“You can become a good teacher. I want unlimited money.”
September 21, 2018
Teaching stuff:
This week went by so quickly, though I guess that’s partially do to “silver week” aka the Monday we had off. I finished The First Days of School. It feels good to have achieved taking my job into my own hands, instead of leaving it up to the other teachers. The book ended on some very high notes: Don’t blame the environment nor the students; take responsibility for your own learning if you want respect from students/teachers; be the traits you want your students to have; and always be working at improving yourself. I think the last one is especially important, and it reminds me to not feel too bad if I fail at coming up with something good in class or if I make a mistake. Being a teacher, I think you need to work on yourself a LOT first to have it reflect on your students in the classroom. Homework for myself: I need to encourage myself to be willing to make mistakes in teaching or in Japanese if I want my students to do the same. Sometimes that’s easier said than done though.
Side note: The second sentence of the title is misleading! Bad teacher trait number one!! I don’t think about my paycheque when I teach, however I am in a somewhat tough spot considering I just moved and had to pay for a bunch of things this month like my car insurance for the year, this month and next month’s student loan and whatnot. It’s just a funny phrase a kid said he wanted to know how to write in class, and I felt like I could relate a little bit… In other teaching news, I learned being a teacher really requires having a lot of energy but at the same time it unfortunately gets spent so quickly. I have been living off the drug called caffeine so hard lately. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I can’t imagine being an elementary school teacher. Is there a word for a more than full life-time job? It really eats you up.
Life stuff: Not much happening. I did go to Nakashibetsu with a fellow ALT this past weekend! The drive was longer than I expected, about 4 hours roundtrip! On the way back it was nighttime, and an extremely thick fog had fallen on the way from Bekkai to Nemuro. The GPS took us down this completely uninhabited road. It was so spooky!!! I saw a male deer cross the road too—again, veeery spoooOOOooky. Nakashibetsu and the surrounding area reminds me a lot of upstate New York. It looks like it used to be more populated and inhabited, like time has been frozen at the time where businesses were more booming and there were more people who lived there. Nemuro in the 70s used to have a lot more fisherman. Now, there are hardly any people my age who live in Nemuro because they all leave the area when they become of age. Nemuro has a lot more interesting people I feel than the time I lived in Kansai, or maybe I’m just getting to know everyone better. It’s such a unique experience compared to my last one in Japan! P.S. I made my first business card!!! Take a look:
