Some of my old students!

1. Kayoko and Katsunori 2. Hatsuki, Ato, Manaka 3. Serika, Kaoruko, and
                                                    Ayane and Takuya                    Masaya


4. Kouki, Hibiki, Aya, Ryuuta, and Takuro                               5. Moeka and Aya
*kokomo*biscuit*eyeball*onion*taco roll*


6. Ryosuke 7. Miho, Akihito, Kento, 8. Nonoko, Yugo, and Mao
                                 and Satoshi


9. Asako, Shin, and Akiko 10. Chisato 11. Yukiko and Rui

1. Kayoko and Katsunori were two of my high school students, they are gone now to go to college. I miss them so much! They were wildly entertaining. Katsunori would do almost anything I told him to do for homework, ie, eat a muffin. On the last day of class, they were both saying incredibly sweet things to me and Katsunori (who is mostly very serious) said, "I learned so much from your class, like, about muffins and I just want to thank you" it was so awesome.
2. These crazy kids were so energetic, I couldn't get them to say anything in English on most days, but they were just too cute for me to care. Manaka and Ato loved to dance, so we would sing twinkle twinkle little star and we made up a dance to it. It was just so precious. I'll show you when I get home, cause I know you are dieing to see it. My favorite thing that I taught this class was how to be sneaky. We would walk around on our tippy toes saying "shhhh" it was precious. It started because I needed a cd player and I couldn't just leave them there alone, so we went on a sneaky cd player search.
3. This picture is missing a student named Honoka. The class actually used to have 6 people in it but two moved to a different day. There were 4 girls and 2 boys and they loved to compete against each other. OOOOOOR, everyone against me. Which, even with my impeccable english skill it was virtually impossible to 6 people. They also liked to pick a theme and give everyone nicknames according to that them. Ie. vegetables, fruit, animals, etc. I miss them too. The are now Kim's students. =(
4. Ok, I have like a gazillion favorite classes, but this one was definitely top 3. I posted two pictures because the second one is just cute and the first one completely sums up their individual personalities: Kouki is the little trouble maker, pesterer, booger, who you just have to love. Hibiki will do anything you say he is just so much fun. I could say, Hibiki, act like a monkey, and he was on it. I mean full out jumping around the class room and making sounds, it was awesome. Aya, is just a little angel. She was my little assistant. She loved helping other students, or me during class. I just love her. Ryuuta is just sweet quiet little boy that's just kinda like, "hey yeah, i'm here, I'm cool, whatev." Takuro was just like "huh?" half the time in class. He just wouldn't be paying attention and I'd say, Takuro, what color is this and he's all..."huh?" These students are now Kim's too, which I almost cried over because they were just so much fun. I loved this class so much! I mean, I still see them all come in, but it's different now ya know?
5. Aya and Moeka, when I first started teaching them, it was hard to get them to say two words in class. But it gradually got better and then they would say hilarious things in class. Like we were talking about our favorite things and I asked what their favorite fruit was and then we just kept talking about fruit and I asked if they liked a particular fruit (for the sake of the story we will say papaya) and Moeka responded very seriously and a little louder than she intended i think, with " I HAVE NO CHANCE!" meaning she's never tasted it. but it was just so hilarious we all cracked up. And then I asked about another fruit, pineapple (?) to which she said " NO PINEAPPLE!" a little angrily, so we pretended to be on strike against pineapples. We were also practicing interjections and one of them drew a card that said "______! He's tall" correct response would have been, wow, whoa, goodness, hey, oh, etc. but they choose "oh no" so then I acted out the sentence to convey the meaning of what they had just said, they found it very funny and corrected themselves immediately. From that point on when we saw each other we would say, "Oh no! You're tall"!
6. Ryosuke was just a silly little booger! I told him to make a silly face, which he did, but then changed back for the picture.
7. I taught this class how to say "one more time" when they wanted to sing a song again and then they said it all the time, it was so precious. We had this song about chicken noodle soup and they loved it! So I would sing it once and if they wanted to do it again they had to say "ONE MORE TIME" which the did. I swear those kids would have sang that song over and over and over again if I let them. I also taught them to poof out there checks and count to three and smash them together so all the air comes out and makes a funny sound. they loved it. it was the easiest way to get them to sit down and pay attention.
8. Mao was one of the students in the class I was talking about earlier. This class was one of my quieter classes (until Mao and Kenshin*not in the photo* came). But towards the end of the year I did everything I could to make them compete and sometimes Yugo would just get sooooo excited about trying to be first to answer that he would run up to me yelling "teacher teacher" and smacking my arm. It started to hurt, so I told him that if he kept doing it he couldn't get any points, but he would forget every time and just get so excited again. it was funny. but a little painful for me.
9. Asako and Akiko were one of my adult classes (obviously). They are both pretty fluent in English so we would just spend the time talking and making corrections as needed. I also taught them the word lackadaisical which was really difficult for them to say, but it is just a brilliant word and was perfect for whatever we were talking about. One day we talked about toilets for the entire hour. Shin, Asako's son, was also my student he's the one I wrote about once telling me that his mother was a pirate. I love that kid to death. I went to lunch with Asako last week and we picked him up from kindergarten and he was just so excited to see me, but totally trying to pretend that he wasn't. And he had told his kindergarten teacher that he was maybe going to get to see me. Precious.
10. Chisato was my student along time ago when I first came to Japan, but she came back for a couple lessons before she left for school She has such interesting perspectives, we usually talked about interesting news articles, or art, or travel. Her big dream for life is to write a children's book and I've never met a high school girl who would say that without even having to think about it for more than a second.
11. Yukiko and Rui: Yukiko brought me cake for valentines day! I included her in my previous anecdotes. Rui....i have no words. seriously.