Great Teacher A-Chan

Being in such a ghetto area, you have to expect the standard to be a little low. In fact, when I visited nearby Elementary schools, I found most 5th and 6th graders were better in English than my ichinensei. In junior high, students are motivated to study because they need to take the entrance exams for highschool – the better the school, the more difficult the exam. Although 97% of students go on to high school, most Kumiyama junior high students come from working class families (the majority of employment in this town is farming and factory work) and thus will either drop out, or attend only the minimum standard highschool. They really don’t need to get good grades.

I thought it was just the English that was poor, but as another teacher was telling me recently ‘yes, English level is very low... also Japanese level low’. Another teacher piped up ‘Also mathematic level, low’, and still another chimed in ‘Science level... low’. Yep, there’s no denying it, this school is ghetto. Maybe all the kids are suffering from hairspray fume-induced brain damage. For some reason it’s totally in fashion this month for girls to spike up the back of their hair with hairspray. We’re not talking about short hair either – long beautiful hair, messed up into bunches with product. It’s as though all the bad girls and psycho girls saw yamamba walk past and decided she knew what it was all about when it comes to hair. It’s weird.

Anyway, there are countless examples of bad English in this school. One ninensei boy only knows one English phrase: ‘Kill you’. Charming, isn’t it? He takes every chance he can to scream these words in the hopes of a shocked reaction. Usually I just respond with ‘Kill you? Are you sure? Well, ok’ and then make some dramatic show of stabbing him or shooting him, which he and his friends think is a hilarious game (almost as funny as the girl who uses air-swords to stab me while making this adorable soft ‘fuuuuuu’ marshmallow sound. It’s totally non-violent, I assure you. It’s an ongoing joke with us). One of the psycho girls only knows how to demand things. If I’m drinking water, she thrusts out her hand and shouts ‘Water please!’. If I have a toy koala for a class activity, it’s ‘Koala please!’. If I’m carrying nothing at all? ‘Money please!’. I don’t mind, but it’s very loud and shrill (sounds funny coming from me doesn’t it?). Today I was chewing gum, so it was ‘Gum please!’, but was interrupted by the soft-spoken, beautiful Catherine (Catherine is silent in a foreboding way. She’s one of the Bad Girl Bosses) who looked me up and down in my less-than-conventional clothes and said ‘Sensei... smart?’. I got it straight away. See, today we were all trekking out to the nearby Public Hall for chorus performances by all the classes. I hadn’t realised this was formal dress until I rocked up that morning and all the teachers were dressed up. Even the sports teacher had ditched his usual tracksuit for a suit and tie. Oops. They don’t miss a beat.

In class the other day, I’d made an activity for the ninensei where they had to practice a telephone conversation in pairs, decide what to do on the weekend, where to meet and when. I then strolled around the classroom, randomly ‘calling’ students to go through the conversation with them. I called one boy (by kneeling next to his desk and making a ringing sound until he picked up), but he was having a lot of trouble with the English. When I asked ‘what would you like to do on Saturday?’ he was stumped. Finally his friend whispered something in his ear, which made them both giggle, but at least he answered. ‘Let’s sleep.’

I assumed the joke was that he just wanted to sleep in instead of going out (I know, I know, how can you be that naïve when you’ve been working in a junior high school for 3 months already?), and delighted that he was finally doing the exercise, I continued. ‘Oh! That’s a great idea! Where should we meet?’ Again he consulted with his friend, and both of them now laughing madly, he managed to spit out ‘Let’s meet my house!’

Ok, I get it now. So what exactly do you do in this situation? The pair of them are falling off their chairs laughing, and that sight is just... amusing. I start to laugh. My goodness, I can’t help it, I laugh uncontrollably. The kids can’t recover, and I can’t stop laughing at them. The other teacher asks me if we’re ok, and despite their inappropriate comments, I don’t really want the kids to get in trouble, so I tell him we’re fine.

At least they’re trying to use English, right? RIGHT?

Posted by a-chan on Tuesday, October 24, 2006 at 3:53 PM | Permalink