First Week Complete!

Photo above: east side of Shinjuku station on a Saturday night.

Yay! I survived my first real week as a teacher! I can't express how much relief that is, since I had a slight fear of being completely overwhelmed by the students and the amount of work I am trying to adjust to. I must say I have honestly met some of the cutest kids on the planet and it's such a privilege to be able to interact with them.

The amount of hope and joy that fills their eyes is unbelievable to witness since they are still so young and innocent. The majority of the kids are so eager to learn and excited to be studying another language. Looking over the curriculum is astonishing because they learn vocabulary and advanced sentence patterns that I don't ever recall studying while I was in elementary school. The high school students are looking to expand their thought processes and hope to be able to express more complex concepts, emotions, and relative issues in English. It's impressive to see them apply language structure they study for 5 minutes in class and be able to relay it to their everyday lives.

Meeting the student's parents after classes is enlightening as well. Most of them are ecstatic to hear about what was studied in class and they even want to help out and be involved with homework assignments. However, we'll see if they're still all smiles in a couple of weeks after I fill out student evaluations. Haha.