Ey, ¿que honda?

Hey readers! (And welcome, new readers!)

So, it’s been a while since I’ve last written. Quite a while really. But it’s not understatement when I say, “I’ve been busy.” If you any of you personally know me, you’d totally understand what I’m talking about. But besides that fact, in light of everything’s that been going on here in Japan (and in response to all the emails and conversations rotating around “Are you back yet?” and “You should come back,” comments, I figured now’s a good time to write again about my daily shenanigans and keep you guys in the low paranoia level.

So, let’s begin.

As I’m writing this, I can’t remember when was the last time I posted. I don’t recall if I wrote before/during/after winter break…but right after winter break I’ve been pretty crazy busy. Mainly due to 2 projects that work that just sucked any free time I had. One more than the other (like, I even lost some sleep…ugh…)

Project A: Video Lesson
When I went home for Christmas, I made sure to take pictures of pretty much everything I did in LA and took video when it was possible. (Taking pictures wasn’t too difficult since some friends already call me “paparazzi”. It was the taking video bit that I’d usually forget about…). After I came back to Japan (and spent New Year’s with a friend and with my host mom), I started to work on a video for my students. I’m not a computer geek and computers tend to hate me so it took some time to learn the tricks of iMovie and get the music to start and fade out where I wanted them. Then I made questions for the students to answer, did the lesson 10 times (new readers: I teach all of the first years, equivalent of sophomores, and there’s 10 classes of 40 students), graded their handouts and recorded their scores. Right after this I started planning and preparing for the English Speech Contest.

Project B: English Speech Contest
So, in my school, all of the first years must write their own speech and then we hold preliminary rounds in each class to choose the student who will continue in the Speech Contest. Usually there are about 2 students per class that continue with the contest but occasionally we pass more. Anyway, the time consuming part was getting them to start to write their essays. Most of them didn’t seem too thrilled about it so getting excited for it was a bit of a challenge. Learning from last year’s craziness, I did more lessons with them on how to write. I knew it wouldn’t be easy but I didn’t expect it to be heavily overwhelming for some students. So I made sure to explain everything. But, for their rough draft, once I finished correcting their grammar, I wrote questions all along the sides to help them expand their speeches (and to make it more coherent). THAT took way more time than I had anticipated.
And then, in came a busy cloud. 3rd year’s English Essays!!! This year was the first time I taught at least one senior class on a weekly basis. But usually my part is done by winter break (since they’re mainly preparing to take their college entrance examinations). However, many of the teachers were asking me to help with the English Essay portion of their entrance exams! So, on top of grading/correcting/commenting/asking my 1st years’ Rough Drafts, I was lesson planning/prepping/correcting/guiding/advising the 3rd years! So, I felt like there weren’t enough hours in a day.

This went on for about 2 weeks.

Once I finally finished working with all the rough drafts (did you do the math?), I did 10 lessons explaining more on writing a speech, giving small grammar lessons (based on common mistakes I corrected), answering questions and talking one-on-one with the students who were either slacking off or having a really hard time, I thought I had some free time. But no. As soon as I had finished that second round of classes to start them on their 2nd drafts, their deadlines started coming in. So again, I was correcting all of their speeches. But this time around, as much as I wanted to, I didn’t ask them questions to help them with their speeches because the semester was almost going to end. I needed the last week of the semester to hold the preliminary rounds.
And the last day of the rounds was my busiest day!!! 1st and 2nd period I had preliminary rounds, 3rd period was a co-worker’s Open Class (so I checked it out), 4th was another preliminary round, then I had lunch (oh yea, I had skipped breakfast so I was soooo hungry), 5th was the last preliminary round, 6th was spent tallying up the points, going over my notes to choose the best speaker and writing the list of the students who will continue in the contest and finally, in the 7th period, I announced who would continue.

Phase 1 of the English Speech Contest ended. Oh man…I slept so much that weekend. And it felt sooooo nice.

Now, I’m busy with other things but at least now I shouldn’t be working too late…
Phase 2 will start when the new school year starts. So…maybe mid-April?

Bleh…I only wrote about 2 things and one of them took so much space…

Anyway, clearly, things are fine in my area. Maybe my next one will be more on what’s been going on but first I wanted to let ya’ll know why my replies to your emails have been delayed (or very short-answered…)