Today was my last visit to Sakai Nishi koko. I cannot lie; being there for the past few months has been a struggle. The students had absolutely no interest in my being there, nor in my having interest in them. However I learned so much about patience and just not letting this job get to me. For those of you that have known me all my life, believe it or not, I am not so uptight any more. Frankly this is something I have been working on ever since I started watching home videos of my six year old self and realized what a brat I was. But seriously, since I have been in Japan I have learned to let go of my own personal control and trust others completely. Really in most cases I have to because of language barriers and whatnot, but in addition to giving over some of my power, I have learned that mistakes are inevitable no matter how much thought and effort I put into planning a lesson, it will never be perfect. Learning how to let go of my micromanaging tendencies has helped me to enjoy most of my classes more and take this experience at face value instead of always trying to instill some life-changing, earth-shattering lesson to be learned. Even ordinary days are exciting and the less I actively try to make each day extraordinary, the more extraordinary it actually becomes. Wow, I feel like I could go teach a class in organizational behavior!
However, before I left school today, I was bombarded with some handmade gifts created with incredible care and many warm wishes for luck in the future. I hope the students at Sakai Nishi realize how kind-hearted and dedicated their teachers are to them. I hope they realize this and begin to appreciate it sooner rather than later.
So this means starting next week I will begin teaching at Koga san-ko. This school has the reputation for being the top school in Koga City and I am pretty excited to meet the students and teachers with whom I will be working. I trust that this will be a completely different environment from Sakai Nishi and that my responsibilities will sky rocket. I have been begging and pleading for more responsibility, so I am looking forward to having the opportunity to extend a bit more of my creativity and willingness to really own this job.
Wish me luck. I will let you know how my first day goes.
3 comments:
LUCK!!!
even though I know you won't need it :wink:
Wow, going from classes with unmotivated kids to classes in the top school in the city is quite a shift! I'm sure you'll have an easier time gelling with the kids at Koga san-ko; they will totally appreciate the effort you'll be putting into their lessons!
Isn't it interesting that even when the students aren't really motivated still have their etiquette in place when it comes to responding to your absence. I look forward to seeing pictures of your new gifts.
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