Small Ears

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20

Oh, there is nothing harder than a Nishi morning. A cold, sleepy Nishi morning. It was a struggle to emerge from zombie-state. I'm not entirely there, although I'm at Nishi now.

I actually enjoy my walk to school in the morning. Yes, it's early, but I like listening to my audiobooks. Right now, I'm listening to Silas Mariner, which started quite slow (with quaint and detailed descriptions of the village) but has now started in on the plot. I listened on the train and during my walk, so I got in an hour of the story. Right now, I'm trying to fit in what I remember of the Wishbone ending with what's happening now; trying to figure it all out early.

The teacher's meeting was remarkably short and then I was off to photocopy papers. I'm sure there's a button on the machine that copies the same sheet twice onto one paper, but I can't find it (“it” being in kanji, of course), so I just made to smaller copies and laid them next to each other and photocopied the pair onto a large B4 sheet. Problem solved. I dislike that Nishi has no B4 papers. If you want B4 size – the size all student handouts are – you photocopy double onto a B5 and cut it in half.

I didn't photocopy with Seth today and I had no problems. The photocopier behaved itself agreeably.

Lessons were, well, Nishi lessons. The students were much better behaved this week than two week ago, but they still make me question the sanity of anyone who signs up to be a teacher permanently. Or at the pay rates of US teachers. Don't get me wrong – I love teaching – but sometimes the students don't quite love learning and it's a battle of their immovable wills versus my very destructible force of determination.

I would have challenged the girls arm wrestling to a match had I known I could win.

Today's lesson built on last lesson's directions. After reviewing last week's directions and then playing the cat-and-mouse game (with not quite the enthusiasm as the Kogyo boys, but at least most of their attention), we got to today's (brief) lesson. We learned “At the (school), turn (left)” and we learned “Go past (the school).” The first hour class, a homemaker class, wasn't bothering to pay attention, so I got no where.

See, Nishi is proud of arranging their desks in four columns, two of which face the other two, with the teacher at the end. This format is supposed to support group work and team learning. I think it's a wonderful theory bur it fails miserably when the students don't want to learn. As it is, they're facing a classmate and probably a willing conversation-participant. For them to pay attention to me requires them to exert extra energy and actually turn their heads/bodies. Typically, I'm not worth the energy to even raise their heads, never mind turn them.

The second and third period classes are standard first year students, but their level is higher than their second year homemaker counterparts. In these classes there were plenty of students who didn't bother to pay attention and instead chose to chat, yell, walk around, etc., but there were a few who got it, and got it well. They paid attention and they racked up the hanko points. It makes me wonder if that's bad, that, by the end, I was teaching specifically to these students. My only justification in the moment was that I had been trying all along to get everyone's attention and repeating things enough that the students paying attention were bored by it and ready to move on (exasperated chorus of: “okay! Okay!”) and the rest weren't bothering to look up. So, I moved at the pace for the few students who were paying attention. I think they enjoyed it and had fun, but I can't say how much, if anything, anyone else learned. If nothing else, everyone else, though, did say at least one command in the cat-and-mouse game, so English was spoken by everyone today.

And I did the entire morning without any tea! I don't know if it's admirable or insane.

I'll have to pay attention, but it looks like Seth is doing nothing today but supporting me while I teach. Only one of his students has turned in their self-introduction homework while Tamora's students have turned in a huge pile of them, some of which have been very good.

Walking to class after lunch, some of the boys in the hallway called out to me. They do this every week, with one having the running gag that he's from California. Today, they asked me if I was vegetarian. I said I was. I wonder how they found out. It's nothing I hide, but I don't remember telling the students. Then they asked me if their friend (who was there) was fat. Oh, high school boys...

My last class of the day was the one I was dreading, but it actually went fairly well. I was surprised. This class of future-housewives of Japan is loud, doesn't pay attention, and can be very troublesome. Today, however, they did better than the FIRST homemaker course this morning and actually seemed to get some of what I was saying.

The loudest, most difficult girls also happen to be the best students, so if I can get them on my side, I can make class kind of work. Again, I don't know how much the students who are sleeping (honestly sleeping, not just resting) are understanding, but if I stopped class every time a student fell asleep, I'd never even start a lesson.

As class was wrapping up, I said that Seth-sensei had some things about the exam to talk to them about, except I pronounced his name wrong. The girls were delighted, despite my quick apology to Seth. They then spent the end of class trying to get me to call him by what I took to be his first name. I went along with it, playing complete stupid ignorance as what they were asking, throwing in “sensei” for the first name, even saying “Sensei Seth,” much to their amused frustration.

I found out from Seth after class that the first name they wanted me to call him by was that of a comedian who also shares his last name. We met the girls in the hallway again and Seth continued to the teacher's room, while I stayed to chat. They asked me the standard questions about dating and relationship. They admired my rings and I actually mentioned that I had two toe rings as well, much to their delight. They told me I have small ears, which is honest fact. I've had doctors try to distract me while drawing blood by saying that. They were just asking me if I liked Japanese men when the bell rang and they all scrambled off to class.

This interaction did give me an idea and I'm now trying to work out a lesson on dating and relationships. After all, it is their favorite topic. If one of the internet-connected school computers opens up, I'll get to hop on and actually see if I can make this thing happen. I'm struggling to think of an activity with it. I don't want to be just lecture.

I ended up getting an early train home, so I didn't see Jane.