I am from the city of Corumbus in the state of Oreo

Last week the students had exams every day. That was great because I didn't have to teach and had plenty of time to plan this week's lessons and study Japanese. The exams, however, did not go so well. Most of the students did not study at all it seems. And if they had studied, English would not have been at the top of the list. There are good reasons for this though. A day in the life of one of my students would go something like this:

Go to school at 7:00 or 7:30 am to practice his/her club activity. Club activities here are generally sports, but can also be kimono club or English club. That last one is kind of a joke because only four students belong to the club, and only one ever shows up. Yet we still try and meet twice a week. Every student counts apparently.

Practice club activity until 8:15 when school begins. Classes end at 3:10, followed by a 10 minute break, then cleaning for 20 minutes. Yes, I said cleaning. At most Japanese schools the students do the cleaning. This includes sweeping, cleaning the bathrooms, and taking out the trash. One of my extra duties is to act as a "volunteer" to help the students with the trash. It is very complicated here and has to be separated into five or six different bins, which include burnables like food waste and paper; plastic bottles; cellophane and similar plastics; metals; and glass. I help make sure that burnable trash is not put into the bins for plastic, etc. Not my favorite thing, but whatever.

After cleaning go to club activity and practice until 8:30 or 9:00 pm. Students are at school for 13-14 hours during the week! Even on the weekend they generally go to school to practice their club activity or have a match.

After club activity, go home and maybe study. But what probably happens is that they eat, take a bath, and go to bed. They seem to be exhausted every day and for good reason. They are at school for so long that they generally don't have time to study and, as I said before, if they did English would not be at the top of the list. You're required to pass an English exam to get accepted to a university in Japan, but 75% of the students at my school won't go on to university. So not only is English not a priority, but it's a pain in the butt and is being forced upon them for no reason.

So, back to my test... My students are at a fairly low level of English comprehension, so I have to make my lessons and tests fairly easy. As I was grading the tests I realized that a couple of the questions were a bit too hard, so I felt kind of bad. But the other questions were not and I was very disappointed in the overall scores.

The test material included my self-introduction and greetings from around the world. One of my self-intro questions was "Kate is from the city of Columbus in the state of Ohio." The "l" in Columbus and the "hi" in Ohio were left blank. Students had to fill in the letters. These sounds, especially the "l," are very difficult for them. Still, I thought that this question wasn't too hard since most of the word had been given to them. I was wrong because quite a few students left that question blank or gave the wrong answer. The funniest answer was "Kate is from the city of Corumbus in the state of Oreo."

One of the greetings from around the world questions included a map of the world with a few countries numbered, including the US. Students had to label the US and a few of them could not do this. Instead they labeled it as Canada, South America, and even Tibet. I was baffled as to why 100% of them did not answer the question correctly. I guess that kids can be ignorant everywhere because many American students probably can't point to Japan on a map.

We'll see how the next test goes...