What to write?

So,  although I am perfectly fine ranting on and on about random things on here, I was wondering if anyone has good ideas for what to write and what would be interesting about this area/ be helpful for new ALTs?

If you have any good ideas then comment please! :D

Yesterday was excessively hot and I succumbed to heat fever (I'm pretty sure that is a real thing) and by the time I got back home I was very very sick! Today is better, but this sudden heat and humidity after a very mild spring is especially excruciating. Since my real air conditioning is broken and the kids ate the cord on my brand new one, I had to go buy a new brand new mini air conditioning. Despite having that and a fan both running and pointed directly at me and being wrapped in ice packs and water towels.... well let's just say that today's relatively mild weather is already this bad I don't know how I'll make it though the summer, especially if they really start cutting our power for several hours a day to conserve power. GUH
School of course has no air conditioning and most of the fans in my classroom are broken so....

But enough complaints.

For any new ALTs reading, my school situation is very simple. When I started last year I had (still have) a base middle school about 3 minute walk from my house (nice!) where I am essentially just a normal staff member and I have my own shoe space, desk, get all of the normal forms and generally follow the same schedules, go to special events, etc.

Additionally, I also had two elementary schools, each about a 3-5 minute drive from the middle school. The first school I'd go to on Tuesday afternoons and teach one class.. grades 1-4 (5th and 6th had their own special teacher). At that school I had no lesson plan whatsoever and planned, created and did lessons on my own. They had homeroom teachers to "help" but their English levels ranged from "What are you saying???????" to absolutely fluent. My other elementary school I taught at on Thursday and Friday afternoons along with homeroom teachers and an excellent English specialist.

This spring the first Elementary school was shut down and its students and some of its teachers were added to the other Elementary school which had been remade and is new and beautiful!

So, my current schedule is middle school M-F 8-4 and Elementary classes in the afternoons on Thursday and Friday. While it's nice not to have to plan the lessons for this school, I kind of miss getting to think up super fun games for the kids to do and I liked that the smaller school had very small classes (1-2nd grades were together and only 8 kids!).

Elementary school is grades 1-6 and middle school is 1st grade (7th) 2nd grade (8th) and 3rd grade (9th).   My middle school kids are great, but does anyone remember middle school? It is clearly the worst time of anyones life and they have their moments where they just want to do NOTHING. It doesn't help that they all are required to do club activities after school, on holidays and the weekends, but also most of them go to after school school and participate in marathons and things. They work hard, so it's understandable that they fall asleep a lot in class. I'm always tempted to draw on their faces with black marker, but I guess the punishments that worked when I was a kid may not work well on this generation? So I just draw on their faces in my MIND! Muahaa... the joys of teaching.

Additionally, for most of my stay here I taught English night school. While I originally signed on to "help" a friend, they dropped out and I was stuck doing it on my own. It was very terrifying having to come up with two hour lessons for students ranging from 4 years to 88 years old and I've complained incessantly about it, but it has been one of my most rewarding experiences in Japan so far.
Unfortunately, after the earthquake our community center had to cancel all night classes to preserve energy for Japan and I had to cancel my classes for the time being. It was a huge relief to have my Fridays to myself again, but if all goes well I'll start them up again in September :D (unless any of the new ALTs are interested?)

Hope that everyone is having a lovely day in places less hot and humid than Japan.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Also this is the best blog ever :D