Both Ways

It's Friday the 13th, and we return to cookie baking. I told myself, we're gonna do this again, and we're gonna do it right this time.

Planning well in advance, I got my wonderful parental units to supply me with a shit-tonne of the instant pudding necessary to make the cookies. The also brought along some chocolate chips to make my ordering load lighter.

I can't believe we're making them today. Not because it's Friday the 13th, but because this week has been so incredibly intense and it's only been like four days long.

I want to do a 'real' post about this.. complete with pictures and all that, but for now I'll just fill in the outline.

Last weekend was a sort of mess. Friday, I didn't go to work, but instead to Kobe where I was made an official Goodwill Envoy of Hyogo Prefecture. This just means that wherever I go I should spread the good word. This is easy; I'm liable to pimp out anything I think is truly any good (someone once told me I would be a good saleswoman when I vehemently extolled the virtues of some thing or other.. but the truth is I can only sell something I really know and love).

So that just meant no school that day. Saturday was supposed to be a school day, sort of.. we were to go to work and then after an hour of hanging out at school, go and watch kids compete all over town in various taikai things against the other schools (then get Monday off as a trade in day). But Saturday got rained out so hard they called in an O-ame (too much damn rain) warning, which cancels school in the city. (This happens way more than o-yuki, or too much snow warnings, actually... seriously, imagine a place where rain cancels school more often than snow does!)

So Saturday got pushed to Sunday, and we still had Monday off... I had a visitor in town to hang out and see the taikai, and we thought go to the beach Sunday, but no cigar.

Long story short, it was planned to be a sort of schedually challenged weekend and became EVEN MORE SO because of the rain.

This thrust me into Tuesday's 'last lessons day' at Small Elementary with little mental preparation (since I had Monday off and work on Sunday? I don't know). And then suddenly everything was happening at once. Tuesday was an exhausting run of six class periods conducted for all grade levels, including kindergarten, made heavy with the knowledge that it was the last one for each and all of them. By the end of the day I was a ragged mess. Wednesday was first-year classes back at the middle school (Mario Kart game ftw), and Thursday was the actual last day at the bigger elementary school, which left me less wrecked by still glad I wore waterproof mascara.

I felt better at the bigger school because they made a bigger deal of things.. I felt okay about crying because I could tell they wanted me to cry. They were doing things with the express purpose of making me cry. Then the entire school "hana-michi" style harassed me all the way to the front door. It was exhilarating, and exhausting. More about all that later when I get the photos ready.

In an oddly fitting gesture from the universe, the little girl who walked into the office on perhaps my first day (she was a second grader then) was in the office again during the end of my last day. She was the first student I have memory of speaking directly to; as a second grader she came up to me and told me that I was cute (which was a shocking thing to hear from an adorable second grade girl willing to walk right up to you), and gave a sort of botched self-intro in English. She's one of the special needs kids and is absolutely precious still. She's a fifth grader now and she thanked me for the time I've spent there before I slipped out to put all the presents I'd gotten near my desk at the middle school.

And since I realized (that afternoon) that I was going to be making cookies the very next day, I decided to just get all that stuff when I had my car, which I would on Friday, because I would need to transport said shit tonne of pudding mix (not heavy) and 5.5 kg of chocolate chips (kinda heavy) along with a few other odds, ends, and things.

So yeah. It's been a short week (too short... I almost wish I'd had Monday) and now I'm facing this weekend when I will rent that giant effing van I once drove, roadtrip to Shikoku with some of Shiso-plus-Alessandro, and go rafting and canyoning again. 

All that because it's a three-day weekend, which leads into another too-short (blasphemy, I know) week, which is the last week of this semester, the last week of my job in any actuality. Ending ceremony is the 20th, the day after our Salamander farewell dinner which is the same day as the BOE last 'greeting' for which I'll get out of school early (I am never sure these days whether skipping school time is a good thing anymore)... 

There is no time to think, little to plan, and I feel like I should have seen this coming, but I didn't realize it would come on so fast! I know there will be another quieter period once the school year ends (after my 'word' at the closing ceremony, etc.) for me to pack and clean and sort, but the way all this descended in a rush makes me feel like I should be packed and ready to go, like, tomorrow. Which just adds to the sense that there was probably a time to think and feel and plan, and that time has come and gone while I was marveling at June and how for the first time it wasn't a shit show. Whatever was missing from June has about hit the fan and here we are up on the final countdown.

So some moments I'm really happy, and some moments I'm hearing a song I just discovered on a CD I unearthed in the packing process and it's making me cry. And some moments I'm feeling relieved that I don't have to plan for/worry about/English educate this or that group anymore -- that their enthusiasm for or knowledge of English is no longer my responsibility. Other moments a particular face will come to mind.. a kid or a teacher, and I'll have to forget for the moment how much it sucks to leave a place.. how much I always did hate graduations.

One of the third graders summed it up pretty well at my send-off ceremony. "She's crying! Look! Now she's smiling. [confusion]" There's that saying, don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. But I was always one to have it both ways.

two of recent pieces of praise

Recently, I've been getting a lot of positive feedback from so many different sources in such a coordination, I hardly know what to think. I'd like to share a little of it, just to keep my head from exploding.

First, I'll tell you about the sixth graders. Although we've had middle school graduation already, they are still working their way toward a ceremony. The current 6th graders are kids I dubbed the "butterflies" back when I was in the business of giving them nicknames. They were just 4th graders then, and I have very little memory of why I chose that (probably just the progression downward from dogs to cats to mice to frogs to fish.. to butterflies. Maybe they were prettier?).

Anyway, as they move toward graduation, they undertake a lot of memory and forward-looking things, one of which is thanking teachers with written messages on plaques, and another of which is intercom interviews. They did present me with a plaque thing which to my surprise referred not to just this year, but to teaching them English for three years. The kid who was in charge of hanging it over to me had to make a little speech, and in it he said that he's grown to like English.

That is pretty standard; they weren't going to pick the girl who is always saying "I hate English!" (who, nonetheless, waves to me and calls out hello when I see her walking to school as I get off the bus in the morning) to give the little speech to me. But it sort of dawned on me that at the elementary school, especially having been there so long by now, the English program has slowly become my program. These kids had ALTs before me, but I've been the longest-standing and most current, so their English learnin' has largely been associated directly with me.

Also with that, the current sixth graders were 4th graders when I arrived; I don't see 1st - 4th grades as often, but I spend time with 5th and 6th once a week at that school. This means that this particular class is kind of my pinnacle performance because they didn't see as much of me during those first two trimesters, when I had no idea what I was doing, and came up through the years to be the first group with whom I even managed to finish the textbook.

The butterflies have always been pretty well-disciplined, I remember that from their time as 5th graders (and because they followed just after the fish, who as elementary kids made me want to tear my hair out sometimes, but which fish have later made excellent middle schoolers, what with the iron fist of authority dwelling here and all).

I suffered a spell of paranoia similar to what happened with the math teacher (and with similar results) wherein I really thought the guy hated working with me. We hardly communicated in the spring of 2010, but when he remained as my "English co-teacher" for the second year in a row come 2011, things just got a lot easier. I started joining his group for cleaning time (because it was outside and usually involved plants), and came to see that even though his English was less than fantastic, he really was trying. AND as a bonus, he is a great teacher, in the sense that the kids (even the worst of the 4th graders [umm, snakes class?]!) respect him totally. This may have something to do with the fact that he is a giant by some Japanese standards, but it's also a lot his way of dealing with the kids. I love it.

Last year's graduation.

Anyway, I've been invited to their tea party and all their graduation things, which is pretty new and I enjoy it.

What was I saying? Oh! Well, so it's normal to say something nice at the presentation of a thank you card, but no one is making the kids say anything in their barely comprehensible lunchtime intercom interviews. These are conducted by 5th graders against a background of terrible pop music (usually AKB, which I am against kind of in principle). It's difficult to hear and understand what's being said, and the first time I heard a kid respond "English class" to some question, I admit I didn't hear the question (but I still gave the air a fist-bump). Usually they are leading. "What do you want to do your best at in middle school?" "Studies and club activities!" Well... "What club do you want to join?" "What is your favorite memory from elementary school?"

So I have no idea what was being said or even if "English" was really what I heard. But it happened again on some other day, and I felt myself celebrating inside. Whatever the question was doesn't even matter.. some of these butterflies actually liked my class and look forward to pursuing English in middle school. Which, granted, they totally might have done with any other ALT and any other program. But they didn't, cause I was the one here.

Second, I'll tell you about the compliments at the party. Remember that post-graduation party my head wasn't in the game for? I spent my time at that thing alternating between so happy and overcome by emotion, and being a brick whose face felt so heavy I thought it might actually tip me over into the sashimi boat.

But here and there it would crop up within different topics. The other teachers were finding little ways to say really flattering things, which I hesitate to even print here because this blog is supposed to be partly for my successor, whosoever that may be, and I am shy to let them know how loved Ichinan was making me feel, by saying they wished I could stay, or if they had an unmarried son they'd try to make me part of their family, how they can't remember seeing me get angry.

I had been thinking a lot about my own departure and even what to say in my leaving speech during graduation, and I had come up with something that basically means, since I could have been sent anywhere, really, anywhere in Japan, I'm so glad I got sent here. Yokatta.

One of the teachers used almost exactly the words I had thought up for that to turn it around on me, Emily de yokatta. We're glad we got you. I cried a lil' in my cloth napkin. Those are high compliments, from all of them, but even more than that it felt good to know that doing what I do has had this result.. that the work I put in does show (across culture and language barriers), especially over time, and that maybe they love me here because they know I love it too. I mean, yeah I'm awesome, but I can only be as awesome as my situation allows, right?

Well. It's certainly doing nothing for my humility.

Emily, it’s been so long since you updated! What have you been doing that is so absorbing?

A whole lot of not much to write home about.

Well. Let me tell you what. At work, as things continue apace, rocketing toward graduation, I finally took all my marbles in hand and chucked them in the river (so you can’t call them ‘lost,’ exactly..). Idecided it was high time I tried the old ‘cooking class’ with middle schoolers. I also decided that, instead of some kind of culminating lesson with the younger elementary students, we’re just going to do a ‘cultural’ lesson for the end of the year instead (see: play foursquare and HORSE in the gym). This is essentially my way of giving up on teaching 4^th graders anything but the alphabet, God love ‘em.

As for the cooking, I have chosen my favorite recipe perhaps of all time, the delicious cookies I have been making since perhaps I myself was in middle school, recipe received from childhood friend Cindy. I thought of them because once, in high school, a few friends and I made a huge mess of them (like the way you might make a ‘mess of biscuits’ with Pappy O’Daniel flour) in lieu of other Valentine’s Day activity, then went about the school dispensing them in decorative baggies to our favorite people.

The problem with them is they require special ingredients not found in Japan, specifically instant pudding mix and chocolate chips. And I know certain Japan-familiar friends are going to give me shit about chocolate chips, because you can get them at Jusco, so let me qualify that by saying I went to Jusco and the chocolate chips there are MINI chips and they come in MINI bags, and are not appropriate for this LARGER THAN LIFE recipe of deliciousness.

So I sent away for some chips from Foreign Buyer’s Club (along with some oatmeal, taco mix, and other wonderful things, although I yesterday rediscovered a box of Reese’s cereal in my pantry I had forgotten I hid there.. basically I mean to say, I’m hitting the food jackpot)and found myself wondering why I haven’t ordered anything from them ever before, or in fact why I go to the grocery store at all, excepting the fact that I don’t think it’s a good idea to ship eggs to me, and also that bread comes in packs of about 3 slices, so you run out of that pretty fast (which is actually a good thing, because it goes bad just as fast), when ordering stuff online is so very easy.

Because, why leave your house at all? Well, actually I’ve not spent as much time there as I had expected to. I’ve been writing, actually. That novel I keep going on about (do I?), I’ve actually started working on it again and have completed a lot more words. But before you say “send me the first bit,” halt, you who are ignorant in the ways of “NaNoWriMo” and other such ‘just-write-that-shit’ techniques, because the first bit is total tripe right now, because I’m just trying to push through to get any possible amount of the plot barfed through the keyboard into word documents, so it calls for massive revision, especially because on some days, I didn’t feel like writing ‘description’ of any kind, and those happened to be the days that certain scenes were set specifically so that I could describe the setting of the fantasy world as seen through the eyes of a visitor. So that section goes kind of like “There was a parade. It was colorful.” The end.

I got the best comment EVER from a first grader yesterday at go-home-kai. I’ve been swimming a few times a week, just to stay moving, and especially on the Thursdays where I have to skip kempo for evening English class (I just bring a bag and my car and spend the entire day up near work because the pool is right next to work, actually). So it was Thursday, and the week before, I’d been at the pool, so this little first grader said “You’ll be at the pool today, won’t you.” And I said, noooo, actually today I have shorinji kempo instead.

And that cute little kid’s eyes bugged out of his head and he cried out "Suge~ onna!" And I laughed right out loud, because “sugoi” is a word that means .. “awesome” or “incredible, terrific, impressive.” But sugei is the Kansai version, and truncating it is a way of intensifying the word to sort of import shock into that impression. Onna means woman, but is not the politest thing to say.. normally you say onna no hito, meaning female person, for woman. So overall it was pretty much an intense, very Kansai, rather rude, very flattering interpretation of me. The kid then went on to tell the kid next to him that I was scary and one should not mess with me. 

It was pretty much the highlight of the month.

Otherwise, things just keep on keeping on. Lots of changes on that horizon, lots to come. Keep feeling like the end is nigh (and it is, with graduation upon us as of the 9th), the end is nigh, but there's a lot to go between here and there. And beyond!

I write things...

Sometimes I write them and they go up on other websites.

Here's a fun story about how 6th graders are better at phonics than my JHS students!

http://www.hyogoajet.net/hyogotimes/2011/10/26/english-sensei-spirit-how-my-6th-graders-learned-to-spell/

You're So Jozu With Those Hashi

A few weeks ago, I saw someone had "shared" via facebook some article about how Japanese people need a lesson in diversity, and the headline had something to do with being "skilled with chopsticks."

It's kind of been a joke with JETs lately (and before lately), how you get complimented all the time on how good you are at using chopsticks. Until recently, I would just smile and say thank you, as with any compliment, occasionally adding that I "practice a lot," in a somewhat ironic manner. When I say that, the people I say it to tend to think I really mean practice. What I mean is merely that I get a lot of practice, because I kind of live here.

So I've been occasionally touchy lately, a little on edge, and when on Tuesday, the 7th, a teacher at elementary school had the whole class look and see how good I was with my chopsticks, I briefly considered flinging all the rest of my rice at her. It went on from there. Maybe I've just not noticed it and now I'm offended, but now it seems like every time I go to elementary, the class I have lunch with has a teacher who will feel the need to point out how damn skilled I am at using chopsticks!

(Punctuated, quite hilariously, by the first and only occasion I ever had someone -- being one of my middle school second year weirdos -- say in English "You! Can't! Use! Hashi!")

And I want to be careful, because I'm surrounded by 7-year-olds who perhaps do think of it as practice, and who maybe sometimes find handling those sticks a little difficult what with their hand-eye-mouth coordination all still in progress.

But I, dear reader, am a young adult, who can read and write and do long division. And though I am not the most coordinated among us, unless I am handling snakes on fire with my madly skillzed chopstick use, you need not tell me I'm so good. Because I promise you, reader, that even if you do not feel you are good at using chopsticks, you are really close. If I gave you a week of school lunch and only hashi to eat it with, you'd be jozu in no time, too. Two weeks if you're clumsy. You'll be smiling and thanking people for their compliments.

Two years in and I just want to fling rice.

Today I Totally Bitched Out the Fourth Graders

But I had a really good point, and I did it all in Japanese!

It's a simple exercise really, that requires students to take laminated cards with the ABCs on them and arrange them in order on the board. I do this mostly just to get the ABCs up there so we can move on the phonics, or some game, or whatever else you needs the ABCs for. It's an opener, and it's not supposed to take all that long.

I time them to give some incentive for accomplishing it fast. Beat last week's time! Or, beat the neighboring class's time! Older kids who take it seriously can complete ABC board in like less than two minutes.

Their time was one second shy of another class's.. I admit I rounded up.

I wrote the time on the board. The regular classroom teacher was not in the room; she'd had to pull on of the kids to give him a talking-to in the hallway. Yeah, it was that kind of day with that kind of group.

6:49, I said, hm. This is your time for getting the alphabet finished. Know who else had this time? Class 2-1. Second graders. Second graders took as long as you did to do this activity. Now, why is that? My tone was one I rarely take. But why not, I was pissed. They rolled around on the floor, they deliberately put letters in wrong places, or hid them, or sat on each other.

I dunno.

Me either. Aren't you fourth graders?

Yes.

And are you doing your best?

Yeah.

Oh, really? I gave them an appraising look, and immediately moved on. They were subdued the rest of the time. Not making trouble anymore, at least, but not having a 'great time' either.

All the other classes had fun, though. 2nd and 3rd grade was great because I managed to not require them to do 6th grade level work.
It was a tiring kind of day.

Voluntary

I’m killing the calendar like I killed my bank account last month.

I’ve written two posts about the changes this year, but they just turned out to be unhappy, stressed-out rants. I also wanted to wait til at least my first day at Big Elementary (which was today) to make that kind of sweeping statement.

It’s hard, though, to have to be so flexible sometimes. Especially, I think, when you’ve scorched both ends off the calendrical candle. It’s hard to prepare for anything in a limited amount of time with a limited amount of patience; it’s hard to depend on nothing.

Today could have been a little better. It also could have been a shite sight worse.

I will write a more balanced report of the changes thrust upon me by the springtime’s arrival. But I also want to give an account of where I’ll be for the next few weeks, so if I vanish entirely, you’ll know why.

Right now, I’m sitting at a desk in Big Elementary. It was cold this morning, but right now it’s effing gorgeous. The office smells like coffee brewing. I borrowed a large piece of scrap paper so I could write down everything I have to do in the forseeable future (from “taxes” to “plan young teachers’ enkai”). The rationale being, if it’s on the paper, I can put it out of my head.

There is a lot of shit on this paper. I then color-code highlightered it, with orange for “by the end of today” and pink for “by the end of Friday” and yellow for “before the 30^th.” Everything unhighlighted can wait til after Golden Week.

This weekend will be Osaka, going to the Tigers Game (basebaaaall!) then staying out all night, probably, then going to see Kabuki on Sunday. Business as hold-on-to-your-butts usual, Monday to Thursday, then Friday the 29^th is a meeting for Hyogo Times (no school that day), along with a bunch of stuff that is for-fun, like Infiorata Kobe and I think a Shorinji Kempo hanami or something. The 30^th, we leave for Okinawa, and I don’t come back til Sunday the 8^th!

This stuff isn’t all stressful because it’s required. It’s all stressful because it’s voluntary and much of it is supposed to be fun. And almost all of it will actually be fun. It’s just getting all the other stuff done before the fun starts that’s a pain in the ass!

And I mean… it really is all voluntary. Why do I feel it is important or necessary to continue studying Japanese out of a textbook that I KNOW is less than superior? Why do I bother to benkyou at all? To be honest, that is one of the first things to fall off the schedule.. and it’s for that very reason that today, it’s the next thing I will do.

It's warmer, the sky clouds over and clears, and clouds again. The kids are extra cute today, and there's cafe au lait in the second tea dispenser. You can see people weeding their gardens out the higher windows. For some reason the entire school smells like clean laundry.

There are many reasons to have stayed, and these are a few of them.

"Yaritai!" said the short ones

I just got done with the small elementary class of 1^st  ("sheep") and 2^nd (horses) graders (epithets based solely on their Chinese zodiac animals). They are consistently one of my best groups, and I am not even sure why. They’re like, thirsty for knowledge.. when they connect the dots to make a picture in the numbers game, they want to know the English name of the animal they’ve outlined so they can write it on the paper at the top (I just realized that this is a big deal when I saw that the 3^rd grade has only just begun to learn romaji, writing with roman letters). They want to study.. they play the study games hard, and really do remember a lot.

I mean, maybe it’s that I tried to teach the older kids more stuff, and thus they learned each thing less well, but the youngest group here has numbers nailed to the wall more than anyone. They could count to a hundred before the 4^th grade… well, the 4^th grade is up around like 50 as of today. They see the fly swatters sticking out of my bag and insist that they wanna do that!

The fly swatters are for board karuta. Basically, first the kids have to get the ABCs on the board in order (at which this group is A-number-one champ, of course). This is generally done with a lot of shouting, because everyone will be holding one or two letters. So the kids will get ready, and I say “go!” and start the timer (usually I only time older kids.. but once again…).. they all scream “A!” like their lives hang in the balance, then start yelling the name of whatever kid is holding A, in case he/she doesn’t know already. This progresses through the alphabet in one minute and 44 seconds. (Today I had them match the lowercase letters too. This took 1 minute and 42 seconds.)

Once the letters are on the board, we can play with the fly swatters. Initially, I had taught them a bunch of words, one for each letter. Like APPLE and BAG and CAT, etc. Today we had gone over animals, weird ones too, so I kicked it off with “starfish!” The hope was that eventually they would associate the sound with the letter, rather than just that one word.. so I used the associated words for board karuta for a while, then occasionally would throw in other words that started with those letters. 

They cleared the whole board today; I was calling words I don’t think even their teachers have ever heard. I couldn’t think of anything for A but “anteater” at the time. V was “vixen.” But I think they’ve learned the sound idea. Hell yes, first and second graders.

The thing that impresses me most, and also probably works so well, is the way they fling themselves so wholeheartedly at everything I present. I don’t even really have to try that hard to entertain them. Anything will be fun. And anything will be absorbed, too. They’re like a little army of 14 sponges.

I mean, I’m fully aware that they’re not all the same. The “YARITAI!” engine is driven by a few key second graders, and there are some who are still blanking totally on English Ball (we throw a ball around and they say one English word before passing it to someone else), and I do hear a few mooouuu wakaran!s from time to time. But the energy and sheer knowledge of the class is staggering, especially for a group I hardly thought too much of while trying to plan.

What I mean by that is, I designed 5^th and 6^th grade lessons to be efficient and as effective as possible. To learn what I wanted them to learn, or what the curriculum had in store. But I planned downward, and by the time I got to the youngest of them, I was like “well I’m already bringing numbers cards, maybe we can play some kind of number game…” and sometimes I went so far in numb-minded I’ve-been-planning-under-duress to simply write “Number game, 15 minutes” and leave the details for future EmLem to handle.

Lucky for me, everything with this class is a pretty big hit. Though, they’re the only ones who’ve run me to the end of a plan (repeatedly) and had me blinking at the clock on which was left 15 more minutes of classtime. I’ve wised up a bit.. I now just keep a bagful of tricks, and if all else fails, there’s always ABC board.

Aaaand...

I managed to spend one classless day accomplishing a whopping TWO things on my to-do list. Don't be impressed. If I had put my nose on the grindstone I could have done most of them. But the kids were practicing for a school-presentation-festival which I may or may not attend, and they were cute.

IN OTHER NEWS Christmas is approaching. I have heard tell that packages over like 400 grams might have to be sent from Japan by boat, which can take up to 2 months, so your presents are already late.

But let's talk about what you can do for me. There's not much I lack in the land of the rising sun, but I have two desired things if you feel inclined to send anything. Feel free not to.. that's not what Christmas is about of course, but here's the thing. Every house in Japan has a hot-water maker. It comes standard, right after fridge and stove, probably before microwave-oven. There are like two in every staff room I've ever been in. These exist mostly so you can make yourself instant coffee. Or instant ramen. But Japan for some reason does not have instant oatmeal.

I know. wtf right? So I bought eight boxes this summer and unboxed them and put them in plastic bags and packed them in my suitcase and brought them here, and at the time of writing I now have one solitary packet of oatmeal left. And everyone knows you need two packs at a time anyway.

I like the reduced sugar stuff because it's not too sweet, but really any flavor is okay, excepting maybe plain, because that would require me to be creative at 6:30am and that is pretty hit or miss. But, if plain is in a collection or something, I suppose I could stir some yuzu jam into it and call it even. Hmm.. that sounds kinda good.... okay, all flavors are a go. And with this gift you can't go wrong, because no matter how much oatmeal I receive, it will never be too much.

Secondarily, I really like the body cream type of lotion that comes from Bath and Body Works. Body cream usually comes in an upright tube that is round at the bottom and kinda.. triangular at the top. Like this:


In my youth, I used all kinds of crazy scents, but these days I like it pretty tame, so if you want to send me one of these, please exercise discretion in scent choosin'.. nothing too sweet or fruity. If you find yourself unsure, just send oatmeal. I am particularly fond of the brown sugar fig (third from right in that picture). Unlike the oatmeal, though, I can have too much lotion. I kind of already do, although it's all different, inferior, non body-cream kinds. Except this 99cent bottle of Walgreens lotion which for some reason is also awesome. Accept some substitutes?

Also if you want to give me lotion, please wait until the twice-a-year B&BW sale to buy it.. that sale should be like just after Christmas sometime. Trust me, it's worth it the wait.

Some days, I feel like my job is not real. This has a lot less to do with its temporary status than with what I am doing at that given moment.

Yesterday, I thought, what the hey, I'll ride my bicycle (which was at Big Elementary, having been left there post-Autumn-festival by me upon being offered a car ride home with another JET) to Small Elementary. It's not really all that far up the valley from my other schools.

It is, however, uphill all the way. I have a lot of leeway when it comes to what time I arrive at Small Elementary, because it's so out of the way, and regular buses don't go up that road. If I make the connections the way I am supposed to, I hit the schoolyard about the time first period is starting. If I'm lucky, they will have left first period free, and I can teach the other five after taking a minute to get my materials in order and have a cup of coffee.

If I'm not lucky, I have to hit the ground running and dash off to third or fifth grade; hopefully I have all the materials in hand, but if I am hoping to dig flashcards out of the textbook flashcard box, I end up feeling lame for running late to class. The kicker is, they generally don't warn me, so I don't know until I walk in and look at the schedule on the front board whether I get 40 minutes of chill time or if I am already late.

If I drive myself there, which is against the rules (but come ON.. on the occasions when they DO warn me that I have a first period class, I can't just show up late, knowing that some of my materials are buried in boxes in their office), I kind of feel chagrined for obviously flouting the rules set down for me. If I get there at 8:20 instead of 8:35, I am clearly disobedient.

Anyway, there I was, red-faced and sweating in the cool October air, pushing my bike up the hill after whatever point I gave up trying to pedal. I couldn't help but enjoy the quaint view of persimmon trees and rice fields, wildflowers and lovely houses along the way. It was basically like taking a stroll when the other teachers are having their morning meeting. Kind of weird. Or awesome. Unprofessional? Maybe childish. But also special.

The weather yesterday resolved itself into perfection just in time for morning recess, so I ignored my physically demanding schedule and went outside to play. During my planning period, I took a walk up the hill behind the school and found the path to the little shrine at which I'm always staring when I use the stairwell. It's kind of like being in your own little world, but taking breaks from that to teach a bunch of classes. Or else, being in teaching world, but taking frequent forays out into something else.

Either way, it doesn't feel like a real job, days like that.

Today, Wednesday, which has rapidly become my get-shit-accomplished day (I generally have one or no classes on Wednesday... every other day I have four to six), my VP reminded me that these reports for CLAIR are due tomorrow. I made a halfhearted attempt to tell him that the reports are optional, and then sat down to do them in true I-went-to-college-and-can-bust-out-reports-like-whoa form. I'm at my desk, makin' outlines and mapping ideas and I feel like this is a lot more like what real office people do. Meaning, I feel like my job is "real." I've got a whole list of things to do. It sort of brings out the businessperson in me, though, and I don't dislike it.

I think the low pressure of yesterday would, were it every day, eventually cause me to explode. While the high pressure of today would, were it every day, eventually cause me to implode.

My VP has made a dangerous discovery, being that I like to work.

So now, I'm always working.

It's field-day-week (and a half) again, and this time I am less baffled and more involved than before. I am also better prepared. I'm hatted, fully sunscreened, and double-fisting on the water bottles every day we are outside. Because of rain, we were inside today. I am perhaps even sweatier for it.

All this stuff is a lot more fun when you know the kids and can kind of enjoy their antics. My favorites among the girl students keep making me join their dance practices and I suspect I'll be expected to participate in that stuff in actual sports day too.

When I wasn't folk-dancing (the Oklahoma Mixer, no less) and sweating a disgusting amount, I was sitting in the upper level of the gym, sorting paintings for display, putting them in plastic sleeves, labeling them, and sweating a disgusting amount. Or I was outside raking grass clippings and sweating a disgusting amount. I wear real American-made deodorant and I am embarrassed at the way I smell right now sitting in the staff office.

But this post is already longer than I thought it would be, because mostly all I came to say is, I had like a whole month to be at my desk. And now I have no time, and I need to make a lesson plan for elementary school (little elementary.. the big one is doing the same stuff we are, namely running around outside all the time and sweating a disgusting amount), and I'm silly for not having done that sooner. Alas. I keep feeling like I have no time to take care of my own stuff. As little of that as there is. I'm tryin' to plan trips here, and classes. My apartment languishes in a seemingly endless state of disarray. I've got Japanese class and maybe karate and ikebana and eikaiwa. And my taxes, and sending money home (since it's like 84 yen on the dollar right now.. I just sent a couple thousand bucks), and trying to find better sports day practice clothing (this shit ain't cutting it), and preparing to be a guest on an hour long podcast to be recorded this week, and no weekend to speak of... Haha. Well.

I'll write more about Sports Day later, when I feel like I have time to reflect on it more. Just suffice for now to say I am enjoying it, more or less.

You Never Know

It’s currently pouring. Just an hour ago, it was sunny and warm.. pleasant in the shade, anyway. It’s one of those delicious summer storms in this, the so-called rainy month. It’s only day three of this rain-month but it’s rained two out of three days.

Today was weird. I didn’t feel like teaching class, but I did feel like chilling at recess. I think working in elementary schools is taking years off my mental age. I think that may be a good thing. But I didn’t want to run or be athletic like I sometimes do. I have a little bit of a sore throat, a little bit of a cough..

And that kid that normally seems to exist solely to make one hour of my day really suck… that kid was for some reason carrying the class activity. He’s actually pretty sharp, that little ADHD punk, and even when he was getting stuff wrong, at least he was still participating.

I guess you just never know.

And even though it’s now June, it still gets chilly enough that one needs sweaters in the morning and evening. And sometimes in the afternoon, too, right after the rain. What is up with that? I’m not complaining; it’s just weird is all.

A few good ideas

Part of the reason I keep this blog is to disseminate information and ideas. When I arrived in Japan, my predecessor had left me so many materials and copies of her lesson plans, I had to do what was natural to me to continue a big paper (or digital) trail of what works (and what doesn’t) at work. I can still remember what it was like to sit down at my new desk and wonder, omg now what?!

Anyway, here are a couple things I discovered or reused recently:

Musical chairs – If you need to be able to single out a student to practice conversation with you, this actually could work well. It takes a lot of help from the homeroom teacher, but what I ended up doing in my 5th grade classes was make a long row of chairs back to back, the chairs numbering one less than the number of kids in the class. They move around the circle to the sound of American music until it stops. When it does, they sit down. It’s always funny because there is this scramble produced by the fact that a bunch of kids are so focused on making sure they have their butt near a chair that they leave open seats between themselves and the people ahead of them. Which other students who at first think, aw crap, I am the odd one out, suddenly spot and make a dash for.

Anyway, once everyone has a seat (or not), the seatless kid has to come and demonstrate the target conversation with me. Then they all have to practice the type of conversation demonstrated with the person whose chair is back-to-back with theirs. Seatless kid is free to gleefully spectate this part.

Concentration – The simple beauty of this game is that you can play with the whole class, and everyone has to pay attention the whole time. Too often when I am trying to do small group or individual stuff, those not in the spotlight see it as a great opportunity to slack off/talk to their friends/etc. But in concentration games (we recently did matching lower and uppercase letters) you can have one group at a time choosing a letter from those magneted to the board, and those who disregard others’ turns do so at their peril. I generally play in groups, although even there kids can sometimes get all overcome by shame and indecision.

 

Aaaand apparently, my “letter project” is about to get some press.. Mikan-sensei just asked me for copies of a few of the letters so he can include them in some kind of report he is giving. I’m totally flattered. I only wish we had gotten replies put together before American schools dismissed for summer! Alas.

Things Lately

So sometimes I pop on here to gush about how it's the Best Weather Ever and life is better than predicted and my kids are awesome, etc.

Lately, things have been busy, not because they actually are busy, but because we have graduation practice every day, which requires us to stand in the gym for two hours each day. And two hours isn't that long; considering that normally I am in class about 4 hours a day, having only one class and then two hours of grad practice gives me a net of one more hour to do random stuff at my desk.

But here's what we didn't reckon with: I hate grad practice. Well. Odi et amo, I suppose. It allows me to get all emotional and watch the graduates walk by and hear all their names called and hear the younger students sing "Goodbye, goodbye" to them. But I have absolutely no function at grad practice. And some days I am either so emotional or else so bitter about having to stand around doing nothing at all for two hours (NOT SIT, STAND) that I don't even help move chairs or anything. I did at the last one. But not the one before.. heh.

It just sucks to spend two hours actively doing nothing at all. When there is so much stuff you would have yourself doing, both work-related and non! I finally got some of the stuff done by Monday that I had planned to do Wednesday, and let me tell you that is great for your ego.

Then there was today. Two weeks ago, I had an elementary-stack day at Big Elementary. This was the day with the photos from recess. Because it was like 65 degrees, sunny, and awesome, so even though it was a stack-day (all six classes), it was still great. Today was also stacked, only instead of 1st, 3rd, and 4th, I had 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. And the weather?

This is my favorite part because this is where my life goes back to being a movie about extremes. The weather was perhaps the shittiest weather I have seen in Japan. Made worse for what came exactly two weeks before, you know, back in February, when it was spring or something?

I ran to the bus stop thinking my coat and umbrella were going to be enough. And for where I live, south amongst the mountains, it was enough. But as we traveled the whole 18 minutes northward, the windy chilly rain gave way to windy chilly snowy rainy winterskyvomit, which persisted all day. The worst part was that it all happened sideways, which meant that if you had an umbrella it was 1, useless, and 2, broken. I had a ball with the "how's the weather?" question today because the kids were throwing out everything from "cold" to "rain" to "snow" to "wind" and "cloudy" and beyond, and I had magnetic weather cards for all of that (my predecessor? was/is amazing and I will be in her debt until I pass her materials, assuming they survive, on to my successor).

For all that, the classes went pretty well. I tried to pull some alphabet games that were a bit tough on the firsties, but for the most part, kids were okay.

I took a photo just for kicks.

Why yes, that is snow on the mountain in the background, and frozen slush on the ground underfoot. The only reason their umbrellas work is because we just stepped outside for dismissal, just now. (Even so one of the kids came up just before this to borrow a new umbrella since his was mangled by the wind)

Because I could not imagine worse weather. It's like winter turned around to bitchslap me for doing a little happy dance that it was almost gone.

Oh and my house? Which I was going to clean.. or anything else I wanted to do today? I bet you can guess how done it is about now.

I was supposed to go to the doctor's again today, possibly for the last time..! On my last visit, he said I could "take a bath" with Jermaine now (since I had not, in like five weeks.. only showers with my leg all propped up on the side of my square tub), which to me meant all bets were off. I think Jermaine just didn't do anything at all in the cold. Once it was kinda warm, there was healing happening, or something. Today when I got home from work, I opted to take a bath, rationalizing that I had not yet, and maybe it was not safe to drive across town..?

Okay but really I ought to go and do something with my evening, like run a vacuum, a laundry cycle, or read a book.

I'll bitch about graduation more once it's over. ^_^

Lunch with Sixth Graders

Yesterday, I was at Small Elementary. I laughed an evil laugh to see that I was eating lunch with the 6th graders again.

The last time I ate lunch with that class, the room was totally silent, and it terrified me. The girls in that class never participated, and to make it worse, that was back in the swine-flu scare of late 09, so they weren’t even sitting in desk clusters. I tried to make conversation after about fifteen terrible minutes by pointing to the nearest girl’s pencil case, which was sitting on her desk.

“Very cute,” I said. In general, people know the word “very” and they know the word “cute,” and I know these kids have had ALT training in their lives for a while now, and being a class of only like ten people, they totally get the attention they should want. So she understood the words I used, I am almost certain.

How did this kid respond to my attempts to bond over personal taste in school effects? She did not look at me, nor speak to me, but removed the pencil case and shoved it inside her desk, and continued eating.

Terror. Oh my GOD, get me out of here! She probably felt the same way. Eventually the boys (who do participate in class) asked if they could ask me questions and proceeded to do the whole stand-up-and-push-in-your-chair-to-address-a-teacher thing to ask me questions like “What countries have you been to?” .. which were a bright step up from my usual slew of “What’s your favorite color/animal/sport/food?” and “Can you eat ___?”

Aaaanyway, that was last time, so yesterday was round two, and this time I was ready and unafraid. I try to joke around with the students when possible. When I first got to the classroom, no one was there at all. Then, the girls arrived. They began to giggle and exchange glances, which I actually kind of hate. It makes you feel like you’re under glass or something. They won’t try to reach you, they’ll just talk about you and something that is hilarious to them from which you are excluded. I looked at them mournfully and said “Don’t be like that. You’re killin’ me!”

Then one of them asked me how old I was. Oh thank goodness, we are talking. I told her, and then she asked if I had a boyfriend. I was back on my joking bandwagon so I said “Oh yeah, I got three!” .. they did not seem impressed, so I went back to the standard answer which is, “No, no, no.”

I had used some Kansai-ben in class that day, when a kid asked me a question in Japanese I TOTALLY knew he could form in English if he tried, so I drawled out “Nihongo ga zenzen wakarahennnn..!” (I don't understand any Japanese!)

Anynway, next the girls were a little confusing, and they said something about Kansai-ben and then laughed a bit, then said Kansai-ben “Why?” and I wasn’t sure if they were just saying it to be Kansai or if they were still asking about the boyfriend thing, but right then the boys returned to class and were meccha excited to see that I was their lunch guest.

Once we got our food, this crowd of tiny kindergarteners came in to say thank you to their “big brothers and sisters” and present them with cookies of gratitude and congratulations for their coming graduation. It was possibly the cutest thing that has ever happened. I also somehow got cookies out of the deal, just for being in the room to witness this.

Once all that was done, they started doing the formal questions again. They were generally upper-elementary level of though provoking. “How big was your elementary school?” I did some math in my head and estimated it at 500. I don’t really know, though. I just figured, about five classes a grade, twenty kids a class, six grades. That came out to 600 and I figured that was way too high, but it’s probably about right. It’s still staggering to work in schools where the population does not swell, but actually tends to drop, with every incoming class. They were astonished to hear 500, though (their school having 60), and I tried to explain that it’s partly because kids can go to school by bus instead of walking. If we had to walk like the do in Japan, there would be smaller schools because there would be more of them.

Then one kid asked, “When you graduated, were you sad? Did you cry?” That one sort of startled me out of my fried-tofu-scarfing fest.

I’ve had several graduations.. the ones from elementary and middle school kind of not counting as much as the high school and college ones. I don’t even remember graduating from the lower schools because for the most part it was just moving myself and everyone I knew already into another building.

I wanted to give him an answer that was close to the question I thought he was asking; I wanted to go for the lower graduation so I settled for high school. And then I basically lied to a kid. I told him I didn’t cry. He said, “Not sad?” No, not not sad. I didn’t cry at graduation, but I was sad inside.

And I guess I was. I did cry, but not on graduation day. I was a lot of things, at that time. I was happy and excited (and I knew where I was going.. something I only half had at college graduation), and I was scared, and I was angry, too, about the actual graduation ceremony. I was frustrated with others, and with myself too I’m sure. I had a great graduation party at which I was happy, but also felt sick. Graduation is just hard. There’s just so much pride, loss, excitement, love, regret, happiness, promise, and uncertainty in it. College was worse. I brave-faced my way through the ceremony, hugged my friends, genuinely enjoyed those strawberries, and went to my dorm to bawl about it in the first free moment I could find.

And I know that I’m just in my own head on this one, but I do want to think that these 6th graders are interested.. maybe even the girls, who have (maybe??) just been intimidated by the outgoing presence of the boys.

First Year Genki Spirit

I’ve been accused fairly recently of still having “that first-year genki spirit.” Well, accused is a fairly strong word and it makes it sound like being genki is a bad thing. Genki just means energetic and lively, high-spirited, and stuff like that. We have a lot of fun with the fact that in one of my classes, there is a kid named Genki, who also happens to be a genki kid. I’m glad he is; it would really suck to have to make jokes about the fact that he isn’t genki despite his name.

Anyway, the first year genki spirit is apparently the stage of JET life in which you still feel like your job makes some kind of difference, where you feel like all your efforts are not in fact wasted.

But to me, the more time I spend here, the more I feel like it’s important for them to import native speakers to help teach English. Mikan-sensei once straight up told me (when I said, “I’d like to do a little phonics work for like five or ten minutes each class,”) that Japanese teachers of English don’t know how to teach phonics. And with good reason.. they grow up with a language that does not differentiate between L and R, and not between TH and S, either, and to some extent, Z and J, and it doesn’t have the “er” sound and.. all kinds of other things.

I noticed it so profoundly the other day in my 4th grade class. The teacher there used to intimidate the hell out of me. He always participates and tries to help, which is great, honestly, homeroom teacher participation is essential, but they aren’t trained as English teachers, and he’s the product of a system that says a child whose name is pronounced Shota is Romanized Sôta.

There are a couple of different systems of Romaji, but I naturally like best the one I was first taught, which basically is, each Japanese character can be sounded out in English letters. There is no “si”.. the reason so many kids call the letter “C” by the name “shee” is because in the syllables, which for k go “ka, ki, ku, ke, ko,” for s go “sa, shi, su, se, so.”

When I first got my letter of JET placement and it said “Sisou” I remember saying, “Holy shit, Mom, I think they’re sending me to China.”

The other thing that happened in that class was a continuation of the epic struggle to get kids to differentiate verbally between “Tuesday” and “Thursday.” It turns out, Thursday is the hardest word in the world, because it combines that weird-ass TH combination in conjunction with the elusive “ER” sound no one is used to pronouncing. Dammit, Thor. The kids see a day that starts with T and has a U somewhere in the middle and spit out “Tuesday” every time.

Katakana-ized, it comes out saazday, which is at least recognizably different from chuusday (which is how we English speakers tend to pronounce “Tuesday”), but I hate falling back on the katakana, because the whole point of me being here and being adept at English phonemes is to teach them how it really sounds, not how it approximately sounds.

Still, I ask myself, if a sympathetic listener heard them say it, would they understand the word? That’s what I have to come back to.

It also took on striking hues when I asked my students at all levels to spell words like mat, sad, Sam, sat, etc. I said MAT and they said macch(i)? and I said MAT and they said matto? and I said MAT! and they said matsu?!

(head shake) …Mat.

Even my third-years (9th grade level) were doing this. Because you know that ka, ki, ku, ke, ko? For “t” it’s even worse: ta, chi, tsu, te, to.

They don’t understand the alphabet as its own unique thing, although they can sing the song and put the letters in order and they can draw the graphemes. But I know that understanding takes time. They only see the alphabet in relation to Romaji. Earlier on, my third graders (as in, 9 years old) hadn’t started learning Romaji yet. So the teacher explained that they couldn’t yet write their names in English letters.

Which makes the third grade and younger my richest unspoiled-by-romaji-learnin’ group.

The trouble is, secrets like there is a whole new world of sounds with this foreign alphabet are slow to dawn on people, or at least they were on me. Ancient Greek was a little like that. But even Greek is pretty close to my home alphabet. It’s hard to imagine that some language system uses sounds yours doesn’t. That there is more out there than you know or use or would ever need if you just stuck to your one language. It’s hard especially for a kid to see outside the structure of their world.

I know that takes a long time to sink in. So I don’t expect to make a difference in English learning overnight, or in one month, or in one year, even. Give me a couple of years, and some kids who really want to know something, and magic will be made.

Talk About the Weather

I wasn’t really willing to believe what I was seeing when the weather report was calling for highs of 16.. what with last week having highs more like 8.
But I had six classes today, and in every one we ask “How is the weather today?” and the kids respond with varying degrees of proficiency in English depending on their age and temperament.
I try to get the older kids to use two adjectives. “Sunny and…?” sometimes in the past they would say “hot!” because they’d just come in from running. But today I felt it too. Today I wore two pairs of pants (as always) and was sorry I did it.
Seriously, sometimes I set my heater on 17 because that is the temperature I would like my room to be. And it’s doing that out there right now, with the sweet sunshine.
I know we do ‘weather’ (along with day and date and “how are you”) because they are daily conversation topics that kids should know how to say, and which change every day. And in my country, we ‘talk about the weather’ if we can’t be personal with someone.
But to me, and especially here, the weather is personal, and it really does affect my day. Today I wasn’t afraid Jermaine would last forever, because the spring is coming, and it feels today like the freeze is broken, and Jermaine as a winter burn cannot stay for the warming wind. Today I had six classes, six, that’s the max that there are in a day, and they were grades 1 through 4, that’s six to ten years of age, and I couldn’t stay inside and rest during recess.. I had to go outside and give piggyback rides to first graders who somehow had not got enough of me in first hour. Because I had to feel the sun and smell the water in the myriad water channels and find the rose-acorns (I have no idea what they are called for real).
JET of clearly Viking descent said something quite poetic the other day; he said people age year to year through the winters.. because they get all bent by the winter, and each spring they can’t quite stretch out to the reach they had the year before, as the years go on, we get older. I believe it.
But still, I’m never as old as I am in winter.
Tales from recess:

Cherry tree shade.

Storming the fortress.

Irrepressible ichinen and her pet gaijin.

Jump! Rope!

Seed pods that look like flowers.
[I really like this because I can't ever tell if this girl likes me or not; she doesn't respond well in class. But today after recess she presented me with a rose-lookin-seed-thingy. I asked her to hold it so I could take a photo or them both.]

(This is the one I'd picked up myself earlier.)

Thursday vs. Tuesday

No, I really had to work today to push the fifth graders into saying the two such that I could distinguish what they were saying. They see the letter "u" in both Tuesday and Thursday and somehow just slur it all into the same word.

In the continuing saga of Thursdays, this one should have been just banner. You haven't heard from the Thursday front for a week, because last Thursday was National Foundation Day which allowed me to hide from gale force winds indoors, watch Coming to America unedited, and pine for my far-off lover, rather than attempt to wrangle fifth graders into some kind of English learnin'.

Today it's back to the wrangling and the deck looked stacked against me from my waking vantage point. I still had that sore-throat feeling you get while a cold is starting its engines. I had forgone a shower in favor of those extra twenty minutes' sleep. I still almost missed the bus. Oh and Jermaine-site, AKA "Yakedo" is still around/infected. So you know. I'm on drugs for that and no longer to wear shoes with backs, according to the doctor.

And I was facing fifth grade again.

Yesterday, the Powers That Be sold the rights to My Life, The Sitcom. Coming soon is My Life, The Motion Picture! Yesterday was absolutely insane. If the sun hadn't been out, I might have had to cut someone. I pleaded "kaze" (I have a cold) and made some vague reference to the idea that I would eat with the second years on Thursday since I didn't feel well enough to do it Wednesday. I was secretly looking at taking the whole rest of the week off lunch duty, though.

So someone tell me why I feel great? Not only did I walk back from Big Elementary smiling, I did eat with the 2nd years, and I feel fine. Someone tell me, was it that MyLifeTheMovie has a greater budget for special effects (which I noticed when snowflakes began to float lazily from a relatively clear sky.. also, despite the lack of shower, it's not really a bad hair day--I still felt fine about the fact that it was picture day and no one told me)? Was it that I gave up on freaking out about never getting everything done and just tried to enjoy those brats? Was it the drugs I am now on thanks to Jermaine? I have no explanations.

Over the weekend I met a high school JET who mentioned preferring to work with the littler guys. I sighed and remembered how hard I hoped I'd end up in a high school. But when I was in class today, I wondered briefly how that HS JET would handle things in that ES class.. I tried to emulate the way I figured he'd enjoy just being there.

One of the 6th grade classes was like.. total bomb of plan. The other was epic win. I can't predict these things and I have no idea what comes next. But I am glad to be here, even on a Thursday.

T-minus

Today was a much anticipated marathon day. Thursdays are always a bit rough, first because the workday consists of fifth and sixth grade at Big Elementary, and that (at least last week) is the ROUGHEST GIG IN TOWN. And second because the post-work time is full of both ikebana and then adult English conversation class (Salamander). It's just a full day.. which requires a lot of gear switching between elementary and adults. Given that most days I teach the same lesson 4 times and call it even, this is always a stretch.

Back to that rough gig: I don't know how they group the classes. When I was in middle school, we were grouped into teams, but it was all very random. That I was on 7-C is to say nothing of my GPA or behavioral status. But I think they actually separate these kids into quiet/well behaved and louder/less well behaved.

And it doesn't always play out the way you'd think.. sometimes I have far better classes with the louder groups just because they are usually much more willing to open their little mouths and give English a shot. Other times, the "genki" kids won't listen long enough to learn how to play the game right, so it all goes to hell.

Anyway, there's one class at Big Elementary, one fifth grade class... 1st through 4th grades I teach with the homeroom teachers, but 5th and 6th I teach with one particular lady, Youthful-sensei, who is a 6th grade teacher (she is HR for one of the two 6th grade classes, that is). Youthful-sensei is awesome, but she isn't the HR for any of the other three classes we teach together, so it's occasionally a challenge for her to handle them too. Oh, and she speaks English only kind of. So teaching Thursdays with her requires me to convey my meaning not only to these kids who don't know English, but their teacher, who knows only a bit more than they. She's really patient and we work around it (it's worked amazingly so far).. but imagine the frustration of knowing there are only ten minutes left in class and you'd really like to do this one last activity, but... the setup/explanation time are going to be exorbitant. Yeah.

So add to that this one fifth grade class which contains all of the behaviorally energetic kids, plus all kids with special needs. Subtract their actual HR teacher, add me and Youthful-sensei. What does it add up to? Last Thursday, it was DISASTER. This one particular kid tends to get really obnoxious on his bad days. He yells and runs around and pointedly refuses to cooperate. I think he's smart.. I can see that he often understands what I'm trying to convey because this little brat stares at me a minute and then does the exact opposite. You couldn't be that contrary unless you knew what I wanted in the first place.

Anyway, he quite regularly refuses to do what I want them to do, and quite regularly makes teaching the others very difficult. All of which I kind of ignore because.. well, what can you do? But last week, I passed out these beautiful alphabet letters made by my predecessor, all color coded (rainbowing from a red A with matching lowercase red a to a purple H and so on) and magnetized on the back so they stick to the chalkboard. And I passed out all the green and blue and yellow and orange ones and said, "Half of you have uppercase, half have lowercase, go find your partner." [and then acted it out with Youthful-sensei so they would get that]

And when they had done this, all the kids were kind of bending their letters and flapping them around or whatever, and that's fine. I saw him consider sticking his into the giant kerosene heater in the middle of the room. Lucky for us all, he thought better of it. But by the time we were teaching the kids to have a shopping conversation in pairs, he was stabbing through the lamination with the pointy end of a circle-drawing compass.

That shit is zenzen not okay.

I held out my hand to demand the letter T back from him, and he actually ran away from me. So I chased him. And tried to grab that letter from him. But he twisted so I couldn't reach it. So I gravely looked to his friend and classmate and said, "Take that from him and give it to me." He stared. I tried again in Japanese this time. He stared. Slower this time. He did it.

The stabby kid in question returned to his seat and quietly ignored my class for the rest of the period. Everyone basically tried to ignore that I had just lost my shit and attacked a child. Okay not really. But that's how it felt. Youthful-sensei looked like she wanted to say something, but we sort of didn't talk about it. After class, I went in the bathroom and cried.

So that was last week. Flash forward to this one. I was looking forward to Thursday the way a doomed man looks forward to his date with the gallows. Because I had the same old Big-Elementary linep, immediately followed by Open School at the middle school 5th period.

What is Open School? I'm glad you asked. Apparently, every so often, they open up a certain day or time of a certain day for kids' parents to come and see what their kids do in school all day. The moms stand in the back of the room and watch you teach/watch their kids learn.

EXCELLENT.

So my thought is: awesome. 5th graders are going to slaughter me just in time for my bloodless corpse to be paraded before the onlooking parents of the 2nd year (8th grade) students.

But by the end of the elementary stint, I was feeling pretty okay. I dedicated myself to not letting things frustrate or get the best of me. It's too damn easy, really, to get frustrated, because things will basically never go how you plan or even want them to go. So if you can just shrug it off and say "OH WELL! Shikata ga nai!" then you will save a lot more sanity.

So me and Jermaine (the name of my blister.. we'll get to that in Hot Danger part II) made it through 5th and 6th grade. We even maybe accomplished something along the way. And then I pranced my little dressed-up self over to the middle school feeling quite powerful. Bring it on, moms of the middle school. I CAN TAKE YOU ALL.

And we did a lesson, and the moms observed, and it was fine.

I've been so focused on getting through to this afternoon. Now I feel a lot more free. I'm not going to ikebana tonight because Salamander eikaiwa is a welcome party for our newest student, and that starts at 6 right next to my apartment. Win win win. And there will be karoke. Which I haven't done in approximately way too long.

There are a lot of things left to do, but this week of intensity is now officially on its way out. Yess.