Money

At lunch time we have daily broadcasts at school. Usually music videos or comedy tv shows. I never thought in a million years I would see this, but today am I watching Speed Racer as I write this. So money.

Well I've lost them for the year

So I'm in with a class of second year students today and I'm going around handing back quizzes when one girl stops me and says "Tyler um.." I'm thinking there's something stuck to my shirt or something and ask her if there is anything there. "Nope there's nothing stuck to your shirt, but..." and I notice. My fly is all the way down. Usually, the fold of the pants will hide even you fly being down in dress pants, but I got unlucky with the way the fabric folded and it was wide open.

The worse part is that this was 40 minutes into a 50 minute class. Pretty much every student had realized and I had no way to get out of this one smoothly. So I zipped up and just felt the heat rise as I sensed my face turning red. Tomorrow I have a class with them as well so I've planned to go in and deliberately check my zipped up fly at the beginning of class. Should be good for a laugh and make me look a little better after an embarrassing episode.

Now for some picture I took a couple weeks back of the cherry blossoms because if you're in Japan you need to have pictures of cherry blossoms in spring. That is the rule, nothing I can do about it.

新学年準備中

This past week has seen a lot of changes at school. With the start of a new school year teachers all across the school board can change positions. There's some kind of rule/guideline in place so that a teacher can stay at one school for around 10 years at most. Generally, it seems much shorter however, closer to 3 or 4 years. The thing is most teachers don't find out if and where they are going to be moved until about a week before they transfer. Kind of stressful if you as me, but I guess they're kind of used to the system.

We saw 5 teachers leave this year and got 4 new teachers to replace them the following day. One less, because this year there are 2 special-ed classes instead of 3 like last year. I am no longer the youngest teacher as there is a fresh new 22 year old PE teacher in training who just graduated last month. Interestingly enough he is a local boy and grew up in the area where I visit the elementary school in the mountains.

The students have been divided into their new classes and the teachers have been divided into their respective classes as well. I'm with the 2nd year teachers again this year, but the old 2nd year teachers are now the 3rd year teachers and my direct supervisor is a 1st year teacher now so I'm with a whole new group and in a new spot. It's been a refreshing change so far and I like my spot because the teachers around me have things piled high on their desks and I feel like I'm in a fort.

I've also found out that I will be in charge of the 3rd year elective English class. I don't know how many people will take it as the students decide next week, but since it's elective I'm assuming mostly the kids whose English is a bit more advanced will be taking it. Since it's elective too I am not constricted by the textbook and can really do some interesting things.