Azuma Junior High School 吾妻中学校

Today I taught my first day at a Junior High School. It was alot of fun, a bit different from teaching at Elementary School, but fun none the less. So since Azuma is the smallest Junior High in Sano I taught the entire school (grades 7,8,9) (or they call it years 1 2 3). I believe the whole school only has something like 60-70 students.

First I had the welcome ceremony speech. It went really well. I'm actually on the schools website now http://www.sctv.jp/~stude-sanojazuma/news/200809011.html check it out.

The thing below my pictures (in the link) is my introduction. I ended it by saying LET'S STUDY ENGLISH in Japanese! I typed it in English and Japanese and for some reason everyone was shocked that I knew how to type in Japanese. Everyone complimented me on my Japanese but in reality I'm no good! After my intro I taught 1st year students (7th grade). Each year had one thing the majority of them liked, it was kind of interesting.

I also made it onto the principals daily newspaper.


I made sure to be extra goofy. (That's my specialty) It helps the kids want to participate and when you make them laugh they have more fun learning than just being dry and boring.

So first year students are all really into tennis and net sports. I taught them how to do self introductions. Basically: "Hello. My name is ___. Please call me ____. I like ___." and a free sentence to say whatever they want. It was great one kid, his name is Heihachi Mishima (which is a character from tekken) and he said but please call me Jack Bauer (from 24). I just started cracking up. Then for his free sentence he said I am not good at English. That was the highlight of that class haha. I also taught them some grammar, something like "How many ____ do you see?"

Second year students are really into Tekken. I challenged them to a game and said let's play sometime. We all talked about what characters we liked. I wonder if I can beat them, or maybe they'll just straight up destroy me. I need to go to my local arcade and practice haha! Either way I HOPE THEY BRING IT!
I also had lunch with this class. The girls that sat near me kept asking me tons of questions. Eventually they kept giggling and I was like nani? (what)? Then I overheard them asking - Do you have a girlfriend? I just told them it was a secret haha. So everytime they asked (which was alot) I would just say it's a secret then they would giggle. Kind of entertaining.

Third year students are really into anime and specifically Naruto, and Prince of Tennis, as well as another one I forgot the name of. I told them I'd make copies of my drawings and give them out sometime. For their self introducions alot of them said "I was very happy to hear you like Naruto too!"

On Saturday I have to go to Azuma's Sports Day. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do but I guess I'll find out. I volunteered to participate in the 4x100M relay race. I told them I was on track in high school and they think I'm super fast. I told them I'm probably slow now. It should be alot of fun, I wonder what other events they'll let me participate in. FUN STUFF!

I almost forgot today was 9/11 until I saw the news here. They showed ground zero where they are constructing the freedom tower (basically where my aunt works). I hope that anyone who lost someone on that day has found peace.