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Back to School - August 21st, 2022
Back to School!
Hello!
This week was the first week back doing school activities.
On Monday, schools were closed due to the Obon holiday. But, on Tuesday and Wednesday, all of the English teachers in Kobe gathered together to hold English activities with local junior high school students.
The event organizers broke us up into various rooms with about 8-10 English teachers in the same room.
In the room I was in, we played a game in which we drew cards from a deck. The card that we drew would determine what short activity we did with a smaller group of 2-3 students - for example, ask them their favorite sport or have them ask us a question in English.
The event was held at a University not far from where I live. After the games, the students watched presentations from Japanese University students about various countries and cultures.
Thursday was my first day back at my main school. There were only a few teachers at the school when I arrived and others filtered in and out throughout the day.
Our vice principal turned on Koshien on the TV one of the days, but only for an hour during lunch. He seemed to feel the need to make it clear to the teachers that he would turn off the TV at 1pm sharp.
The Koshien tournament is now on its final game - the championship will be held on Monday on 2pm Japan time!
Other than that, I had some work in the morning on both Thursday and Friday to stay busy. In the afternoons, after it got cooler, some of the teachers would spend time cleaning areas of the school.
We had a lot of leaves in the playground - I am not sure if they were from last fall or are new leaves that fell this year. I spent some time cleaning those up.
Weather wise, it seems to have become a little bit cooler on a more consistent basis, but temperatures are still in the high 80s most of the time.
This coming week, students are still on summer vacation. We have two days of job training for English teachers. Other than that, I will go to my "visit" school on Monday (my 2nd to last time there), my regular school on Thursday and then do an English event at a junior high school on Friday.
No pictures this week!
Until next time,
Tom McGuire
I write about and share photos of my classroom, travel and cultural experiences through my weekly newsletter. Enter your email below to receive it.
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