hey all,
I realized that I haven't had any recent updates about my schools. Not too much new, actually. My lessons are going well: no incredibly awful lessons, lots of average ones, a few really fun lessons. I'm still doing introductory lessons, actually; since I work at 3 schools, I effectively have 2100 students, about 700 per school.
My main focus is on the 5th and 6th graders: they have a pretty established curriculum already, so my lessons for the younger students tend to be simplified versions of my 5th and 6th grade lessons. Unlike my last elementary school, my schools this year are using Eigo Noto, "English Notebook." It isn't the most amazing set of material or anything, but I can see that it does ensure a certain amount of English is brought to the attention of students, whether or not they actually remember it later, or can make use of it after, say, 1-2 weeks, let alone 1-2 years.
One of the problems with Eigo Noto is that there is already too little English classroom time in elementary school: we don't have extra time to practice a tricky set of vocab. or a difficult grammar point, and we don't have time to review anything later.
I'm still feeling much more like an actual teacher than at my junior high school last year, but a little less like one in some ways too.
Cheers,
