A Tour of My Classroom!

To get to my classroom you can walk down this sweet checkered hallway.



These are the doors and windows to my classroom! Most Japanese doors are sliding doors as you can see.



Enter Oral Communication Classroom!! Just inside the door you can see the view towards the back of the classroom. This is half....



...and here is the other half. It's a little dark but notice the beautiful windows! Each classroom has these awesome windows.



This is the front of classroom - notice posters Lindsey gave me! THANKS LINDSEY!! Also, you can see there is a giant podium at the front. If you look very closely you can see that just in front of the chalkboard the floor is raised up one step. Make the teacher more prominent maybe? I'm not sure, but it's actually kind of annoying. I often trip over this step.



You can see the left-front of classroom. I wanted to show you my desk in the corner. I didn't want this desk becuase there really isn't that much extra space once you get 42 desks in there for the students. But, Watanabe-Sensei insisted that I need it. He recruited some kids to carry it up there for me, so what could I do? the desk in the corner and lovely windows. Didn't want the desk, but Watanabe-Sensei insisted I have it!



From the back of classroom.



This is taken from window showing the doors of classroom.



This is my reading-corner in the making. I scrounged up some magazine and English newspapers with the hope that students would spend more time in my classroom speaking English with me. The students are definitely interested in the magazines, everyday before and after class there are people standing there gawking at the half nude ads, but it hasn't been enough to entice them in on their lunch break for some extra English time with me. Ah, oh wel :) I'm working on it. I do need more magazines so if your feeling willing to send me some feel free! Near the "Team Teachers" sign you see I posted all the English teacher profiles (as seen below).



These Teacher Profiles were just another way to entice the student to understand some English. I had every teacher (8 of use all together) do one. Here are a few examples. Click on the pictures to make them bigger if you are interested in what they said.

Watanabe-Sensei. He sits next to me in the teacher's room and is great! He always tells me everything that's going on, and makes sure I'm in the know. I am forever indebted to him.



Nishiguchi-Sensei. She is one of my favorite teachers to teach with. This is only her second year teaching so it's easy to relate to her.



Me



Shuto-Sensei. For some reason she never gave me her profile! I think secretly she just is too shy to put it up. So, in her place I drew her picture for her. One of the other teachers wrote "Late!" on there :)




USA Map. I had a numerous amount postcards from around the US in my desk so I made this bulletin board. Funny story - the students that clean my room everyday like to leave their mark. Often I find things are upside down, sometimes things are misplaced, magazines are opened to the crudest advertisment, but, oh, how clever of them to rearrange the letters to UA SMAP! SMAP is an uber famous boy band here in Japan. They think I don't know that they've changed it...but really I just want to leave it because I think it's funny.

While I'm at it, if you have postcards from any of the 50 states that is NOT Oregon, Idaho, California or NY, I'd love to have them! Send me postcards! Come on, it's for the kids.



Each classroom has a balcony, this is mine.



This is the view from balcony. The round roof is one of the gyms.



Inside Broom Closet. Every classroom and most hallways/stairwells have their own broom closet. There are no janitors in Japanese schools because everyday after school there is a 20-minute cleaning time. The students and teachers are all assigned to a particular place and they clean. Well, "clean." There is a lot of goofing off and standing around, but overall the school stays pretty clean. This is the broom closet for my classroom.



Garbage Cans. In Japan the garbage system is super confusing. We have 4 different garbage days each week - another topic for another entry, but in my classroom I have two different bins. "Burnable" and "Nonburnable." It really throws the kids off that they are marked in English. It's pretty funny to watch them debate which bin is the correct one.



And that's my classroom! I love teaching in it, and I think the kids really like coming here. For the next installment, I will have a tour of my school!

Rachael arrives tomorrow! Yippee!