jonai shogakko

Jonai Elementary School

Today was my first day @ Jonai. With a vague idea of how to get there, I headed out of town a ways to this remote and incredibly BEAUTIFUL school. Look at this scenery...the mountains surround this school and were splashed with reds/oranges/yellows/greens and WHITE--yep, at the tops you can see the snow starting to accumulate! Only Japanese students and their inane ability to focus on school, would NOT be distracted by this view!

So the day went as scheduled. Oh, wait. There was no schedule-I had no communication with this school prior to heading out there. The teacher in me is just not used to "winging" it all the time. As it turns out, I was overprepared, but it provided much diversity for me in doing several different games and activities with each grade. I LOVE elementary school visits on Mondays - I actually GET to TEACH! I have the floor, can plan the stuff and run the show. It's fantastic and I SO miss it during the other days of the week...OK let's keep this positive!

Jonai was my first official rural-sized school visit. The entire school population is 42 kids....that's Kindergarten thru 6th grade! So, it was no surprise to be teaching classes with less than 10 kids! There were 7 sixth graders and they were such wonderful kids, I wanted to stay in their room all day long! I had free reign with the curriculum and waved goodbye to the textbook. It was just me, 7 kids who REALLY were interested in English and a phenomenal teacher that chirpsed in with occasional translations, but otherwise just let the kids get exposed to the language. PERFECT! It's how its supposed to be done. The sixth grade class is pictured above...albeit one!

The school is so small that the teachers have to take on extra responsibilities--ie. teaching gym, music and art in addition to the basic subjects. So after finishing my classes for the day I joined up with a couple of the "gym" classes, both of which played softball the entire hour. Getting to my play my favorite sport in a semi-competitive atmosphere, in this amazing geographical location was pretty swell!

Thank you Jonai! I had a wonderful day with you! See you soon...