Friday, December 19, 2008

Take My Camera to Work Day - Part 3: 宇部西高校

Today is Friday! which means I was at 宇部西高校 - Ube West High School. This school was traditionally an agriculture school... and now it pretty much still is because they offer a lot of agricultural classes... however, I don't think it is "technically" an "official" agriculture school.... But it basically is. Anyway, this is my base school and I teach here every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.

Ube Nishi is at the top of a winding hill in the middle of nowhere. Riding my bike there and back (20 minutes one way) keeps me in shape : ) All the students walk their bikes up this final leg of the journey... and so do I. I rode my bike to the top without stopping ONCE... and it was quite an accomplishment.


Hayashi Sensei - my supervisor. That's my desk on the left!
(the one with the winter coat on the chair... it's mine!)


I was teaching them about Rudolph. The picture on the right is what I see from my perspective. They were supposed to pretend to be working... but the girls in the back couldn't resist the peace sign for a picture, haha.



Out of the 3 schools I teach at and the numerous classes I teach, this one is by far my favorite : ) It's a 1st year oral communication class. I really enjoy the students in this class.


At the bottom of the winding hill that leads up to the school is this Sake House. haha. And here's a picture I took of the sunset on my ride home from work today. It's crooked, I know.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Take My Camera to Work Day - Part 2: 宇部工業高校

Today was Thursday, which means I was at 宇部工業高校 - Ube Technical High School. I actually only had one class to teach today... and I definitely slacked on taking a bunch of pictures. But here are the ones I got:


Ube Technical High School (left) and Teachers' Shoe Cubbies (right)


I teach all boys at this school. It's a lot of fun!


Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Take My Camera to Work Day - Part 1: 宇部商業高校

I decided it was about time I got some pictures from work, so today I took my camera and took some pictures! Today is Wednesday which means I was at 宇部商業高校 - Ube Commercial High School. Hopefully I'll remember to get some pictures from my other schools before winter break!

There's a steep hill that leads up to Ube Commercial High School

Shoe lockers - you have to change into slippers and Staff Room - Every teacher's desk is in here

You can't even wear indoor slippers in some rooms (left) and Warming up by the heater before class (right)

Students working hard : ) (left) and Hayakawa Sensei and the class clown (right)


The track girls running after school

For my Christmas lesson plan, the students learned about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer through my awesome drawings on the board and the song. They had to listen to the song and some of the lyrics on their worksheets were out of order, so they had to number them in the correct order. It was harder for them than I thought it was going to be... I think they just didn't understand what they were supposed to do... but they eventually got it. Then after that, Hayakawa Sensei (the teacher who I team-teach with at this school) wanted them all to make Christmas cards for me. So they used this sheet we gave them that had Christmas card phrases in English with the Japanese translation. Almost all of the students stuck with the set phrases, but a handful of them branched out and wrote a little letter along with the set phrases. The cards turned out quite nice. Here's my favorite one:
They call me バーバラ先生 ("Barbara Sensei")... which is why when they wrote my name in English it turned out saying "Ms. Barbara"... instead of Ms. Belsito. ONE girl had a picture of the manger scene along with a Bible verse from the Chistmas story. I was shocked. Shocked. Almost no Japanese people even know that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. This girl must be one of the very few Christians in Japan. I thought about teaching them the Christmas story... but it didn't fit in with the amount of time I had to work with at this school because Hayakawa Sensei really wanted them to make the Christmas cards. Also, this is a bad reason, but honestly, I thought it would be too hard because the vocabulary would've been way out of their range and they probably wouldn't have understood... or have paid attention. But I did manage to throw in that on Christmas Eve I go to church with my family and we sing Christian Christmas songs and somebody reads the Christmas story from the Bible. But anway, here are some of my other favorites cards from students:


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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Time is FLYING!

I can't believe it's already the middle of December. That means I've been in Japan for almost 5 months now... crazy. Did I mention that it snowed about 2 weekends ago? It was the first weekend in December... no, I never mentioned it. Well it did! There were snow flurries... luckily they didn't stick though : )... but it was cold! However, last week it was in the 50s and even got up to 60 at one point! The weather here hasn't been too bad lately.



Last Friday, Fuji Sensei - another English teacher - came up to me and asked if I (well, more like told me) would give a presentation in front of the whole school Monday for 20 minutes about some of the differences between Japan and America... mostly cultural differences... but basically anything was game... oh yeah, one more thing... give the presentation entirely in Japanese. So of course I said sure. I pulled a power point presentation together all day Friday and touched it up Monday before 2pm... and it turned out really nice. I didn't have a chance to actually practice what exactly I was going to say though. I knew what I wanted to talk about and I hoped that I knew the vocab and grammar needed in order to say it... basically, I didn't practice the speech AT ALL... I just put the power point together and hoped for the best. I ended up talking about some hand gestures and body gestures that I thought were strange in Japan. I made them laugh too... very good sign : ) I was explaining how I thought it was funny that a lot of people bow while talking on the phone. I mean, the person on the other end can't even see you, so why do you bow?!?! I also talked about other things like the gesture they make if they want someone to come over (top right), or the gesture they make when they're talking about sushi (bottom right)... AND I talked about how it was "interesting" that Japanese people like to throw the peace sign up in basically EVERY picture! I even threw into my presentation how sleeping isn't tolerated in American schools day in and day out - if you sleep in class constantly, you'll get in trouble in America. I breifly touched on food, but then moved on to differences in the American high schools compared to Japanese high schools. I know that high schools in the US vary depending on where they are... but I touched on the general things such as how students in Japan have to clean their schools vs. the US where they hire janitors to clean the schools. Then I focused in on the high school I went to as an example. I used A LOT of pictures in my presentation and that helped A LOT... because my Japanese speaking ability could really use some help. My listening, reading and writing skills are way better than my speaking skills. It's hard enough to speak, but then when it's not even conversational where you can pick up on and feed off of the other person's language... it's even tougher. But I got through it and everybody understood me even though there were a lot of mistakes in my speaking. Let me say though - I actually had a head ache by the end of the day from racking my brain so much pulling Japanese out from ever nook in my brain in order to give the presentation. Seriously! But anyway, I thought this presentation was also a good way to show students that even if their English isn't PERFECT, they shouldn't be afraid to speak because even limited language abilities can be used to communicate and be understood... which is something I've personally been working on since before I can remember - like many other foreign language learners. It's funny because ever since I gave the presentation, I feel like teachers and students have begun to approach me and talk to me much more than before... which was basically never. I mean, students would say hi, good morning, etc.... but today after work, these 2 first year girls caught me before I left and talked to me for 45 minutes in the hallway about my presentation and how they really enjoyed it and they even expanded on it asking me lots of other questions... all in super freaky fast high school Japanese girl speech. It was hard and I didn't catch EVERYTHING in our conversation (even though I totally pretended like I did and made them believe that I did)... but I'm so glad that the presentation opened a little door and made me a lot more approachable... because before I was just the scary foreigner... and now I'm the interesting person... ok, well still foreign, but still. My school's "bonenkai" is this Friday... and I think it'll be really interesting and really fun. "Bonenkai" is an "end of the year" party that offices all over Japan have. I'm looking forward to it... hopefully some of the other teachers in the office will get a few drinks in them and find the courage to talk to me : )

Speaking of parties - the Yamaguchi JET Christmas Party was this past Saturday in Yuda Onsen. It was pretty fun. I'll end this entry with a few pictures from the Christmas party:



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Monday, December 8, 2008

Ube General Support School

Since it's exam time and I don't have any classes to teach at my 3 regular high schools I have been teaching at my 4th school - Ube General Support School. It's a school for kids with special needs. It's the largest general support school in Yamaguchi Prefecture with 200 students ranging from elementary to high school. I basically get to play games with the students all day... and sing songs... and the time I've spent there has been some of the best times I've had in Japan since I got here at the end of July. The school is really good and I think the student-teacher ratio is somewhere around 1 teacher to 2 students. It's a really great environment and working with these kids and teachers has been pretty rewarding. Last Thursday I was with the high schoolers, today I was with the middle schoolers, and tomorrow I'll be with the elementary kids. Wednesday I'm back to my usual schedule at my usual schools. I'll probably only get to go to the general support school during exam times... so the next round of exams will most likely be in the spring.

Anyway, I've had a really good experience working at the general support school and I think my time there will help me make the most of my time when I get back to my usual high schools beginning on Wednesday.

: )

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

J-cut?

I got my hair cut today. It was an... experience. They shampooed my hair and then dried it and then cut it. So they cut it dry... weird. He majorly thinned out my hair : ( and cut it wayyyy too short. It doesn't exactly match the picture I brought in (because it wasn't a picture of short hair!)... But from this angle, it's ok.



It's all about angle. And I don't really like it from any other angle. ha. Oh well. I'll prob end up pulling back what little hair is left anway... because I seem to ALWAYS do that.