anecdotes from grade school
From November 2006 to March 2007 I taught English at elementary schools. Recently Japan has decided that children should study English in grade school, but has left it up to each city to decide from which grade. The city I worked in, Chiba, decided to give one 45-minute lesson per week to fifth- and sixth-grade students.
What this meant for me, was that I had a weekly circuit of roughly five different schools. So for example, I went to the same school every Monday, and to a different school every Tuesday, and so on. I was only required to be at the school during the time I was teaching. So if my school had only two classes, I was done and free to go home after two hours. Occasionally I had two schools in the same day - morning classes in one school, then a quick trip by train to my afternoon school. I also often had un-scheduled days, where I might be sent as a substitute teacher to a school I’d never seen before. Or if there was nothing for me, it was a day off. Over the six months I probably had seven schools that I visited regularly, and maybe six other schools that I visited sporadically as a substitute.
For grade school students, English lessons are built around activities and games. The hope of Japan’s government is that if students’ first encounters with English are fun, they might not stress out so much in junior high and high school. For the teacher it means this: you can’t hide behind a book or a desk. You can’t threaten the students with tests. Your only weapon is your imagination and a sense of what kids find fun. You have the following guidelines: 1) The students must have fun. 2) Do not be ripped apart by a mob of blood-thirsty kids. 3) If they learn some English too, that would be nice. Their regular teacher is there to help but for the most part you’re on your own. Of course the company does have a set of pre-made lesson plans which are often useful. But they are also often not useful. In those cases it’s up to you to salvage the lesson, or scrap it and think of something on your own. If your carefully-prepared game or activity is failing before your eyes, it's up to you to fix it on the fly
Really it was great fun. Every day on the train to my school I felt like a soldier on a boat heading to the beaches of Normandy. But most days went well and I went home with a happy glow.
PORNOGRAPHY
I was teaching phrases like "My father likes baseball" to a class of 5th-graders. In order to encourage students to raise their hand and say something, I also had a point system. If you volunteer something like "My sister likes Pokemon" you get one point. Any other student can then raise their hand and say "My brother likes Pokemon" for a point. But I especially tried to encourage students to come out with unusual hobbies. If a student starts with "My grandfather likes juggling," and nobody else can add to it, then that student gets three points. (Encouraging individuality is one of the ways that I try to bring about the collapse of Japan.) At this particular school students were being a bit shy so I also allowed students to start with themselves. (for example "I like baseball.”)
One girl, slightly tall for her age, raised her hand and said in a strong clear voice "I like pornography." She garbled the pronunciation of "pornography" a bit but it was unmistakable. Oh shit, I thought, how do I handle this gracefully? I wasn't about to say to a group of fifth-graders "OK! Who else likes pornography?" But I didn't want to embarrass the girl either. I gave a panicked glance to the homeroom teacher, who, thank God, understood my dilemna. He said "Porno Graffitti. It's a Japanese band." Flooded with relief I continued on with a big smile on my face "Who else likes Porno Graffitti?" Meanwhile the teacher went over to the girl, who could sense my stress, and whispered "I'll explain later."
OLD BITCH
I hated going to only one school, Shiina Elementary. Especially for the last class of sixth graders, nothing I did worked. Sometimes it got just plain nasty. For example, for the “my family likes” lesson I drew a quick four-second picture of a woman's face on the board, and said "This is my mother." One of the students, I couldn't see who, shouted out "Kuso Baba!" Directly translated: "Shit old lady." Roughly similar in strength to "Old bitch!" This was a class of sixth graders. Twelve year old kids. Part of my job here, due to the psychological frailties of this timid little island, is taking rudeness gracefully. But this was a new level. The homeroom teacher said nothing. After a couple seconds of shocked silence I continued on. "My mother likes cats."
Unlike previous schools, absolutely nobody volunteered to start. To salvage the lesson I split the class into two teams -- if anyone from team A could start with "My (family member) likes (something)" and if nobody from team B could answer "My (family member) likes (the same thing)" then team A got one point. Still volunteers were scarce so I picked one girl who was talking and ignoring the lesson. She clearly didn't want to say anything, and I hate forcing students. But the regular teacher forced her. Clearly miserable she squeezed out something like "My brother likes fishing." It gained her a point for her team, but a joyless one.
Going home that day the vice-principal stopped me.
"Did you have a hard time in class?"
"Yeah. Usually I know how to handle rudeness, but this was new."
"Is that ok with you?"
A moment of confusion. Then I realized what he meant: "I don't care."
He wasn't talking about that. In fact he talked to the girl who was forced to speak in class. And the blame was on me.
"What will you do to make your lessons better?"
"Um, I guess I'll talk to the company for advice."
"Yes. You learn to be a good teacher."
For almost every other school, I usually went home after teaching with a happy glow. But at that particular school, I usually went home with a rotten feeling in my stomach and a cloud over my head. At most schools the smarter students hold the the most influence among their peers, and the teacher holds a good relationship with the students. But at that particular school and particularly the last class, the strongest students enjoyed derailing the lesson, so of course the other students followed suit. Their teacher didn’t seem to command much respect among his students either, so I really couldn’t rely on his help. So lessons in his class often just kinda failed, or limped to the finish-line. And of course after class the teacher came to me and explained where my lesson was bad. For example “going from ‘can you jump?’ to ‘can frogs jump?’ is too conceptually difficult for twelve-year old kids.” Eventually I gave up trying to defend myself and just shut my mouth and nodded my head, eager to get the hell out of there.
ZATO-ICHI
I was teaching basic directions like "Go straight, turn left, turn right." To teach this, I wanted to try a game that I had read about. The game goes something like this: divide the class into teams. Maybe six teams. Each team picks one student as their samurai. They then make "swords" from newspaper rolled into a staff. I figured three sheets would be strong enough to swing, but not strong enough to actually cause any harm. The samurai from each team then wear a blindfold and have to listen strictly to their teammates for directions. Their teammates decide whether to attack another team’s samurai, get out of the way, etc. When they get close enough to attack, the command was "Strike!" If they actually hit, the team got one kill
I tried it first at Shiina, the school I discussed above. It went ok. Of course the last class went the least well but it wasn't a failure either. After class the teacher approached me and said it was a bad idea to have students hitting each other, and I should make the target something like a ball in the middle of the room. I nodded my head and resolved to try it again at another school
So the following week I tried it at Shinjuku Elementary, one of my favorite schools. A bit nervous that my idea would be rejected because of the violence, I explained it to the teacher before class. She was in her fifties, a bit stern in manner but clearly loved by her students. She listened to my idea for the lesson with a concerned look on her face, and then spoke: "I don't think three sheets of newspaper is strong enough. You need four or five."
Grinning with delight, I suggested four.
I discovered a lucky accident in language for this lesson. In the middle of explaining it to the students I realized that the idea of blindfolded samurai was kind of stupid, and quickly tried to think of how could I justify it. Then I remembered the old long-running Japanese TV series Zato-Ichi, about a blind samurai. Beat Takashi also recently made a movie with the same character, which is how I knew about it. Even more luckily, "ichi" also means "one." So the teams became "Zato-One" "Zato-Two" etc. Aside from making the students more willing to be blindfolded, It also made them goof off less -- disrespectful behaviour would be like insulting Zato-Ichi himself!
One team chose a tall graceful girl named Asuka as their samurai. She complained about being chosen but went along with it. While she was making her sword I picked it up briefly - it was as thin and hard as you can roll four sheets of newspaper. After watching her move I knew why she had been picked -- she was clearly taking lessons in Kendo. Her feet were planted in the proper Kendo stance, her sword held firmly in front of her. She soon had her first kill too, and brought her newspaper sword down hard onto a boy's head with a loud "WHACK!" "Oh crap!" I thought, and went to see if the boy was ok. He clearly wanted to cry, but wouldn't let himself. Asking if he was ok, he nodded yes and sat down. There was a red mark on his forehead but luckily it didn't swell into a lump. I said to Asuka "Don't actually kill anybody!" She laughed and said ok, but her next victim got it pretty hard too.
CHRISTMAS
One thing I did for the Christmas lessons was to tell the students that the school had given me $1,000,000,000,000 to buy presents for them, so what did they want? Of course it was a chance to make the students practice "I want a ..." I also wrote some examples on the board for students to think about like "I want a bicycle," "I want a book," "I want a UFO" or "I want an island." Usually half the students picked something safe like book or video game. "I want money" was surprisingly common. A lot of the students made me laugh with outlandish requests. "I want London" was one of my favorites. Another student made the class laugh by teasing their teacher and saying "Mrs. Omura wants a boyfriend, right?" But one student left me speechless for a second when she said "I want a grandmother."
LOSING MY TEMPER
I made a big mistake during my first lesson at a new school. I had students make a circle and jumped randomly from student to student saying "My name is Devon" and shaking their hands. One student, sitting right next to the teacher, seemed eager to shake my hand so I picked him. He shook my hand forcefully and exaggeratedly, saying “nice to meet you” in a mocking voice. In a moment of irritation I gripped his hand firmly and pulled him toward the middle of the circle. Then I went on to another student. This stunned him. He just stayed there in the middle staring at me. So I said "go back." He did but looked crestfallen for the rest of the lesson. The homeroom teacher too had a stony expression on her face that could have been anger towards me or a message to the boy that she wouldn't comfort him The boy never really forgot this either, and looked at me balefully for several following weeks.
ANNUAL SALARY
For the last lesson of the year, I let the students ask whatever questions they wanted in English or Japanese. There were some interesting questions, and I wasn't always able to think fast enough to give good answers. One question that had me thinking was "What's the difference between Japanese TV and American TV?" (The best thing I could come up with at the moment, was that there's a wider range in intelligence level. Some programming makes me think "why can't American TV be this good?!" and some programs make me think "Good God, are there really people stupid enough to laugh at this?" In the States, programs aim mostly for the middle.)
The strangest question to me was "What's your annual salary?" If one student asked it, it'd hardly be noteworthy. But it was asked at least three times at three different schools. That eleven- and twelve- year old kids are thinking about annual salary completely amazed me. And they didn't say "How much money do you make," which is a phrasing you might expect from kids, but instead "What is your annual salary?" And each time the teacher responded strongly that it was a rude question. This drove home my precarious position here. As a teacher I don't make a lot. And things like respect and social position are tied closely to money. As the "old bitch" experience at Shiina also showed me, I'm at least as much clown as teacher, If the Chiba Board of Education decided that letting students throw tomatoes at the teacher while he danced around in his underwear would be a good way to let the students have fun while learning English, then that would become my job. As fun and interesting as this job can be, it would be disastrous to consider it a career.
ODD MOMENTS
There are a few moments that I still don’t understand.
Once as a substitute teacher I was washing my hands between classes, when a sixth-grade girl, one of the brightest of the students from the previous class came up to me. She smiled at me, put her hand on my waist. I smiled back, not sure what to say. Then she walked away. I don’t think it was flirtation - I think she was simply curious how skinny I was.
At Shinjyuku Elementary, I was walking down the hallway between classes. I walked by a girl I’d never seen before, maybe nine or ten years old. She stopped me and said wrapped her arms around my waist, saying “aitakatta!” At its weakest, this means “I wanted to meet you!” but often means “I missed you!” At its strongest it could be used to express “I love you.” I and asked her what her name was. She looked at me with confusion, with a trickle of green snot going down her face. I think she might have been a bit of a special-needs kid.
I had several classes where somewhat-challenged kids took part in the class. You might expect them to be ostracized and picked on. Surprisingly the opposite was true - the other kids seemed to take it upon themselves to encourage, and care for them. The beauty and depth of Japanese society occasionally appars in the most unpredictable ways.
PROMOTED
The school year in Japan ends in March and begins in April, On my last day at Shiina Elementary I had to go through a "Gratitude Ceremony" that was excruciatingly hollow. They had asked me to prepare a short speech for the students, so for weeks I ruminated on something simple and encouraging to express. For the fifth-grade students, who seemed to like me, I said simply “It was fun being your teacher. Good luck next year and be nice to your new teacher.” (By this time I knew I probably wouldn’t be asked back.) For the sixth-grade students, I said something like “Until now, English class has been just a game. When you start junior high, you will have homework and grades and tests. But if you continue to think of English as a game, you will succeed. If you know the rules only a little, you can communicate with roughly half of the world. With this game you can make friends, help people, and even defeat an opponent. Because the rules are complicated, the harder you study the better you can play the game.”
So I went to the Gratitude Ceremony. First I played a game with the entire student body, from 1st grade to 6th grade, roughly 200 students. Then I stumbled through my speech. Another teacher, A Japanese woman who was in charge of English for the 1st through 4th grade classes, also said a few words to her students. Then two of the students solemnly presented us with bouquets of flowers. Then I was told “Bye. You can leave now.” I wanted nothing more than to leave, but I had to wait at the office for the vice-principal to sign some paperwork.
Before leaving, I said to him "I hope to see you again." His eyes fell to the floor. As I was leaving I overheard him saying in "we don't really need a teacher who knows Japanese." At the train station I left my bouquet in a coin-op photo booth. I didn't want the fucking thing, and would have preferred shoving it in the trash. But I wondered what would happen if a teacher or student saw it.
Of course that school gave me poor reviews. But it helped me get promoted! Apparently the rest of my reviews were good. This was very very lucky - if even one other school had something negative to say, then I would have been seen as a teacher that “still has things to work on." And I did make a lot of mistakes but the overall impression was good, I guess. So instead of Shiina reflecting poorly on me, it highlighted my successes at other schools and reflected poorly on them. It still warms my heart to remember the guy in charge of scheduling at the office, telling me "They just don't get it. They're a bunch of hicks." In April I was placed in an academically-oriented high school, and given a pay raise.
What this meant for me, was that I had a weekly circuit of roughly five different schools. So for example, I went to the same school every Monday, and to a different school every Tuesday, and so on. I was only required to be at the school during the time I was teaching. So if my school had only two classes, I was done and free to go home after two hours. Occasionally I had two schools in the same day - morning classes in one school, then a quick trip by train to my afternoon school. I also often had un-scheduled days, where I might be sent as a substitute teacher to a school I’d never seen before. Or if there was nothing for me, it was a day off. Over the six months I probably had seven schools that I visited regularly, and maybe six other schools that I visited sporadically as a substitute.
For grade school students, English lessons are built around activities and games. The hope of Japan’s government is that if students’ first encounters with English are fun, they might not stress out so much in junior high and high school. For the teacher it means this: you can’t hide behind a book or a desk. You can’t threaten the students with tests. Your only weapon is your imagination and a sense of what kids find fun. You have the following guidelines: 1) The students must have fun. 2) Do not be ripped apart by a mob of blood-thirsty kids. 3) If they learn some English too, that would be nice. Their regular teacher is there to help but for the most part you’re on your own. Of course the company does have a set of pre-made lesson plans which are often useful. But they are also often not useful. In those cases it’s up to you to salvage the lesson, or scrap it and think of something on your own. If your carefully-prepared game or activity is failing before your eyes, it's up to you to fix it on the fly
Really it was great fun. Every day on the train to my school I felt like a soldier on a boat heading to the beaches of Normandy. But most days went well and I went home with a happy glow.
PORNOGRAPHY
I was teaching phrases like "My father likes baseball" to a class of 5th-graders. In order to encourage students to raise their hand and say something, I also had a point system. If you volunteer something like "My sister likes Pokemon" you get one point. Any other student can then raise their hand and say "My brother likes Pokemon" for a point. But I especially tried to encourage students to come out with unusual hobbies. If a student starts with "My grandfather likes juggling," and nobody else can add to it, then that student gets three points. (Encouraging individuality is one of the ways that I try to bring about the collapse of Japan.) At this particular school students were being a bit shy so I also allowed students to start with themselves. (for example "I like baseball.”)
One girl, slightly tall for her age, raised her hand and said in a strong clear voice "I like pornography." She garbled the pronunciation of "pornography" a bit but it was unmistakable. Oh shit, I thought, how do I handle this gracefully? I wasn't about to say to a group of fifth-graders "OK! Who else likes pornography?" But I didn't want to embarrass the girl either. I gave a panicked glance to the homeroom teacher, who, thank God, understood my dilemna. He said "Porno Graffitti. It's a Japanese band." Flooded with relief I continued on with a big smile on my face "Who else likes Porno Graffitti?" Meanwhile the teacher went over to the girl, who could sense my stress, and whispered "I'll explain later."
OLD BITCH
I hated going to only one school, Shiina Elementary. Especially for the last class of sixth graders, nothing I did worked. Sometimes it got just plain nasty. For example, for the “my family likes” lesson I drew a quick four-second picture of a woman's face on the board, and said "This is my mother." One of the students, I couldn't see who, shouted out "Kuso Baba!" Directly translated: "Shit old lady." Roughly similar in strength to "Old bitch!" This was a class of sixth graders. Twelve year old kids. Part of my job here, due to the psychological frailties of this timid little island, is taking rudeness gracefully. But this was a new level. The homeroom teacher said nothing. After a couple seconds of shocked silence I continued on. "My mother likes cats."
Unlike previous schools, absolutely nobody volunteered to start. To salvage the lesson I split the class into two teams -- if anyone from team A could start with "My (family member) likes (something)" and if nobody from team B could answer "My (family member) likes (the same thing)" then team A got one point. Still volunteers were scarce so I picked one girl who was talking and ignoring the lesson. She clearly didn't want to say anything, and I hate forcing students. But the regular teacher forced her. Clearly miserable she squeezed out something like "My brother likes fishing." It gained her a point for her team, but a joyless one.
Going home that day the vice-principal stopped me.
"Did you have a hard time in class?"
"Yeah. Usually I know how to handle rudeness, but this was new."
"Is that ok with you?"
A moment of confusion. Then I realized what he meant: "I don't care."
He wasn't talking about that. In fact he talked to the girl who was forced to speak in class. And the blame was on me.
"What will you do to make your lessons better?"
"Um, I guess I'll talk to the company for advice."
"Yes. You learn to be a good teacher."
For almost every other school, I usually went home after teaching with a happy glow. But at that particular school, I usually went home with a rotten feeling in my stomach and a cloud over my head. At most schools the smarter students hold the the most influence among their peers, and the teacher holds a good relationship with the students. But at that particular school and particularly the last class, the strongest students enjoyed derailing the lesson, so of course the other students followed suit. Their teacher didn’t seem to command much respect among his students either, so I really couldn’t rely on his help. So lessons in his class often just kinda failed, or limped to the finish-line. And of course after class the teacher came to me and explained where my lesson was bad. For example “going from ‘can you jump?’ to ‘can frogs jump?’ is too conceptually difficult for twelve-year old kids.” Eventually I gave up trying to defend myself and just shut my mouth and nodded my head, eager to get the hell out of there.
ZATO-ICHI
I was teaching basic directions like "Go straight, turn left, turn right." To teach this, I wanted to try a game that I had read about. The game goes something like this: divide the class into teams. Maybe six teams. Each team picks one student as their samurai. They then make "swords" from newspaper rolled into a staff. I figured three sheets would be strong enough to swing, but not strong enough to actually cause any harm. The samurai from each team then wear a blindfold and have to listen strictly to their teammates for directions. Their teammates decide whether to attack another team’s samurai, get out of the way, etc. When they get close enough to attack, the command was "Strike!" If they actually hit, the team got one kill
I tried it first at Shiina, the school I discussed above. It went ok. Of course the last class went the least well but it wasn't a failure either. After class the teacher approached me and said it was a bad idea to have students hitting each other, and I should make the target something like a ball in the middle of the room. I nodded my head and resolved to try it again at another school
So the following week I tried it at Shinjuku Elementary, one of my favorite schools. A bit nervous that my idea would be rejected because of the violence, I explained it to the teacher before class. She was in her fifties, a bit stern in manner but clearly loved by her students. She listened to my idea for the lesson with a concerned look on her face, and then spoke: "I don't think three sheets of newspaper is strong enough. You need four or five."
Grinning with delight, I suggested four.
I discovered a lucky accident in language for this lesson. In the middle of explaining it to the students I realized that the idea of blindfolded samurai was kind of stupid, and quickly tried to think of how could I justify it. Then I remembered the old long-running Japanese TV series Zato-Ichi, about a blind samurai. Beat Takashi also recently made a movie with the same character, which is how I knew about it. Even more luckily, "ichi" also means "one." So the teams became "Zato-One" "Zato-Two" etc. Aside from making the students more willing to be blindfolded, It also made them goof off less -- disrespectful behaviour would be like insulting Zato-Ichi himself!
One team chose a tall graceful girl named Asuka as their samurai. She complained about being chosen but went along with it. While she was making her sword I picked it up briefly - it was as thin and hard as you can roll four sheets of newspaper. After watching her move I knew why she had been picked -- she was clearly taking lessons in Kendo. Her feet were planted in the proper Kendo stance, her sword held firmly in front of her. She soon had her first kill too, and brought her newspaper sword down hard onto a boy's head with a loud "WHACK!" "Oh crap!" I thought, and went to see if the boy was ok. He clearly wanted to cry, but wouldn't let himself. Asking if he was ok, he nodded yes and sat down. There was a red mark on his forehead but luckily it didn't swell into a lump. I said to Asuka "Don't actually kill anybody!" She laughed and said ok, but her next victim got it pretty hard too.
CHRISTMAS
One thing I did for the Christmas lessons was to tell the students that the school had given me $1,000,000,000,000 to buy presents for them, so what did they want? Of course it was a chance to make the students practice "I want a ..." I also wrote some examples on the board for students to think about like "I want a bicycle," "I want a book," "I want a UFO" or "I want an island." Usually half the students picked something safe like book or video game. "I want money" was surprisingly common. A lot of the students made me laugh with outlandish requests. "I want London" was one of my favorites. Another student made the class laugh by teasing their teacher and saying "Mrs. Omura wants a boyfriend, right?" But one student left me speechless for a second when she said "I want a grandmother."
LOSING MY TEMPER
I made a big mistake during my first lesson at a new school. I had students make a circle and jumped randomly from student to student saying "My name is Devon" and shaking their hands. One student, sitting right next to the teacher, seemed eager to shake my hand so I picked him. He shook my hand forcefully and exaggeratedly, saying “nice to meet you” in a mocking voice. In a moment of irritation I gripped his hand firmly and pulled him toward the middle of the circle. Then I went on to another student. This stunned him. He just stayed there in the middle staring at me. So I said "go back." He did but looked crestfallen for the rest of the lesson. The homeroom teacher too had a stony expression on her face that could have been anger towards me or a message to the boy that she wouldn't comfort him The boy never really forgot this either, and looked at me balefully for several following weeks.
ANNUAL SALARY
For the last lesson of the year, I let the students ask whatever questions they wanted in English or Japanese. There were some interesting questions, and I wasn't always able to think fast enough to give good answers. One question that had me thinking was "What's the difference between Japanese TV and American TV?" (The best thing I could come up with at the moment, was that there's a wider range in intelligence level. Some programming makes me think "why can't American TV be this good?!" and some programs make me think "Good God, are there really people stupid enough to laugh at this?" In the States, programs aim mostly for the middle.)
The strangest question to me was "What's your annual salary?" If one student asked it, it'd hardly be noteworthy. But it was asked at least three times at three different schools. That eleven- and twelve- year old kids are thinking about annual salary completely amazed me. And they didn't say "How much money do you make," which is a phrasing you might expect from kids, but instead "What is your annual salary?" And each time the teacher responded strongly that it was a rude question. This drove home my precarious position here. As a teacher I don't make a lot. And things like respect and social position are tied closely to money. As the "old bitch" experience at Shiina also showed me, I'm at least as much clown as teacher, If the Chiba Board of Education decided that letting students throw tomatoes at the teacher while he danced around in his underwear would be a good way to let the students have fun while learning English, then that would become my job. As fun and interesting as this job can be, it would be disastrous to consider it a career.
ODD MOMENTS
There are a few moments that I still don’t understand.
Once as a substitute teacher I was washing my hands between classes, when a sixth-grade girl, one of the brightest of the students from the previous class came up to me. She smiled at me, put her hand on my waist. I smiled back, not sure what to say. Then she walked away. I don’t think it was flirtation - I think she was simply curious how skinny I was.
At Shinjyuku Elementary, I was walking down the hallway between classes. I walked by a girl I’d never seen before, maybe nine or ten years old. She stopped me and said wrapped her arms around my waist, saying “aitakatta!” At its weakest, this means “I wanted to meet you!” but often means “I missed you!” At its strongest it could be used to express “I love you.” I and asked her what her name was. She looked at me with confusion, with a trickle of green snot going down her face. I think she might have been a bit of a special-needs kid.
I had several classes where somewhat-challenged kids took part in the class. You might expect them to be ostracized and picked on. Surprisingly the opposite was true - the other kids seemed to take it upon themselves to encourage, and care for them. The beauty and depth of Japanese society occasionally appars in the most unpredictable ways.
PROMOTED
The school year in Japan ends in March and begins in April, On my last day at Shiina Elementary I had to go through a "Gratitude Ceremony" that was excruciatingly hollow. They had asked me to prepare a short speech for the students, so for weeks I ruminated on something simple and encouraging to express. For the fifth-grade students, who seemed to like me, I said simply “It was fun being your teacher. Good luck next year and be nice to your new teacher.” (By this time I knew I probably wouldn’t be asked back.) For the sixth-grade students, I said something like “Until now, English class has been just a game. When you start junior high, you will have homework and grades and tests. But if you continue to think of English as a game, you will succeed. If you know the rules only a little, you can communicate with roughly half of the world. With this game you can make friends, help people, and even defeat an opponent. Because the rules are complicated, the harder you study the better you can play the game.”
So I went to the Gratitude Ceremony. First I played a game with the entire student body, from 1st grade to 6th grade, roughly 200 students. Then I stumbled through my speech. Another teacher, A Japanese woman who was in charge of English for the 1st through 4th grade classes, also said a few words to her students. Then two of the students solemnly presented us with bouquets of flowers. Then I was told “Bye. You can leave now.” I wanted nothing more than to leave, but I had to wait at the office for the vice-principal to sign some paperwork.
Before leaving, I said to him "I hope to see you again." His eyes fell to the floor. As I was leaving I overheard him saying in "we don't really need a teacher who knows Japanese." At the train station I left my bouquet in a coin-op photo booth. I didn't want the fucking thing, and would have preferred shoving it in the trash. But I wondered what would happen if a teacher or student saw it.
Of course that school gave me poor reviews. But it helped me get promoted! Apparently the rest of my reviews were good. This was very very lucky - if even one other school had something negative to say, then I would have been seen as a teacher that “still has things to work on." And I did make a lot of mistakes but the overall impression was good, I guess. So instead of Shiina reflecting poorly on me, it highlighted my successes at other schools and reflected poorly on them. It still warms my heart to remember the guy in charge of scheduling at the office, telling me "They just don't get it. They're a bunch of hicks." In April I was placed in an academically-oriented high school, and given a pay raise.