships that define even my non-academic, mid-level school, I was curious about the kids who don’t play […]
Last night, in the absence of having Voyager episodes to watch or email to check, I cleaned my apartment (more like shuffled things into different piles) and made ready for winter (dug my kerosene heater out of the media equivalent of a snowdrift).
I also cooked dinner, for the first time in awhile. I’ve been skipping […]
Or alternatively, “empty chairs at empty tables.” Where did the entire staffroom disappear to? Do I hear an assembly in the gym? Well, it’s a good thing I no longer give a shit about whether they include me in stuff here at school…
Briefly considered going home there, upon being ditched yet again at my […]
It is supposedly the rainy season, but we haven’t had a drop in weeks. Today it is hot and humid and I can tell people are thinking what I’m thinking–better not complain, because if we use up all the heat adjectives before July we’ll have no superlatives left when August comes. Only the visiting Americans […]
So I was ranting about how my students aren’t learning anything.
Is English just an exceptionally difficult language to learn, for native speakers of Japanese? I think that can pretty much be ruled out. Taiwan is also an island, whose language also has little in common with English, and the English I saw/heard in Taiwan (judging […]
An English teacher at my school is preparing for a sabbatical in Canada. He will be studying English and teaching (leaving me with a stranger for my Tuesday morning class) and here is an excerpt from his research proposal:
…another problem is that some of my students do not think they have to make much effort […]
This week has seemed long, despite it’s only being four days. Maybe it’s because it was my first real week of teaching since I got here 9 months ago.
I say that because tables have turned and schedules have been rewritten, and it seems I am going to be earning my keep this time around. I […]
Today I went to school, as I usually do on weekdays, and sat at my desk, as I normally do on days when there are no students or classes. It was a low-key day, not many people there. Turns out it was a holiday celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the school.
As a matter […]