Kareshi

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Kareshi - Boyfriend

It has come to my attention this week that the entire staff as well as every last one of my students believes that I have a boyfriend. In fact, the only people who don't think I have a boyfriend are the ones who know for a fact that I am single. Other people just believe that there is no way I could be without. I mean, I'm too beautiful and special to be alone. It would a crying shame. It would be such a waste. It would be too unbelievable to possibly be true!

yeah

Also, I made a boo boo. I couldn't help it though! It's all my neighbor's fault!!! She brought me all of her pen pal letters from her students and they were...well, I was blown away. They were written really well and most of the cultural things that she needed me for, she either steered the kids around it or they actually figured it out. I mean, one of the kids knew what a sugarglider was and they didn't even ask me! That's pretty impressive and I don't know how she knew that unless she went on the Internet to figure it out. It's not in any dictionary to say the least and most people don't even know it off the tops of their heads. I don't even know how I knew it!!!

So anyway, I see these letters written very well and on really nice stationary that the students brought in from home and I thought...my students can do better. These kids are only first years and it's a required course! My students are a year ahead and they chose to be there! HA this'll be easy!!

Or so I thought.

In reality, I think I just bombed the whole lesson. My original plan was to walk into class today and tell the students that they needed to finish up before the end of the period. They needed to write it on the paper I provided and cut and paste whatever they thought was cute off of their rough draft onto their final paper. It was going to be sweet and simple with no frills or complications.

Instead, I gave the class extra time because it was too tempting to think that I might be able to draw this out for another day and not have to write a different lesson plan. It also meant the possibility of having the students be a little more creative and maybe show up the first years in the end! I mean, the first years letters were really good! But by the end of class only three people had finished and the rest were fighting off sleep much to my dismay. I showed them the other pen pal letters hoping it would inspire them to do better. Since some students were already done and I could see that my other students didn't actually need the extra time, I made the split second decision to tell the class to take their letters home and finish them.

And it was like the slow motion scene in The Christmas Story when Ralphy says the F-word. I just saw my entire lesson crumble before my eyes. All my work, gone. All my effort, for not.

I had just wrote not 5 days ago that I should never give my students something to take home. It'll never come back!!!

But my neighbor had done it! In fact, she's done it many times and her kids always bring it back! So where am I going wrong?

I just hope my Tosayamada second years are more trustworthy than my Oodochi first years. You would think that's a given but my JTE for that class basically said in a Japanese way "Nina, you just screwed yourself. You should never ever let your students take their work home...but I'm sure everything will be ok."

It's all my neighbor's fault for making me jealous of her work. She made me do it!!!