Put Me in, Coach

I crashed the first half of a gym class today with the third graders, who are my favorites. It's the first class of the new year so the kids had to introduce themselves to the new PE teacher. He tells them that they have to say their names and their hobby or club, and then say something else about themselves too; and I, from behind where the kids are sitting on the gym floor, say: "in English! Introduce yourselves in English!" After all, didn't we all JUST do this yesterday and the day before for the new English teachers? "In English," I say and everyone laughs; these kids are all smiles. The shy ones mumble, "really?" to their neighbors and the louder ones say, "no way!" to the teacher, but after a moment's pause the first kid, Taiki, stands up and goes "Hello! My name is Taiki Watanabe. I'm in tennis club ..... THE tennis club! I'm in the tennis club. Thank you!" And when he sits down, all the rest of the kids give him this big round of applause, and then the next one stands up and does it too. They applaud for every kid (and we didn't even practice it this time!). The super unconfident ones started in Japanese but I managed to make even them do it in English. One really shy girl, Yuuka (who I like a lot, she's on the volleyball team and all those girls are really friendly) even added her own sentence at the end, "and my favorite volleyball player is Kasturaya Hirabashi," or someone. This week I've been spending more time with the baseball club, so when one boy stands up and says he's on the team, I ask what position he plays. "What?" He's already in the middle of sitting down, and is so startled by this new question, suddenly outside of the safe self-intro speech, that he ends up caught in the bent hunch between standing and sitting on the floor, looking up at me. "What position do you play?" All the other kids echo, "what position!" "Oh," he smiles after a minute. "Bench."