Tsuyazaki Jr High Speech Contest.

So there's an English speech contest for a bunch of area schools on Dec 1st. My Jr High can only send three competitors, but we had 10 kids who wanted to try for it. So, for the last month or so, the kids have been crafting, translating and practicing their speeches every day.

It. Has. Been. Awesome.

Like I told some of the other teachers... I really like my job, but like any school, not all the kids are actually into studying. Great kids nonetheless, and I have pretty good rapport with most of them, even with the language barrier. But not everybody digs English, and not everybody is academically inclined. [Nor should they be.]

But spending a lot of time working with the smart kids? Who try hard? Who like English? It has been an outstanding experience.

So last Monday we had to have our in-school competition to cull our ten candidates down to three.

They all did sooooo well. I was really proud of them. It was both difficult and painful to be able to only choose three.

Here's a video sample, short, of the kids prepping before the contest. The cacophany is one of joy, at least for me to hear, let me tell you.