Teacher Transcendence

So everyone has had a bad class, right? You don't even have to be a teacher to have had one. You could be a student and realize that one of your classmates is sending your teacher through...you know what I mean.

Well, today I had one of those classes. I can't say that this is the best time in my life. Last night, Kody almost missed the bus that got him to Kobe where an angel had to help direct him to the correct trains so he could get to the airport on time to catch his flight. Thank the Lord for young Japanese people who want to speak English and/or help foreigners. Also, it's freezing. I'm exhausted; I haven't had a weekend sleep-in day for a while AND I'm looking towards two 9-6 rehearsals this weekend in a far away town where I'll only be utilized for 1 hour. For 20 minutes, I'm a star. Those 20 minutes cost a lot. Yay female parts. Anyway, I'm overwhelmed. But today, I can happily say, I transcended my circumstances.

I think there is a fine line between not caring about your class and not caring about your students. The first means that you don't get your feelings hurt everytime things don't go as planned. The second means you just don't care at all. I'm attempting to master the first without inadvertantly falling into the second. Ichi-D, ichinensei, is probably the WORST first grade class. There is a bank of 4 troublemakers that sit on the far left and a bank of 2 or 3 lesser trouble makers that sit on the right. Up until this point, I've been a bit shy to these students. It takes a lot of ego to go into that classroom with gusto. But today, I threw everything out the window. I've learned that drawing attention to students - not in a negative way, I'm almost incapable of scolding them - does loads for their participation. I FORCE them to participate. So today, instead of avoiding the trouble-makers, I sought them out. I walked up to 13 year old boys that were writing 'I love play sex' on their papers and asked them if they liked playing baseball.

The class didn't go very well. It took forever to get them to do the first activity which entailed writing two past tense sentences on a piece of paper folded in four. I studied English. I played the piano. This is easy stuff. Even for 13 year old Japanese kids. If all else failed all they had to do was copy two of the 10 sentences I'd written on the board. The teacher and I forewent the last activity, which was playing a dice game with a neat little gameboard because there were only 7 minutes left in class after the other activities. We played tic tac toe instead. It wasn't ideal, but we managed.

Now, I feel great. It's absurd. I came back to my email and started a log to keep track of my classes. I gave 1D a horrible review and now I'm writing this peppy blog. It's a bad class. That's all there is to it. It's not me. It's not the host of other 27 students that did a great job today. It's 6 or 7 puny 13-year-old brats who don't know their left hand from their right. I'm okay with that.

One of my favorite things about this job is that I'm learning to go with it, to create lessons on the fly (still working on this), to be unquenchably resourceful and resilient. These things take self-confidence and poise.

I can't believe it. Japanese junior high school boys are going to shape my character. I never dreamed I could learn from someone who carved 'sex' into their classroom wall.