Second term lessons

Having experienced the ins and outs of all three school terms, I've learned that second term is the busiest for me. First term begins in April, and is full of introductions, entrance ceremonies, and placement tests; I didn't teach my first first-term lesson this year until practically a week before Indonesia. There's also a brief spring break, Golden Week, and Obon.

Third term begins in December, and I visit home for two weeks then. That term also has end-of-year exams, junior high school entrance exams, and graduation; those eat up the end of February and most of March. What lessons remain in March take place after the final exams and thus their subject matter can't appear on any tests. March is curricular limbo, which means I get to do purely fun lessons with no stress about getting everyone to the same point, content-wise.

That leaves second term. It begins in September, and while it's just as slow to start as first term--pretty much all lessons are called off the week prior to tai iku tai kai for preparations--there's still a substantial chunk of time for lessons.

I was aware of this heading into first term, and tried to spread out my lessons accordingly. I came away from last year with a few solid lesson modules: telephone, shopping, restaurant, and weather. All those needed was polish and fine-tuning. I understood that those four units wouldn't come close to filling up the whole curriculum, and resolved to use them only as crutches. In the end, though, I burned straight through them: weather and telephone were done by the end of first term.

September began with the tai iku tai kai, and then I showed everyone pictures from my visit home. The first real lesson was the shopping unit. It went much better than last year's, and got lots of polishing from the other teachers and me--exactly what I wanted.

After the recipe lesson with my Toyotama second-years, we moved on to travel-related topics. The teacher, Iwase, wanted to get as much of that in as possible before the annual school trip. We started with flight information boards at an airport, which entailed delay, cancel, status, departure, arrival, and other related terminology. We took making a hotel reservation and checking in at the hotel and turned them into a full-blown dialogue each, and even made a speaking test out of the second one.

The four third-year Option C students--Misa, Erika, Takashi, and Koji--kept right on with their assignments. We've given them an end-of-term deadline for four assignments, and we've been observing how well they handle the pace. Misa is pushing herself the hardest. Erika almost matches Misa in effort, but lacks Misa's ability, so she's a little behind. Misa goads Koji into competing with her, which is just about his sole motivation to keep up. Takashi knows more than he lets on, but slacks off too much to be very productive.