Back To School

Posted by Emily

Yesterday we spent the day at one of Ellen's schools where we were entertained by cute Japanese first and second graders while Ellen taught them English. The lesson for the day was singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", learning the names of school supplies, and then playing school supply bingo. There was lots of yelling involved. I am always amazed at the amount of energy that young children have. There is a morning and an afternoon recess and children were running around playing basketball and the like and even riding around on unicycles. It was very interesting to watch. There was also a Japanese calisthenics time (yes, we participated) and a cleaning time where all the students cleaned there assigned portion of the school. I was amazed.

Other than observing Ellen's classes, we were also invited to eat lunch with different fifth and sixth grade classes. We were split up for this because the students eat lunch in their own classrooms (hot lunch is served in each of the rooms by the students themselves....I don't think that would pass sanitary standards in the US). This made for awkward conversation because most of the students didn't speak much English and I obviously don't speak that much Japanese, though we have managed to pick up a few basic phrases. The teacher even made me give a little speech, but that was really no big deal because I don't think they could understand me anyway.

Overall the day was very interesting but tiring because of all the screaming children and lack of ability to communicate without help. We did get lots of cute pictures of the kids playing and sitting in class. I hope to share those eventually.