Today was my second day teaching at Wakasono Municipal Elementary School, and tomorrow I will already be moving to another school. Such is the life of a "One-shot Assistant Language Teacher", which in JET lingo refers to a teacher who covers a wide variety of (usually elementary) schools, but has a low number of visits to any one school. I feel that my teaching went well, and that I started to develop positive relationships with the staff and students, which makes moving on to another school so quickly kind of a downer. On the other hand, since I'll be starting lessons with a brand new audience tomorrow I can feel free to reuse a lot of the material I've developed for my introductory lesson. After just two days of actual teaching I can already tell that my time spent in the classroom will be both mentally and physically demanding, however, the work is legitimately rewarding, and often fun as well. I was told by one of the teachers in the staffroom today that many of the students had written in their daily school journals that they wished "Tim-sensei" could stay longer. I was also informed that this sentiment was particularly strong among the girls, as I am apparently widely considered to be
kakko ii (cool) among that particular demographic. I will get a chance to make a few more visits to Wakasono in the future, it looks like I might be assigned there a couple of days every month or two, but for now there is nothing to do but repeat the process of forming a series of positive experiences into understanding and mutual respect at the wide array of schools I will be visiting in the coming months. To that end I hope to use my experiences at Wakasono as a template for success at my other schools.
