Teach Your Children Well

So a class's teacher makes a big difference in how genki or how crappily difficult the kids are. Surprising, huh? I guess we all remember having crappy teachers: the burn-outs, the block-heads, the dead-zones, the tyrants, the basketcases, the buffoons, the pushovers. It takes all kinds I guess. But classes are pretty closed systems in general, and you really only think about 'you the students' and--or versus--him or her the teacher. In my job now I'm a visitor and come-again assistant teacher to about forty-five different classes across five schools, and I see classes with very different kinds of character and a lot of different kinds of teachers at their helms. I can't complain; I make out pretty well in general, and most of the school-related folks here are pretty great to teach with. They seem for the most part a real fondness for their jobs, and despite being worked for rediculous hours and forced into the schizophrenic heirarchicies and compromises of any Japanese bureacracy, they seem to have a lot of job satisfaction and they're all really dedicated to their kids.

Teaching works very differently here; a teacher is often seen as one of a child's primary caregivers, on par with and sometimes above a child's parents. I met a teacher at a conference recently (this is it must be said a whole nother story ... "there's nothing more romantic than a doomed romance," my sister tells me) who was called back to her hometown across the prefecture because a boy in her school--not even in her class, but in a differet homeroom in her grade--had been caught trying to shoplift manga (had been caught, to be specific, trying to shoplift an enormous sachel of 142 seperate paperbacks, of all the idiot reasons for the universe to find to deny me a chance at new love), and she as well as all the other teachers in the grade had to be in school to receive him when the police turned him over to his own homeroom teacher, who was the first one they notified after his detainment; it was up to the teacher to then inform the parents. There's a lot of shit like this here; I'm told that hospital patients might not be told about severe or even terminal conditions, but that their families or teachers will be told instead. Scary to think.

Today I'm at Hidaka Sho, with the ichinensei--meaning first graders--whom I think I completely and unconditionally love. They are so cute and wonderful. Their teachers, on the other hand, can make things difficult. There are three different teachers for the ichinensei at this school, one for each class. The first is young, the next middle aged, the third a bit on the older side (this is like witches in Shakespeare, neh?), and each is very different from the other two.

The young one, Michi, I had a crush on for a while and we kind of dated for a bit, wayyyyyy back when I'd more or less just started out here. She speaks a decent amount of English and although not a great kisser, she was kind of fun. But she's just so scatterbrained and not-with-it in the classroom that my crush totally evaporated after only a few times of teaching with her. As of this writing I've just gotten done her class, and while I really like the kids I can never help feeling like their lack of general intuition and charisma is actually her general lack of intuition and charisma; it's like she's infected them with some mild form of idiocy. I know it's not at all so cut and dry: it's hard being a teacher, and the little little ones can run you pretty ragged. Also, groups of kids do acquire a kind of natural character to them like any other ghestalt. At Becket there were always the harder or smoother, younger or older, fightier or more creative cabins; sometimes my kids were the same age as another cabin but so much less far along emotionally and rationally that they might have been years younger. It just means that within your group stuff you have to work things out to their best interest, at and just beyond their level so you can all get the most out of everything and so your activities and games can help them grow a bit.

Now, this natural character business all understood, it becomes slightly dissapointing with first graders. These kids are like 6. Maybe 5. They really reeeeally want to have fun with you. They want to have pretty much whatever kind of fun you look like you want to have with them. Like, you know what can constitute ten minutes of seriously exhiliating playtime with first graders? Jumping. That's right: Jumping! You hold their hand and you jump! And they jump. And you jump! And they jump. And you pretendtojump! And they jump. And then everybody screams with delight and surprise. It's like, they're perfect. Today when things didn't go terribly well with activities it just felt like the other teacher in the class, Michi, was the only one not on board with the "let's all have fun" program that I felt I had tacitly outlined at the beginning of the lesson by bringing a ukulele and colored magnets into the room with me and tickling the kids as I went around to say hello to them. And it's just like, Try. Please try. Just stay with us. The activities aren't difficult. It's essentially, "repeat after me and we'll sing a song and look at pictures!" All it would take to work is for you--you're the ACTUAL teacher remember, I'm the ASSISTANT teacher--for you to put in a normal application of normal teachery stuff to make the class run smoothly around the "repeat after Josh, jump up and down" game plan. It's not after all like I speak Japanese. My ability to do the behavior management stuff is incredibly slim, limited mainly to some stern eyebrow raising and several ways of standing with my arms folded that are supposed to convey slightly different degrees of teacherly, stoic exasperation. Help me out some, lady, huh?

Really the most crucial thing to any of my classes is that there's some energy--mine and the kids' both--that makes things work. I mean I can't speak Japanese and they can't speak English, so the only option is pretty much to try to have some fun together and orient it around using English words and phrases and to avoid translating them so that the kids don't just think in Japanese the whole time. At first grade especially, anything ESL revolves around energy, intuition, some charity and a lot of kindness, and honestly very little else. In today's class with Michi the only thing I really needed was some linguistic teamwork and energy, and instead she managed to manifest the ability to disperse every watt of energy we could try to build up and work with. It was nearly impossible to retain the kids' attention and interest. And it just shouldn't be that hard. Intuit a bit for goodness sakes. Look:

We warm up every class--and I mean every class, every school, but also every class I've taught with you--with the same series of big cartooney faces that represent tiered answers to the all important English language opener, "How are you today?" The answers we've practiced are, in order, "I'm great / I'm good / I'm OK / I'm not so good / I'm sick / I'm grumpy (alternately, 'I'm in a bad mood,' depending on the grade level)." Every class. Often we'll do activities with this. Often as in, every class. The littler kids can't get enough of it, and it's great because they practice saying a lot of English sounds in what gets to be a very natural and conversational voice, and it makes them feel really special to communicate with me and with each other (they also really like roaring "I'M GRUMPYYYAAAAA!!!!!" and running after each other, and I always feign fear and cower until they pounce on me and I tickle them and pull on their pigtails). So today we start with the faces on the board and everybody warms up together call-response style, answering me with whatever face's signified I'm holding up in front of the class. Michi has gone to the back of the class. And clicked her brain off. I can see it. Nothing spinning behind the eyes. So we finish the faces, and I try to beckon Michi up to the front.

To be fair, lots of teachers go to the back of the room when it's my turn at the plate. But most of them, or, well many of them anyway stay involved in the class and blanket-monitor the kids and help the ones who get lost or stray out, and they'll help me in Japanese when I flounder. It's usually pretty obvious when I need one of them to come help me. But this time Michi has spaced out and I have to super super beckon her up. "Eh, atashi?" "Huh, me," she asks from the back of the room. Well, yes, yes you. First of all I'm beckoning someone exactly where you're standing who's got to be about five and a half feet taller than the tiny munchkin children over whose heads I'm trying to get your attention, and second of all YES YOU, you're the teacher who I'm supposed to be Team-Teaching with. This, is the beginning of the end. Once the kids sense a lack of harmony amongst you the teachers, they snap right out of your spell. It's how it goes with any audience. You break that fourth wall, you lose the magic.

What I want the kids to do is stand up, have the "How are you today" conversation with three other kids and then sit back down for another game. I try to pantomime this and draw it on the board, but they space out a little. Which is fine. They're 5, and I don't speak their language. So I super beckon Michi and drag her to the front and give the pantomime to her, and gesture/say "can you explain that to them?"

"Eh?"

Okay. Let's give it another go. I can feel the spell slipping away from the kids, their eyes clouding over, pencils entering mouths, drool pooling, snot forming. Okay. Let's give it a slightly different go, and with some Japanese: "kids ... talk with ... three people ... this conversation ... three people ... "how are you today" / "I'm blahblahblahblah" ... with three people ... finish and sit back down." Gesture speak: can you tell them to do that? And Michi looks at me and says loudly and clearly the Japanese colloquial, abrupt equivalent of, "I have no idea what you mean."

The spell snaps audibly. Crayons go in noses. One child stand up in his chair and shouts, "it's blue!" Sigh.

Still, it was fun overall. And I really like the "it's blue" kid. He knows his colors, that one! And shortly after the talk-to-three-people game finally got itself underway I gave my ukulele its first classroom debut, which was super exciting for, believe it or not, pretty much everybody. The admittedly lame "How's the Weather" song I'd fabricated (GGGGGGGGGGDCGGGGGGGGGDC...) was not by any means a blue ribbon winning lesson plan, and it too was frustrated by Michi sensei not catching on with the "see, you hold up these cards that have huge pictures of the weather that we've just been practicing with for the last ten minutes and the kids will sing along with 'it's sunny' when they're supposed to. Beleeeeeeive me. just hold them up. three times and then change to 'it's a beautiful day.' PLEASE." Exasperating, but my kids all were singing "it's a beautiful day" pretty accurately by the end of it (that's the GDC ... ooh yeah). Overall very happy-making but I'm not going to strike it back up with Michi. Also, she smelled distinctly of what I believe to be coriander.

Later on today I have the third ichinensei class, with the older of the teachers. She is a peach, and her class might be my favoritest of all favorite things in the entire world. They are just so so so so so so so so cute, and they're fun and lovey and enthusiastic and warm, and I love being in class with them: it always ends up a hundred times more successful and fun than I ever could plan it. Wonderful wonderful wonderful. One little girl has the cutest cheeks that any little girl has ever had ever in the history of human civilization, and it makes her giggle and blush when I pinch her cheeks or nose or tickle her and when she wants to escape she runs towards me and gives me an enormous hug, and is thereby wonderfully and completely safe. Playing with her and the others is almost always the best part of any day I can have. I go play with them honestly every time I come to this school, no matter what. They never get tired of "How are you today?" Never ever ever. They just LOVE us having that little conversation; it almost baffles me. I can say with complete conviction that with one or two exceptions this class of 5 year olds speaks better sounding English than any of my Junior High School students (the exceptions being among the five year olds, not the junior high kids). Their teacher is an incredibly sweet woman, very tender and fun. She's just a peach ... I hadn't ever even wanted to say that about anybody till I got to know her. A peach. Every single time I see her, even multiple times within a given day at this school, she tells me something nice about myself. From how well chosen my tie was to how she thinks my cowboy shirt makes me look very handsome and I'm always such a snappy dresser, to she's so impressed by my Japanese, to how fun my lesson was, or how good my drawing is, and on and on and on. And she's always so genuinely happy when I come to play with her class. It's like, Why am I not always around you and your love-inspiringly cute children? She's just a peach. I'm sure that part of her class's general wonderfulness is her fine example; she's just so kind to them and everyone else, and she's really supportive and patient and strong. It's nothing saccharine, it's totally a gentle strength this woman has. Of course hers is the class that's going to be patient and happy and kind and loving towards me (also, if you were in a class full of kids that cute, how could you not be wonderful towards everything in the world?). What a great class. For them I can't WAIT to pull out the ukulele for the weather song. So much love to ensue.