I'm SO lazy... sorry kids, this is a long one.

GRAWR!!! Boredom + Jenny = RUN FOR THE HILLS...

Two hours of 99 poken Japanese Educational Board meetings.  At least I wasn't the only one falling asleep, seeing as it's a bit hard to listen to people comment on your school's performance for a third of the working day after working our asses off for the other two-thirds.  Although I received some specific accolade, it was perhaps the most aggravating part of the whole meeting to hear "good use of the textbook" stressed in a way that only further fueled the impression that faith in the text is worn a bit too devoutly by the powers that be.  And unfortunately, it's always the last, gracious speaker that receives the brundt of my frustration... poor dude, he was just saying thanks for being here... for like FIVE MINUTES OVER THE TIME LIMIT!!! GRRR!  My team teacher definately sensed my impatience when she wrote "get through it!" on a slip of paper and slid it over to me... am I that bad???  Did I ever really have an attention span to begin with?  Well, no... now that I think about it, no.

The students love it when I dance around and yell out the spelling for day and date.  It really gets them and me started on a good note... hopefully I can keep that up :) 

The Drudgery Wears On

One long weekend has left me in a continued state of sleep-deprivation.  Could I possibly be doing too much with my time already?  I think maybe I'm just acting as though I have all the time I had before and adding it on to the time that is now consumed with Aikido, Japanese lessons, and guitar.  That guitar would keep a Jenny up all night, if it were not for the blisters...  I went to a nice lil gettaway spot for the weekend with many other rambunctious ALTs only to relive what I thought I had left behind: good ole' Bacchanalian fun.  Drinking, dancing, jumping off of rocks to uncertain doom, and meeting up with many lost and found ALT acquaintances.  Good times overall, although a dash too much of the sleaze factor (hey I can relate... I can feel the weight of chastity like a rusty iron diaper digging into my hips, but manogamy is my anti-rash vaseline... keeps me goin).  I am happy in my little town, even if we are disastrously devoid of "things to do," again in that Bacchanalian sense.  That's fine by me, since the scenery has quite a sobering effect and I am in no need to drunken up the lifestyle (particularly when metalic panties are in play).  My students have shed their first-month luster and have become the apathetic butterflies they would inevitably resemble.  However, the genki in me is far from finished.  I can already feel the dynamic forming and it's an exponential decrease in motivation on their part for every incling they get of my own soporific urges.

I want to get more involved with the class structure.  There is a definite lack of creativity and it bogs down our lessons like crude oil on a penguin.  I'm tired of saying the same useless, horribly specific phrase ad infinitum.  I'm tired of following a nearly useless textbook as a result of the lack of incentive for innovative teaching methods.  I've got "slow" learner classes now, and I am convinced that they just took all the "shy" students and corralled them together to make the teaching experience as excrutiating as possible.  It's a self-esteem issue for many of these students, and I get the feeling that some of them have honest learning disorders that require one-on-one teaching and a lot of effort which is just not available through the current teaching system.  They still play out the same way the "advanced" classes do: there's one or two students who know their shit and yell out answers, and the rest can just stare into space for the 50 minutes of what I'm certain is little more than a faint buzzing in the back of their academic subconscious.  The trully unmotivated have tuned even this hum out. 

Nevertheless, they are excited.  I can smell the satisfaction they get when they answer something correctly.  I can feel the excitement of spelling simple words when I yell them at high-pitched cartoony voices.  I can see the greed and competition in their eyes as they try to find as many students who like the same breakfast food as they do just to dock up a few more points that have no purpose.  It's fascinating to see the ones that are really interested (I can remember the ambivalence of youth combined with being stuck in an institution that was so inadequate I barely remember a damn thing even out of "higher level" courses).  They are good students.  They are intelligent.  And I feel badly that when I tell other teachers or members of the community this all I get is a blank stare, "Hontou?"  Yes, really, I really think they can accomplish a lot.  And I want to help them.