My Schools

I am hired by the municipal Board of Education (BOE) who is in charge of all the elementary schools and junior high schools in Kanazawa. High schools are run by the prefectural (provincial) government. At the BOE, there are 12 of us - 6 first year ALT and 6 second year ALTs. Everyone there is really nice. My boss, Naka-sensei is really nice and can speak English (thank goodness!) I am supposed to teach 3 out of 5 classes a day. But I usually end up teaching anything from 1 class to 5 classes a day. I suppose it all evens out eventually.

I am teaching at three schools - two junior highs and one elementary/junior high school. My base school is Shikindai Junior High which has about 600 students. This school is about a 3 minute walk from my apartment. My other junior high is Jonan Junior High, which is slightly smaller at 550 students. This school is about a 25 minute walk from my apartment. My third school is Shibahara Junior High located about a 20 minute drive from my apartment. It's a tiny combined elementary and junior high - 75 students in total. My largest class has 14 students and my smallest class has 6 students. At the other two schools, I have about 35-40 students per class. I am scheduled to be at Shibahara every Monday and then I'm at Shikindai one week and Jonan the following week. 

This was taken during the Cultural Festival at Shikindai. I actually got paid for the day to make clay pottery and to have the kids dress me up in a kimono. It was a REALLY fun day!

I like all the schools, but I like Shikindai the most - the students are more into English than my other two schools. When I say "good morning" at Shikindai (during the beginning of class), they actually answer full heartedly. At Jonan, I'm lucky if I get a smattering of "good mornings" back. Shikindai does really well at English competitions too. Since I've gotten here, my students have won in many competitions. I am actually quite lucky because all three schools are supposed to be "good" schools. But I still have kids sleeping (literally) in my class. There are many that don't see English as necessary to learn. This is true because there is hardly any English spoken here. Usually "how are you?" sends some of my kids into wild panic attacks and when they recover their wits, they usually mumble, "I'm fine and you?". *sigh*

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