School Life

Ok, today instead of the boring "this is what I did today" post, I'll just explain a bit about school here.

So, I'm placed in a senior high school (SHS) here. Well, two actually. High school in Japan, as well as junior high, lasts 3 years, unlike high school at home, at least in Bloomington, where high school is 4 and junior high is 2. Also, the numbering of grades restarts at each schooling level, so I am teaching 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders.

Another difference between high school here and at home is that here the students stay in the classroom and the teachers move around. Which means that while I had lots of different people in all my different classes in high school, here the students stay with the same classmates all year. Don't know yet if they mix around at the end of the year though. Also, this means that there aren't different levels of classes for different abilities (for the most part). So (almost) all first graders take OC 1 ("oral communication" -- what I teach), second graders take OC2, etc. It's not possible for talented, more advanced kids to be in a higher level class like they would be in the States. A benefit of this, though, is that the students really get to know each other, which is good for group-work and such.

Now, I threw in "for the most part" and "almost all" up there because there are a couple exceptions. At my main school, there are 6 classes per grade. Numbers 1 through 4 are normal classes, taking the normal courses. Number 6 is a math & science course, so they take an extra class or two of math/science, and one fewer of social studies or something.

And then there's class 5. These are the English course students. They're my babies. They have extra English classes every week. They also tend to be the more advanced, motivated students. By the time they reach 3rd grade (ie. senior year), their English is pretty impressive. As a quick example, for my first ever class with 3-5, I taught them about endangered languages (which I studied in college) and had them come up with causes. And then they debated (in English) whether the world would be better if there was only one language. Yeah. It was amazing.

So I teach English to all of the first graders, plus the English course for the second and third graders at Maibara. I will also be teaching some first graders at Ibuki SHS, though I haven't started there yet so I can't really tell you the details.

Ok, that's a "brief" intro to what the school system is like here. There will be more, since I've barely scratched the surface here, but I feel like that's enough for today. Hope all is well back in the States or wherever you're reading this.