2001-09-28 - 9:57 p.m.
The thing about teaching is that it brings back my own junior high school days (which, as opposed to my high school days, I remember quite fondly). In part this is because I’m somewhere between a teacher and a student. My desk is in the teachers’ room, but I don’t attend any of their meetings, and I certainly work less than they do. Today, there was an all-city teacher’s meeting at 1:00, so I got to go home and take the half day off with the kids. The teachers are lucky if they get one day of their weekend free -- sometimes they have school on Saturday and usually they spend both Saturday and Sunday with whatever club or sport they coach.
In the morning, I arrive between 8:20 and 8:25, about an hour after the rest of the teachers. Everyday, I find myself racing for the last couple of minutes of my ride, trying to make it to school before the 8:20 bell. I don’t HAVE to be right there at 8:20, but the ringing of that bell evokes some kind of Pavlovian response. The kids, who at first seemed like uniformed mass, now are individuals to me and are actually starting to remind me of kids *I* knew in junior high. There’s the wacky kid with the crazy hair who makes faces at me during my lesson; the three girls who never leave each other’s side; the “bad girl” who wears a boy’s uniform jacket instead of her own and sits on the floor in the back of the class; the kiss-up girl who waves her hand in the air insistently to answer questions and carries the teacher’s books to class; and of course the sullen kids who are having a rough time being 13, 14, or 15.
Sometimes this job strikes me as so hilarious that I can’t believe I am getting paid for this. Three times this week I got to stand on a chair and lead 40 kids in a less-than-rousing version of “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” Yesterday, I asked a class of first year students, “What is the weather today?” (correct answer, “sunny”) and got the following responses: “I’m fine thank you, and you?” “Hot dog!” “I no understand English!” “Snow!” I’m supposed to teach 18 classes a week -- 3 days with 3 classes, 1 day of 4 classes and 1 day of 5 classes. But it seems like at least 3 days out of the week they have some kind of special schedule, so I’m never sure how many classes I’ll have to teach on any given day.
This week for example, the students had no school on Monday (some holiday), an assembly on Tuesday, and earthquake drill on Thursday, and a half day on Friday. Tuesday’s assembly was a sports awards ceremony, followed by an all-school chorus rehearsal. The kids all filed into the gym and sat in precise rows according to homeroom. Once the vice principal started the assembly, you could have heard a pin drop -- it was amazing. Following the awards ceremony, the vice principal gave the kids a ten minute break, and I’m not sure what he said, but it seemed like “Okay kids, wrestling break! Go totally insane!” -- because that’s what they did. The kids went from sitting silently in rows to tackling each other, playing full-contact chase, having tickling fights and yelling across the gym to one another -- while the teachers looked on without batting an eyelash. After ten minutes, they were back in their rows again, completely silent. In America, the teachers would have been screeching at the kids to calm down or be careful. There seems to be a “let kids be kids” attitude here, which allows kids to do what they want, but at their own expense. There’s a lot of structure in the classroom, but the kids have to opt to follow it, and most of the time, most of them do. Teachers aren’t yelling at students and hauling them off to the principal’s office all the time. They let the bad kids goof off or sleep or read comic books, and go ahead teaching to the rest of the students.
Thursday’s earthquake drill was a real throwback to junior high. (Did I mention that apparently I can expect about 12 earthquakes a year in Kimitsu? I slept through a small one Tuesday morning). I joined one of the English teachers in her homeroom for the drill. The principal made an announcement on the PA, which I guess said “it’s an earthquake, guys!” because all the kids starting pretending the ground was shaking and crawled under their desks. Once the “earthquake” had “stopped,” we filed out of the school, teachers stationed at various points along the way to tell the kids to be quiet and hurry along -- but of course DON’T RUN. The kids sat in their perfect homeroom rows on the field in front of the school while the teachers rushed to take attendance and the vice principal timed the whole thing on a stop watch. After everyone was accounted for, the principal made a very long speech about (I am told) a time when he was in an office building that caught fire and everyone panicked. So the moral was don’t panic in an earthquake. The kids were dismissed to go back inside, and we all had to wipe our shoes on wet rags laid out by the door because, of course, we hadn’t had time to change from our indoor shoes to our outdoor shoes when fleeing the earthquake.
This afternoon, I used my time off to do a little shopping and run some errands around town. As I was biking home, I passed a gaggle of kids hanging out next door to the photo shop. There were about a dozen bikes parked outside a little store, and some girls were sitting on a picnic bench trading cards of Japanese pop stars. I went inside, and it turned out to be a candy store, but more than that, a kids’ hangout joint. It’s a tiny store, but in every corner, kids from ages 6-13 were hanging about, crouched on the floor or sitting on the shelves, slurping ramen and eating candy. The owner was besieged by kids running up and plunking down their change for candy and trading cards, tugging on his shirt and pointing wildly at the things they wanted. Amazingly, there was not a parent in sight. It was totally a kids’ space. And the candy was amazing! Everything was individually wrapped, of course, because the Japanese don’t like to go sticking their hands in places where other people have been sticking their hands (and who can blame them). Chocolate-filled marshmallows, cola-flavored chewing gum, a candy bar that I can best describe as tasting like a chocolate-covered Cheeto... Have I talked about the jellies yet? A very popular sweet in Japan is jelly, which is not like jam, but rather like a single-serving of dense Jello. They come in little plastic containers the size of half-and-half at restaurants, and you just peel off the top and pop them into your mouth. Some flavors come in bigger cups, my favorite being coffee jelly, which comes with a layer of cream at the top. I fear that I am becoming addicted to, or perhaps obsessed with coffee jelly. I think I may throw a few in my earthquake survival kit.
