a Monday in the life

Ok... in the interest of being consistent, I am going to try to write about my day today, too.  I skipped Friday because it was the "research meeting" and I was not at my school.  I also picked a really bad week to start writing these because test day is Wednesday and therefore I will probably not have any classes this week, and therefore nothing extremely exciting.  But I am still going to write a bit about the days if I can.  sometimes funny things happen even when I am not in class.  For example, there was a funny moment this morning during the teachers meeting...

Head teacher: "Ok, let's have the club reports.  First, table tennis."
Table tennis adviser (is adviser really spelled with an e?  I like advisor better but it gets red squiggly lines under it...) made his announcement, if I understood correctly, a student got 2nd and another got 5th.  YAY!
(head nodding and smiling all around and other teachers said "good work")
Head teacher: "good work.  Baseball?"
Baseball adviser: "Um...I do not really want to remember it.  We lost."
(general chuckles all around)
Head teacher: "good...work?"

Ok, so that was just part of the meeting.  poor baseball team.  It must have been bad.  He did give some other details about good plays and such, but something extremely bad probably happened. 

On to the rest of my day...

No classes because the students are studying for midterms.

Let's sidetrack for a moment while I tell you about midterms (or test days in general) in Japan...

They schedule midterms here (remember, junior high school) all on one day.  So the teachers all coordinate and they produce reports that show what the kids will be tested on and what the kids should know, etc.  BUT THEN...leading up to test day, they do nothing new and review only.  Can you imagine?  I suppose I am just considering my own experience in school (the only experience I have, as a matter of fact) but when I had midterms, the teachers did not give us time in class to study and review.  We had to do it on our own.  They kept going, and often we started new material that would not be on the test.  Also, after school activities were not canceled.  But in Japan, they stop everything and review, review, review!!  Granted, I do not think I ever had all my midterms on one day, but still...I guess it is just a very different system.  The strangest part?  NO GRADES!  The kids do get scores out of 100 points on the test, but they count for nothing.  I can tell you now, that at least half of the students will get under 50 points on English.  But it does not matter at all.  Last year I saw scores in the teens, and it was just completely irrelevant to life.  Also, on test day, the teachers who proctor the tests are rotated around, so English teacher might proctor for social studies and social studies for math, etc etc etc.  They do not want the teachers in the rooms to be able to accidentally give students a hint when answering questions.  Also, if students drop a pencil or anything, the proctor has to go get it.  Students cannot turn around, pick up their own pencil, move their chair or desk,  blink more than 24 times a minute, or, obviously, talk.  In fact, even during lunch, the students are not allowed to turn their desks.  (usually for lunch, they make groups, but on test day, they have to stay in their lines facing front)  Remember, no grades here...  And then... after test day, the teachers grade frantically that night and give the tests back the next day.  And when they give the tests back, they spend the whole class period going over the correct answers!  That is something a teacher in America would probably not do.  I think my teachers would go over problems that a lot of people got wrong, but never the whole test word for word.

In all my free time today, I studied kanji and worked more on my Halloween game.  It is really difficult to think of games and activities that keep these kids interested.  Part of the problem is that I go to class and do quiz games often, so another quiz game, only Halloween themed was out of the question.  I think I am going to do a board game.

Lunch today.... rice, milk, soup, veggies, and oden...(oden can be a soup or served on a plate or a skewer and it's made of delicious things like konnyaku (pretty much fiber and water) chikuwa (fish cake) daikon (big radish) and a boiled egg.)  And during lunch something happened to me for the first time.  A student said my eyes were scary and would not make eye contact with me.  There is a confidence booster for ya.  I also go to listen in on their conversation about how old they think all the teachers are (they are wrong) and which ones they think are cute and which ones have nice handwriting.

Back to doing nothing.

Cleaning.

Home.

Luckily, tonight I have eikaiwa (English conversation class) and it is super fun.  Something to look forward to since the MatsuJun drama ended.