My First Day At Chizu ES

Chizu Elementary School entrance.

I only visit my elementary school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and for some reason I couldn't visit last week, so today was my first day! Because of that, I wasn't sure if today was the opening ceremony (first day of classes) or not. Just in case, I tried to go prepared with my suit, a powerpoint self introduction, props, and omiyage.

For some reason, N-san told me we would walk to school together today, I'm not sure why, but it was nice to have the company. She also informed me that the opening ceremony is tomorrow, so I guess I brought all that stuff for no reason. Ah well.

N-san brought me into the teacher's room and dropped me off. I was shown to my desk and I had just started going through all the stuff in there when K-sensei approached me. She isn't one of my JTEs (she's a first grade home room teacher), but she speaks English probably the best. She helped explain the school schedule and my class schedule. She also introduced me to the 4 JTEs I will work with, who sit behind me: R-sensei, N-sensei, H-sensei, and K-sensei (a different K of course).

At 9:00am we had a teacher's meeting. I didn't really understand most of it, but I could tell that the teachers were talking about situations in some student's lives. I thought that was really interesting. When announcements were done all the teachers introduced themselves to me and then I did a short introduction myself.

After the meeting K-sensei took me and all the JTEs upstairs to the classroom to discuss lesson plans for Thursday and next Tuesday. I only teach 5th and 6th grade, two classes each, so although I teach 4 classes total, there are only two plans.

Once the English meeting was over, it was time for desk warming, a.k.a. shuffling papers and randomly making notes to look busy. Actually it wasn't toooooo bad, since I still had a ton of stuff in my desk that I wanted to look over.

Lunch time came around, and I hadn't brought my lunch because I wasn't sure if it would be provided today or not. It was okay, though, because K-sensei took me and the other K-sensei and three other teachers to lunch at a restaurant down the road called Foret de Claige. I ended up ordering some kind of pizza with possibly deer sausage? Also some kind of soup which just tasted like warm cream, a dish of spaghetti, sausage, and mushrooms, and a pretty delicious salad/coleslaw thing. It was really fun and the teachers were all so nice and talkative. They kept asking all about me and Yana and Justin. They also recommended a preschool for Yana.

Accidentally, we were 5 minutes late getting back to school, because at 1:00pm there was some kind of computer training. I have no idea what it was about, and I don't have a laptop on my desk, so I had to sort of entertain myself quietly for 2 hours. I was so bored that I started translating the all-Japanese lesson plans for the English textbook. My supervisor from the BOE, O-san, was actually sitting beside me (he was visiting for the computer training) and noticed me and went and exclaimed to K-sensei and the JTEs about this crazy and sad thing I was doing. So then what started as me mostly wasting time ended up as a big kerfluffle as O-san translated the page for me instead of doing his computer training!

Computer training finally ended and K-sensei told me I could go home. I slowly got my things together and ended up in the hallway looking and photos on a bulletin board. She found me out there and told me again to go home. I left for home and it was actually sunny for once, so I really enjoyed the scenery on the way.

A view of the school grounds, taken from the entrance. Further down the road to the left is the JHS.