So today we started orientation. We had breakfast from 7:30 - 9:00. My roommate and I stayed at the breakfast table for the entire hour and a half. Two groups of people sat with us. First we met some people from the Tennessee, then after they left we were joined by some girls from New Zealand. Orientation started at 9:00 and everyone was in the same room. Our seats were assigned and we were split up by prefecture and/or city. Fukuoka prefecture is going on an outing tomorrow night at 8:00 to a prison themed 居酒屋 (izakaya), a casual bar that usually requires a cover charge and all-you-can-drink. I'm not sure how the prison theme works, but I'm really looking forward to it! This is when I got to meet my fellow Kitakyushu JETs for the first time! We had some talks about general information, the last of which was the best. He talked about culture shock and had so many great stories to share. At 12:00 we had a break for lunch.
After lunch I walked around with some of the other JETs going to Kitakyushu. We went to see the AJET (The Association for Japan Exchange and Teaching)fair and we got a lot of good information. I also bought two books, "Planet Eigo" and "Foxy Phonics." They are all about how to set up lesson plans as a team teacher and have tons of great pre-made lesson plans as well. After looking around, all the ALTs met again in the same big room as before. There were four talks in the next hour an a half about English education standards in Japan, what to expect in elementary school, what to expect in middle school, and what to expect in high school. I'm only in a middle school, so it was kind of boring to hear about the other schools. It didn't help that we had been sitting all day on the plane yesterday, then all day this morning, and now it was just more sitting.
After finishing those lectures, we got to choose our next three panels. First, I went to one about how to incorporate pop culture into our lessons. It was an AJET talk and it was a lot of fun! It was only 45 minutes, but they had a lot of great ideas and even did a few games with us. The second panel I went to was about technology in the classroom. We talked about the different technology we most likely find in our classrooms as well as what we probably won't find. They gave us examples of what we could do in classes with very limited technology and talked about how sometimes teachers in Japan are not as tech savvy as people from other parts of the world because they don't teach basic computer skills in school. So things we might take for granted such as PowerPoint, many people in Japan don't know how to use. The speakers explained how to respectfully teach not only our students, but our coworkers as well.
I skipped out on the last panel because they were either topics that didn't apply to me (e.g. Driving in Japan or Senior High School Teaching) or topics I'd already heard. Instead I went with the other Kitakyushu JETs to dinner in Shinjuku. We went to a nice udon place and walked around for a little bit. We came back in time for a reception at 6:30 where we had a toast and ate some desserts. The reception was a nice chance to mingle with people in or near our prefecture that we hadn't gotten a chance to talk with yet. Some people went out after, but I came back to my room to reorganize my suitcases. I only have my two carry ons with me right now, but we have to send one bag to the airport tomorrow, so I was making sure I would have everything I need for an overnight in one bag.
Today during my very limited free time, I worked on my introduction. Everyone needs to memorize a short paragraph in Japanese to use to introduce ourselves. I have been e-mailing with my old professor to help make sure all of my
Japanese is correct. I think I have it all set and my goal for tomorrow is to have it memorized.
That's it for now, hopefully tomorrow is a shorter day for me because I am exhausted!
No comments:
Post a Comment