Flashcards??
Between 2 units I asked if she would like me to bring the flashcards for the unit we were finishing, so that we could review them before starting the new unit.
She said "No, we don't need those, that unit is over. Read the textbook and think for yourself."
I left the flashcards on her desk in the teacher's room, because she made it look like I was dumb for even suggesting it.
In class, she proceeds to tell me to use those very same flashcards for review. When I told her I left them in the teacher's room she turned to the students in Japanese and said "Sorry, I know I said yesterday (when I was at the JHS) that we would play a review game today. But the ALT made a mistake and forgot the cards. So now we can’t play."
I offered to go back and get the cards while the students were doing some type of assessment on their tablets that I wasn't allowed to help with anyway, and she said no.
The principal just so happened to be sitting in on class that day.
Copy Copout
During the typhoon we were making printouts for the students and she told me to make 350 copies of 4 different printouts. In total, 1,400 pages of paper. I asked her if she was sure she wanted 350 each. I made sure to write down the number to make sure I was correct. She said "Yes because we will use the same printouts in 4 different classes."
I intentionally only made 300 of the first printout, and of course that just so happened to be too many when another teacher came into the room and was understandably waiting to use the copier. She says "What did you do? I said 300, not 3,000."
I said "300 is a lot of pages."
She said "Why did you use 2 packs of paper for 1 printout?"
I said "1 pack of paper only has 200 sheets, and you said 300. So I needed 2."
She tells the other teacher in Japanese "looks like we will have to find something to do with the back of all these copies, she made too many. I said 100 and she made 350."
I only made 300. She told me to make 350. This was not a communication error. She knows what she told me. I asked her to show me the right way to do it, for the other printouts in front of the other teacher. She made less than 100 of each of the next 3 printouts.
I'm Not Doing That
At one of the ES the printed out schedule is always wrong because they only printed it once at the beginning of the year, and teachers tend to change their schedules a lot. Usually Sensei tells me the schedule in the half hour before the first period starts. She did tell me the schedule. According to the schedule she told me, we didn't have a class during the first period. She also asked me to go to a supply room to look for some flashcards she couldn't find.
While I was looking for the flashcards, she went to a class I've never been to before; and also did not know we had first period, because she told me we didn't have a class that period. She took a different computer than the one she always takes to class. Her usual one was still sitting on her desk when I came back to the teacher's room. I assumed she was just in the bathroom because her computer with all of her offline powerpoints was still there and she told me we didn't have a class that period less than 10 minutes before.
10 minutes into the class starting, she called the teacher's room looking for me, and asking why I was late. Of course, when I showed up, there were people from outside the school observing this class because the middle schoolers were doing a "work week" and they were being introduced by some adults during the first period.
After the class ended she tried to argue with me about being late. I said "You told me we didn't have class then, so I went to look for the flashcards you asked for."
She said "You should not have left, even though I asked you to go find those. You should have waited until lunch time and looked before you started eating."
Kahoot Conundrum
I made the Kahoots based on what unit the 3rd years were on at both ES. As per her request. Just one Kahoot for all the 3rd years at both schools. Don't make different ones based on school or class letters.
Apparently at SM, 3B can answer questions directly from the book without any translation, but 3A cannot. ("Directly from the book" meaning I took screenshots of the digital book, and just blacked out the keywords and had them fill in the blanks for most of the questions. It really can't get any easier and still be on-unit.)
I based the Kahoot off of what SM's 3B could do. When we played it with all the classes on Tuesday at SN; and with 3B at SM on Thursday, no problems. When we played the same one, unedited, with 3A at SM the same day, they could not understand the same questions.
And sensei decided to repeatedly tell the students and homeroom teacher in Japanese (in front of me), that she didn't check it (she did, we played it more than once by this point and she changed a lot of the questions), and that these are all my mistakes (the ones that were wrong were not the ones I wrote), and that she would tell me I did it wrong later. (She did tell me I was wrong, when they were right the last time I checked them, and she said they were fine in the few minutes before the first period...)
I've noticed this a lot, now that I've been paying attention. If she makes a mistake, she will tell the students and teachers it's my fault and apologize on my behalf; even though I make sure to check these things with her as often as possible. Of course, she can never be wrong though.
Bingo Bust
Was asked to make 350 Bingo sheets. I asked her if she was sure. She said yes. I wrote down the number to confirm we were on the same page. She said yes. I made 350 Bingo sheets.
We used them all day, and by the time we got to the last class of the day (one of the ones Mike came to observe, unsurprisingly), we had 32 Bingo sheets left and 30 students in the class.
She decided to ask me why we didn't have enough and why I didn't make more. And why didn't I make the amount she asked for. (I did make the amount she asked for. We did have enough. We actually had 2 extra.)
I tried to tell her we had enough, but she wouldn't let me pass them out to prove we had enough. Instead the students drew their own easy Bingo sheets in their notebooks, so it all worked out anyways.
Thigs I say WRONG apparetly
❥ Hello. It has to be "Hello, everyone." Don't use everybody, don't use you guys, abosolutly don't use y'all, and don't just say "Hello" by itself. It has to be "Hello, everyone."
❥ O'clock. The students were saying A'clock (because it's easier) but the textbook says O'clock. So I started stressing the O (like お—) so the students could hear the difference. It worked, and the students started saying it correctly. But apparently it's お not お— and there's a difference, even though the students were not writing anything down and this was the first time they heard this phrase in class.
(huh, apparently japanese does not work on this website... had to use unicodes for this one....)
❥ Bye bye. Japanese people think it's Japanese for some reason. Can't use it even though it's actually english.
Computer Delimma
She got mad at me for asking if I could use the computer while she wasn't even using it. She was grading papers (with an answer key), so I asked her if she wanted help grading (since I CAN'T get an answer key wrong), she said no. So I asked if I could use the computer so I could work on the kahoots she ASKED ME TO MAKE THAT MORNING.
She said "everything you do doesn't have to be computer work, you have stuff you can do without the computer, right?"
I'm not really sure what the right answer to that would be… so I asked if she was using it, and she said no, and gave it to me.
❥ She didn't want help grading papers.
❥ I couldn't make copies because we are about to have the weekly meeting, and the copier is in the other room.
❥ AND I couldn't get the flashcards ready for next week because I ALREADY DID THAT, (and she saw me do it).
❥ And I couldn't print and cut out things for the English board because the printer is in the same room as the copier.
WHAT ELSE was I supposed to do that wouldn't interrupt a meeting? I guess just sit there and do nothing while everyone else was either doing computer work or grading during the meeting? That didn't seem like the right move.
She has access to 3 computers, I only have access to one.
(The other 2 computers use face ID to unlock, so there's no password, and obviously my face isn't in that system so I can't just unlock it without her doing it, which seems really inconvenient when she's grading and I have the password for the other one she wasn’t using.)
Why would it be an issue for me, the ALT, to use the only computer that says "ALT computer" on it, when she was just stacking papers and another computer she could use on top of it?
WTF Whiteboards
She suggested we play a game that involved the students using whiteboards. I asked if the schools had whiteboard sets we could use for that (because I've never seen them used; and it would have been my job to get them.) She responded with "The students have whiteboards built into the back of their textbooks. Have you never looked at one of the textbooks ever in your life? You should really look at the textbook. It's in there."
She then proceeded to open the textbook to the back to prove it to me.
I'm sure you can guess what was not in the textbook. And I'm sure you can also guess she did not apologize.
(For the record, the schools do have whiteboard sets.)
Christmas Crusade
she was being more rude than usual. She kept cutting me off during the xmas presentation and explaining everything in japanese before I had the chance to say it in english. And when I tried to say it in English anyway, she would say "I already told them, go to the next slide already." Which confused the kids because she started doing this halfway through the presentation. At the beginning, she left the room to go make copies, so I was doing it just fine with just me and the homeroom teacher. And the kids were answering me correctly, so they did understand...
We have a routine of saying hello, then I ask "how are you" before we do the daily questions. She also cut me off in the middle of saying hello for something she could have told me in the few min between classes where she didn't talk at all. Literally:
Her: hello everyone
Me: he--
Her: LET'S SKIP "HOW ARE YOU" TODAY
Me: oh okay then, hell--
Her: WE ALREADY DID THAT, ask the daily questions
Am I saying hello in some sort of secretly offensive way or something??????????
She also wanted to play werewolf, but when I saw her slides I noticed her version was way different from the version I know. So I asked if she could explain it. During class, instead of explaining, she asked who already played before, and when half the class raised their hands, she said "since most of you know it already, i won't explain it at all."
What was the point of that?
It wasn't even the whole class that said they played before...... Half of the people were actually confused the whole game! (She also told me before class that they would be saying things like "werewolf" and "hunter" in English and I would practice with them beforehand. But the whole game was in Japanese actually and that didn't happen... but that's less important.) I spent those 2 class periods in charge of the xmas music, but she wanted it played on the lowest setting; so it couldn't be heard over people talking; basically it was just there to give me something to do. I could have been working on the next unit printouts or kahoot in the teacher's room instead considering we were ONLY using the tablet for music.
She also deleted half the slides off my presentation during recess without telling me, so I figured she wanted a shorter version of the presentation so we would have more time for the games after. So I pretended it was supposed to be like that. And she got mad at me and asked me where the rest of the slides were. Thankfully I used google slides, so I could restore the old version.
But in the edit history, I could see she intentionally deleted specific slides and saved after each delete. She literally made up her own reason to get mad at me in front of the students. And, surprise (not), there was a trainee teacher observing that specific class.
Interesting how we have been doing this same presentation for almost 2 weeks with no problems, and it only goes wrong when someone from outside the school is in the room. I'm starting to see a pattern where there are probably no patterns.