Work (=) Life

Being an ALT has quickly gone from sitting around with little (if anything) to do during summer vacation to being slammed, staying overtime, and taking work home. The prefectural speech competition for first year students is coming up, so I've been helping prepare for that. The students and teacher supervisors have been staying until seven every day practicing, and I've been with them (voluntarily) about three or four days a week. I also helped out with test grading, which took me about an hour per 40 student class because I'm a newb. In order to meet the deadline, I had to take the last 80 home with me. Then there was the junior high lesson prep, complete with a new powerpoint. Powerpoints, by the way, always take longer than you think. Always.

I also got my sudden schedule switch on Monday. At lunch I found a note on my desk saying that I would teach the new lesson to a class that had been moved up from later in the week, "surprise surprise!" (that "surprise surprise," incidentally, was probably the only remaining thread supporting my slightly overtaxed sense of humor). Luckily, I had made extra copies for that lesson just for the heck of it.

So, all that was before Wednesday. Wednesday, I gave my junior high lessons and made the grave mistake of rewarding correct answers on the "quiz time" slides with stamps. These students went crazy. Totally berserk. One class chanted answers in unison, and in order to end it I had to give all 30 students stamps--and these were classes I didn't even think were listening! It turned out they were just discussing the powerpoint with their neighbors in Japanese while I presented in English. Then there were students who would read the slides aloud to themselves. Madness.

Wednesday was another stay-until-seven sort of ESS practice, this time working on pronunciation and intonation. I am looking forward to the end of the speech contest for the student's sake at this point--after a 2-3 hour practice, they go straight to cram school until 10 at night. Anyway, I thought Wednesday would be hump day not only for the week's duration, but also for my workload, especially because one of Thursday classes had been moved to Monday.

Nope! When I came in to work today, I was greeted by another schedule change note: one of the classes I had taught on Tuesday was having their next lesson FIRST PERIOD, in ten minutes. I made copies of lesson two and raced up, and then realized that I had already taught this lesson to this class. I was expected to teach the handout-heavy lesson three, which the other ALT and I wouldn't originally have to do until later next week!

Surprise first period, no one likes you and your parents think you are a mistake.

So, standing with the sensei in front of this class, I had to make up lesson four--which we were going to plan together and include on the midterm. The assignment off the top of my head that will now be the template for all lesson 4s: write train/bus directions to your favorite place in Ishikawa, read them aloud in pairs, and then present them to the class.

It would have been better with more than one minute of planning time. I think the next classes will get things like maps and bus routes, although it was pretty awesome to hear directions to Kenrokuen given from memory. The students wrote some really informative compositions, and I'm taking notes on their places and directions to use over my upcoming six day weekend.

It's good to be busy, and good to have to think on my feet. It's exhausting, but I feel like I might be starting to earn my keep.