Okay. First day back to school. I'm at junior high today. I said my little Happy New Year greetings to all the principals.
As the new school gymnasium is currently under construction, the 3rd term opening ceremony was outside, in about 50 degree F weather. I was rocking the leather jacket for sho', while the youngsters shivered. Po' little thangs.
I spoke to the vice-principal, Tomita-sensei. He reminded me that there's a special teachers' meeting this afternoon, and I'm supposed to be giving a speech about my opinions concerning the current local English curriculum. All the teachers from both my elementary and junior high schools will attend, so that'll probably be about 40 teachers. Now, the vice-principal told me about this meeting and speech right before winter break, but I was surprised then because usually the schools clear important matters like this with my company first. This time around they "volunteered" me into giving a speech, without me even knowing about it. Before vacaation I'd asked one of my company's staffgirls about it, but she hadn't heard about it. Although the vice-principal claimed to have to cleared it, to this day, I still think they never told my company, simply because my company didn't tell me, which they're suposed to do. On top of that, the school (vice-principal) also compulsorily selected my roommate, Aaron (who also teaches in the same city) to translate for me because 1) He knows me well (?) (I'm using their logic here) and 2) His Japanese speaking ability is better than mine (although this makes some sense, they could've had one of the Japanese teachers who speak English perform translation duties. Again this is their logic). I'm not really worried about giving a speech so much as the fact that I'm unprepared. I have general opinions, but I don't know if they will or should, even, constitute a speech. Hmm. Even though no one really would understand a dang word I'd say anyway, I still would feel weird getting up in front of everyone without having prepped my thoughts. In theory, I could get up there and recite Snoop Dogg lyrics and they probably wouldn' know the difference; actually, it's really more of a burden on Aaron, because he has to translate pretty much everything I say. I doubt he wants to translate a sporadic, broken "speech" on my behalf, or even have to fill in the gaps where necessary. It would make us both look pretty dumb...
..Gah, what am I pothering about? I'm sure this won't be difficult; I've been solicited for "educated" opinions in previous meetings--this should be no biggie.
Hm.
Did I mention that there's an open Q & A session after my speech? (gulp)
With the meeting less than 3 hours away, I may just have to wing it and freestyle this babdboy... I dunno. We'll see how this goes.
Thought gathering...
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