Interviews

I'm happy to have had a very relaxing, if not a busy week, after almost a full month of traveling. I went back to work on Tuesday. My supervisor came to meet me to tell me I had a super secret job for the week, interviewing people for elementary and special education teachers. I was paired up with a new member of the Board of Education, Mr. Takahashi. He came with us to English camp and it was really nice getting to know him more. We went to one of the middle schools in the area to start conducting interviews. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we interviewed 169 prospective elementary teachers and Friday we interviewed 23 prospective special education teachers. Because there were so many people, we were only able to talk to each candidate for about five minutes. It was alright, though, because since they won't be teaching only English they didn't need a lot of English.

The interviews were pretty simple, but the last few questions were a bit difficult. I asked everything in English and they were supposed to answer completely in English to the best of their ability. I asked the interviewee to do a short introduction (i.e. name, age, birthday, hobby) and asked a few easy questions about the hobby. I asked if they'd ever been to a foreign country; If yes, where and what did they do and if no, where would they like to go and why. The last questions were the most difficult: How do you study English? How will you teach English? What do you think about elementary/special needs students learning English?

Some people could answer without problems, but most people had trouble with the last few questions. I graded all the interviewees along with Takahashi. Takahashi sat with me and spoke at the beginning and end of the interviews, but although he speaks English I asked all the questions. I stayed an hour late to finish all the interviews and asking the same questions 192 times was exhausting, but I really enjoyed having the opportunity to help interview new teachers and work with Mr. Takahashi. Overall it was a great experience!

This week we're going to Japanese language and culture classes at the YMCA. The language classes have been really interesting, we've talked about everything from the Coka Cola company to Nintendo. We wore yukata as part of the culture class and today we practiced calligraphy. It's been really fun! Tomorrow we have an international camp and we'll go back to the YMCA on Thursday. On Thursday we'll finish YMCA classes at 11:30 and because I worked overtime last week, I can go home after the YMCA. My friend Caol's parents are here now, so I'll meet up with them and go to the fish market in Shimonoseki! This was a great week, but probably not as fun to read about, sorry! Hopefully next week will be more excited!