Semester’s End and New Faces

So, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Sorry about that! I’ve been pretty busy with end of the semester things, summer supplementary classes, office paper work, renewing my work contract, and preparing for the two new ALTs who are coming (or rather, recently came) to my town. And no, I don’t mean to the tiny village I live in, I mean the overarching town which encompasses many small villages including my own! Anyway, enough excuses, I’ll fill you in instead!

End of the Semester

As many people who read this blog regularly probably know, Japan’s school year starts in April and ends in March. This is quite different for my American self who is used to the school year starting in August and ending in May or June with a huge long summer break in between school years. Well, the system here includes more school days, shorter breaks, and a lot of activities even during breaks. We’ll get into that later, though.

So the semester ended, and we had a small ceremony to mark the end. Well, really we had multiple ceremonies! One was for the end of the semester, one was to review the goals of each grade and to see if they had been able to achieve them, one was for sports awards, and then we watched our music club do a taiko performance!

Summer Vacation

The students get a month of summer vacation! Well, 5 or so weeks, actually. But here’s the catch, they have a ton of activities and even some supplementary lessons, as well as summer homework. Not quite the care free summer vacation we’re used to in the US! Though elementary school students are entirely free, middle school students do a lot during their summer vacations, and high school students do even more. I had some summer homework when I was in high school, but only for some school subjects, and not nearly as much as these kids are assigned!

For the first week of summer vacation, I was coming to school to help teach summer supplementary lessons. For English, this time was used to do the summer homework which was assigned, to reinforce some of the grammar points which a majority of the students had struggled with, and to give the students an open floor opportunity to ask the English teachers any questions they may have and to get help on anything they don’t quite understand.

Even on days where they had supplementary lessons, students had club activities. They do badminton, softball, or taiko practice every day. Well, most every day. With the heat wave that’s been hitting Japan, we’ve cancelled practice due to safety reasons. Now that classes are over, I still look out the window to see students running laps, swinging bats, and catching balls. Looking across the field into the gym you can see students performing taiko on the second floor, while some of their classmates undoubtedly swing rackets in the main court of the gym just below.

Students do have some good things to look forward to, though! While I’m sure many of them actually enjoy going to their club practices (or else, why would they join in the first place?) there’re also summer festivals, fireworks, and other awesome events that happen in the summer time!

As for me, students not having class anymore means that it’s easier for me to take vacation days! I’ll fill you in on that later. For now, just know that I do have some awesome things planned!

Summer Camp

I also taught at a one day summer camp for elementary school students! It was awesome! I didn’t speak a word of Japanese for the whole day (at least not to the students) and was able to communicate the rules of the game we were playing with them at my section of the camp, as well as practice vocabulary and talk about different things in English. At first, many of the students were quite nervous (speaking in your second language all day can be tiring and tough!) but seemed to loosen up more as the day went on. In the end, I think it was a major success! And I loved being able to interact with students in English that they understood. It truly boosts their confidence when they can understand what’s happening with no Japanese support.

Though I’d love to be able to do English class entirely in English, it’s not nearly as possible when you’re teaching new information as opposed to review, and when you teach a class for 45-50 minutes instead of 10-15. Either way, it was an experience which I can take a lot away from! And I hope to be involved again next year.

New ALTs

Alright, so, two of our ALTs left this year. We only have 4 in our BoE in general, and the one who just came in April will go back to the states soon to continue his studies. This means a few things. (1) I’m now the “most experienced” and most long term ALT at our BoE (YIKES!). (2) I spent a full day yesterday helping the new ALTs with moving in stuff. (3) I’m gonna have to do that again in April when the next new ALT comes…

Yesterday we had two new arrivals to my area of Kochi! The new ALTs are both quite young as they just graduated college. It was a long a stressful day for all involved, but I’m really proud of them for handling it as well as they did! They really held out and we got everything done that needed to be done. What exactly does that entail, you ask?

8:30 – I left the BoE in my village to go to the main office. There I met with a BoE representative who would go with me to pick up the new ALTs. Their supervisor had some business to attend to and wasn’t able to come to the airport. The new ALTs got on a bus to go to the airport.

9:30 – We left the main office for the airport. The ALTs got on their flight from Tokyo to Kochi.

10:30 – We arrived at the airport and prepared to greet the new ALTs

11:00 – The plane lands and the ALTs arrive in Kochi! We load their luggage into the car and begin our crazy day.

11:30 – But first, lunch! It’s going to be a long day for all and eating is the best way to prepare for that. We also had to lay out a game plan and do some general introductions. I don’t think the new ALTs would appreciate being thrown into the fire even sooner than they actually were in the end.

12:30 – First stop, town hall. We went to get their addresses sorted and printed onto the back of their residence cards. This is a longer process than you might think, and involved a lot of forms and a lot of Japanese!

2:00 – Setting up bank accounts is the next step! We started filling out stacks of paperwork, and banks here close at 3:00! That is to say, they don’t begin services anymore once it becomes 3:00. If you’re already in the middle of a service, they will certainly see it through. Opening a bank account takes about an hour or so here, though. And one of the ALTs wanted to convert some American dollars into yen! Around the end of this process, their supervisor arrives. She’s finished her meetings for the day and is able to come along for the rest of the necessary steps of moving in.

3:30 – The bank work is done! But while we were there we learned that the home addresses for the ALTs were somehow swapped…so we had to go back to the town hall to straighten it out. You know what that means? That’s right, more paperwork! At least they’d already done this once and knew how to fill it out this time around.

4:30 – Town hall stuff is finally finished! So it’s time to go get cell phone plans! I was without one for about a week when I came and it was quite frustrating not being able to contact anyone. Around this time, the supervisor for the new JETs tells me that I can go home. Well, if I go home, who’s going to translate for the phone plans? So, I stayed.

5:00 – We’re really getting started with this phone plan stuff! But it’s a long process to set up two phone plans with a translator. The two employees working with us were both 18 years old and had just graduated high school. One of them was the previous student of one of my friends! She was very good at English and was even able to help the new arrivals with some things in English. They were quite tired from the long day and I’m sure they were happy to have someone speaking English to them.

6:30 – Phone plans are set up, and both ALTs have working phones! Time to go see the apartments, drop off luggage, change, and head to the welcome party.

7:30 – Depart from Ino for the welcome party. It’s in the city and we’re all tired, so we don’t want to spend too long. But it ended up being a blast and we stayed for around an hour and a half or so in the end.

9:50 – Return to my car in Ino. Time to drive home to the mountains!

10:45 – Arrive at the office to drop off the key to the car. And now I get to walk home!

11:00 – Finally, I’m home!

It was a hectic and long day…and I’m so tired today as a result, but I’m so happy we got everything done!

New ALT Guide

The supervisor for the main office asked me if I would be willing to help make a guide for the process of moving in new ALTs. It should function in a way that, even without my constant interpreting, the new ALTs and supervisor should be able to handle setting up their new accounts and address among other things. We’re hoping to have it finished within this next year, but I’m not sure exactly how to go about it as I have never done such a project before. Time to get thinking!

Upcoming

I have some events coming up, including fireworks this Sunday, vacations throughout the summer, and conferences on teaching. Hopefully I’ll keep you properly updated!

Thanks for reading!

 

Until next time!! xx