Mushroom Head

Today I went to school the normal time…for 8:30 but apparently this was too late because the ceremony had already started as I walked through the door soaking wet from my cold, rainy bike ride to school. Do you think someone would have told me to be a few minutes early today? Oh no, I was supposed to inquire about this I guess. Oh wells, I’ll put it on the “not my fault” pile and move on. So, I introduced myself to another class today. They were second year students and of all the years, they are the worst. They are not energized at all, they don’t seem to care, and good luck getting someone to even try when you call on them directly (which is a no-no here but I do it anyway). The other class that I taught was the 6.7.8 class, which is a special needs class. I am having a hard time striking a balance with these students. Their levels are all so different and some of them don’t pay attention, others are too hyper and interject all the time and I can feel myself failing inside although I know that all in all I am not doing a poor job in the least. The kids are interacting with me, they are learning some English, and hopefully they are having fun doing so. I can feel myself getting worn out by this class though. I really do have a newfound respect for the people who can teach with such diligence and perseverance day in and day out. Maybe one day, I will find this but for now, not present.

There are student teachers that came in today and will be at our school for 3 weeks. Two of them are English student teachers. I think they are really nice but they are more nervous about teaching than I was when I came here and they have the advantage over me. They attended this school, they know Japanese traditions and ways of doing things, hmmm they know the language, and well they have had formal education in this exact field. I don’t know, maybe the overcoming of the anxiousness had to do with something else inside me, some soft skill I acquired along the way. What really shocked me was their inability to speak English. Now, one would think that you should be fairly decent at using a language before teaching it. Not so much the case in Japan. I feel bad for the students because they are the ones being disadvantaged by this phenomenon. The one student teacher pretty much refused to speak to me in English and I was forced to use Japanese. Then the other student teacher complained how difficult it was to read a short passage from the student’s textbook. Now, I know that reading English comes naturally to me but maybe if it were me trying to teach English students Japanese, I would definitely fully understand the basics. I mean we are talking 9^th grade here and this person just graduated from college. I don’t know, to me there is something peculiar about this. Then I realized that maybe it was not English but just this person’s desire to study and learn languages. In a later discussion, I found out that he had studied Spanish as well. Bueno! Sino no. Why? Because he just talked about how difficult the masculine/feminine noun system is. Honestly, if you can learn 2,000 kanji, you can memorize which words are male and which are female. I think I have a lot to learn from them as well. They are my age and seem to be a great window into the world of Japan, especially the local area. We will see what happens.

My lunch today was rather exciting. I ate with Toeda-sensei’s homeroom, which was ecstatic about having me. I was thrilled because that meant that they asked lots of questions and were really friendly towards me. I was even pranked with a question by this one girl. She asked me, “Do you like mushrooms?” To this I replied, “Yes, I love them.” Terrible choice of words because after a full minute of laughter among anyone who could hear, she explained that their nickname for Toeda-sensei is “mushroom head” because as they put it her head looks like a mushroom. So indirectly, I said that I loved the head English teacher in the school. Yet, I felt privileged to have been pranked and then let in on their nickname secret. Made me feel like I was not so much a sensei but more like a friend. One of the girls that was across from me asked if I like the anime Bleach and I said that I liked it a lot, that my friend Luca and I used to watch it all the time. She got lost when I tried to explain he is from Switzerland so I left it alone. Sorry, Luca, the Japanese don’t know European geography very well.  

My artistic side shining through, lol