So, it was a pretty normal day, save for the fact that it wasn't. I worked at JHS, and we had what translates to English as a "school visit," which happens two or three times per school year. A school visit is when resident teachers plus bigwigs from the local board of ed. come to observe and evaluate classroom lessons taught for all subjects. Some teachers tend to wig out around the time of such visits, because the lessons taught on that particular day have to be prepared, written and explained weeks in advance in order to be published in a big "school visit book" which the school distributes to its teachers and visitors on the big day.
I had only one class scheduled for the day, with the 1st year students (7th graders), co-taught with Ms. Takeuchi, a young English teacher, probably in her very early 30's. The whole school visit ordeal didn't particularly faze me; being a lowly foreigner of no great significance tends to relieve pressure in these types of situations. However, Ms. Takeuchi was a fumbly and fidgety wreck. The week prior we'd almost bumped heads over the lesson preparation--the problem was that she'd totally planned the lesson by herself without consulting my English "expertise," which would've been okay if her English didn't totally suck. The English grammar she was trying to teach for the lesson was jacked up, and I couldn't understand half of it. When I politely suggested some necessary corrections, she got defensive and started trying to blame me for asking too many questions about the class. I was like "Slow your roll. I have to ask questions, because I don't understand what the hell you're doing, and you're gonna screw this whole lesson up with your retarded English!" That's what I was thinking anyway. What I actually said was much more tactful. I grew a bit annoyed talking to her, but instead of screaming on her, which obviously would've made things worse, I let the cooler side of my brain prevail and somehow managed to convince her to take my suggestions with little contest. As a result, the class came off pretty OK and we didn't look like complete idiots in front of the guests.
Learning a foreign language is interesting; after a period of time, your brain starts to accept the strange sounds it receives as normal and you can actually understand what the heck people are saying. In the afternoon, we had a big teachers meeting reviewing the lesson we'd taught earlier. All teachers were solicited for opinions and commentary about the class, including myself, which I found I was able to give mostly in Japanese. In past meetings I would just zone out because nobody was speaking English, so I didn't have a clue what was going on. But at that meeting, while even some of the Japanese teachers looked bored out of their minds, I kept my interest sparked by trying to follow everyone's comments. I was kinda surprised I could capture the gist of what most were saying. I guess my listening comp. and vocab have improved alot over the past year. Yay.
