School Spirit

During an instant messenger conversation sometime last week I was asked, by the ever-observant Mark Baffa the Second, “So, how come you stopped talking about this job you’re supposedly doing?” Good question. The answer is, quite simply, that I wasn’t doing anything other than killing time and waiting for the school year to begin, which it finally did last week. Today was officially my first day of teaching and if I had to describe the experience in one word, it would be “exhausting”. I was only told that I would be teaching one 3rd grade elementary school class but I actually ended up teaching two of those classes, as well as two kindergarten classes. Having to teach four classes in a shirt and tie in super hot and humid weather was something like the exact opposite of the phrase “fun on the bun”.

The first thing that I learned today was that two classes of the exact same level at the same school can be different as night and day. The first class of 3rd graders was boisterous, excited and very enthusiastic whereas the second class was shy and quiet.
Upon entering the first class, it became immediately clear who the class clown was. He was basically standing up in his seat, shouting constantly and had his hand raised for the entire duration of the class. Every time I called on him the classroom erupted in laughter and applause. When I had the kids come up to the board and draw animals so that the rest of the class could guess the animal in English, the class clown drew some anime character and kept adding comic flourishes to his illustration, much to the adoration of his fans. When a kid drew a bear on the board one student yelled out “Vegeta, no, Super Vegeta!” While both classes presented their own challenges, my activities were a hit for the most part and both students and staff seemed satisfied.

I really had no idea what to expect from the kindergarteners initially, but a few minutes in the classroom was all it took. It’s like teaching a classroom of puppies; cute, energetic and affectionate but not capable of many higher-level mental functions. The vice-principal of the kindergarten, Megumi Matsuhashi, lived briefly in France, speaks some English and French and aspires to run an artsy, culturally informed kindergarten. She told me that I should try reading to the kids in English (even though they won’t understand a word of it), although I’m a little skeptical if their attention spans will allow for that sort of thing. She believes very strongly in exposing children to many languages at a young age and as she drove me back to the office she said, “My nephew knows how to say ‘apple’ but he cannot say ‘林檎’. Even though he is Japanese, I am worried that they will call him a gaijin.”

My boss walked over to my desk today with a letter that he received and asked me to explain an English phrase in the letter for him (he doesn’t read English). The phrase was “heart of partnership”. I have no idea why they chose to express this one phrase in English, since the entire rest of the letter was written in Japanese. Furthermore, it seems likely that it was translated from Japanese in the first place, as it is essentially meaningless in English. The word “heart” when used figuratively, has no real equivalent in Japanese; the closest I know of is kokoro, which is often translated as “mind,” “heart,” or “spirit”. The actual meaning of the word is something like “the center of feeling” but, like the English “heart,” it has a much more nuanced meaning than one sentence can accurately describe.

I saw one of my 3rd grade students at the mall tonight. He looked up at me with a visage of abject terror and exclaimed, “Uh…Mehan Sensei!” So long as I can strike fear into the hearts of young children, I'll know that I'm doing something right.