School this year is shaping up to be mighty fine, much to my relief after the abysmal time I had last term. I actually do have classes this year, my god! Haha. The chance to be useful and actually obtain some job satisfaction, who'd have thought :) Like last year, I have 14 classes on my timetable, of which I am guaranteed to have at least 7 every week. Those 7 are ichi-nensei Oral Communication classes, which I teach with Nishitani-sensei, Kurioka-sensei and Hashimoto-sensei. The other classes include 3 'mixed' classes (one for each year group) and 4 ni-nensei reading classes. Generally I never teach the 'mixed' classes, but the head ichi-nensei teacher, Matsushita-sensei, asked me to come along to his 'as needed'. Which could mean anything from never to every week, hehe - we'll see.

The four ni-nensei classes are a little more complicated, as they are reading classes. I'm not as immediately useful in these as I am in an OC class, due to the type and structure of the lesson materials. Additionally, this type of class is usually very time consuming (the students have to read and understand the whole chapter) so there really isn't time for me to be taking up a whole lesson each week. Originally I was teaching one class every week with Takagi-sensei and Touda-sensei, until Okamoto-sensei caught wind of it and changed it so that I'm only used as needed. This is the way he uses me, and I fully understand why it has to be that way. So no problems there. Going from 0 to 7 is already a shock to the system, so having the ni-nensei classes as an 'as needed' thing (which could be weekly, anyway) is probably good, at least to start with.

So anyway, last week was my first week with the ichi-nensei. It was quite a lot of fun, although a bit exhausting. The kids were mostly very well behaved, if a bit too quiet for my liking. That's good, I suppose - better that than badly behaved, although I do wish they'd be a bit more genki and maybe volunteer every now and then ;) To 'break the ice', we played a guessing game about me. Apparently I look a lot older than I actually am, haha. Most kids guessed I was in the range 26 to 30 :D Strange - in Australia it's the opposite, haha. I guess it works the same way going back - Japanese people tend to look young to gaijin, so we must look old to them? Hehe.

In terms of the teachers I teach with, I'm pretty impressed so far. I teach the most classes with Kurioka-sensei, who is just awesome. She has so much control in the classroom (of time, the work and the students) and is brutally efficient but is also able to keep a fun atmosphere. I'm used to chaos and mayhem from when I taught in Okuto-sensei's class, where we rarely finished everything but had a lot of fun learning what we did. So it's nice to have some order, hehe. I think I learnt more about teaching from that one lesson than I did from all my classes last school year, hehe. I have four classes with her, so I'm looking forward to learning quite a bit more.

The other teachers really range in terms of everything. Some are extremely nervous, some are really genki, some are just cruising, some don't really know what they're doing and some are just masters. So it's shaping up to be a very interesting teaching year. Thankfully, to help smooth things out a bit, I have an 'in charge' teacher for each year group. I make a single lesson each week directly for these teachers - Kurioka-sensei for ichi-nensei and Takagi-sensei for ni-nensei. All the other teachers then use those lessons too, which makes everyone's lives much easier.

Overall, my timetable isn't too bad either. Last week I taught 10 lessons - 2 on Tuesday and Thursday and 3 on Wednesday and Thursday. Monday is a spare day, which is great, as I can plan all my lessons and take care of any marking I might have. So yes, having 10 lessons was just totally awesome, it was so great to be busy. That's what really struck me about last week actually, I rarely had nothing to do. Preparation, looking through student work, building relationships with the teachers I teach with and so on. Very good times. In the rare few moments I had spare time, I managed to fill them by talking to Baba-sensei, who wants to do a weekly 'chat session' with me to flex her English. She's great to talk to, so I'm looking forward to that too.

So there you go - all in all, looking like a great year. About bloody time, haha. I came to teach, and 9 months in, I'm being given the opportunity to really get involved. 10 classes isn't a 'lot' as such, I know some JETs teach 15 or 20 or more, but at least it's a start. It also gives me a great balance in terms of being able to do other things like study Japanese. So overall, very happy, and looking forward to the year!