The Kids I Teach

As I’ve mentioned before, the end of the second term in Japanese schools is an extremely active time, and as I find myself rushing to finish lesson plans and get loads of peripheral things done in time to actually enjoy the upcoming holidays. But as the upcoming break approaches, I’ve also found myself amused by the foibles of my students. As an assistant, I work with all three grade levels (the equivalent of U.S. grades 7 to 9), so I have a lot of them, and nearly all of them have challenged my expectations about school life in Japan.

I suppose that maybe I had had a distorted perception of the kind of students I’d find here in Japan, based on decades of being told about extreme focus on studying, as well as legendary levels of discipline that, to me, seemed practically inhuman. These both served to make students in the Japanese school system seem like a kind of mythical object, nigh impossible in real life. And as it turns out, these views, if they were ever true, are certainly quite a bit different from the experience I’ve had.

Yes, the students are expected to learn a lot, and are frequently pressured to excel so that they can get into good schools. And yes, the rules themselves can seem unnecessarily strict, especially when it comes to keeping up a particular appearance. (Students are, to name just one example, forbidden from dyeing their hair, on the grounds that it draws unnecessary attention and serves as a distraction in the learning environment.) But at the same time, the kids are in many ways just the same as their American counterparts.

For one thing, they chafe at the rules constantly. While they have uniforms, some students seem to make it their mission to wear them as sloppily, or as inventively, as possible, following the letter of the regulations while subverting their spirit as far as they can get away with. The boys in particular seem to enjoy flashy belts, coloring the buttons on their jackets, and wearing colorful t-shirts underneath; the girls hike up their skirts to a worrying degree, then wear their PE shorts to preserve modesty. The teachers frown on all of these illicit modifications, of course, but can do little besides chide the students as long as they’re actually wearing the things. The main uniform infraction that teachers can actually punish—not wearing it—is of course not an issue the teachers ever have to deal with.

Also, the classroom and hallway chatter is pretty much the same as it is back home. Students pass notes, gossip about who likes whom, complain about school and schoolwork, talk excitedly about their favorite TV shows and bands, and engage me with all sorts of conversation. This last is probably the biggest difference from home, since my school didn’t have a native-language assistant for French or Spanish, but it certainly reveals more similarities to home.

The students who regularly talk to me divide fairly cleanly into three main groups. The first are the students who are serious about learning English. A few of them are quite skilled as a result of serious self-study and after-school prep classes for high school entrance exams, while others have little going for them besides enthusiasm and sheer dogged determination. I try to reward their effort as much as possible, while guiding them towards grammatical sentences without getting them too frustrated, but it seems like the opportunity to speak to a real live Anglophone helps keep them trying again.

The second group is the ones who want me to teach them all the interesting vocabulary English has on offer. Many of them are second-year boys (equivalent to eighth grade in American schools), who are at that critical age where curiosity about the anatomy and human… relations has hit its peak. Some of them are unsure of how to respond to the question “How are you?”, but they can certainly say some items that would make a sailor blush. I most certainly did not teach them those things; I blame the Internet. Nevertheless, I try and steer them towards more appropriate subjects, while feigning ignorance of the words they really want to know. After all, I don’t want them to blame me if they get beaten up by irate locals on their first trip abroad.

The last main group of students seems to relate to me chiefly out of curiosity about, well, me. They are intensely interested in where I’m from, what life is like back in the U.S., what my family is like, and more. While I appreciate the desire to learn more about life overseas, some of their questions can get uncomfortably personal; I’ve invented some answers out of whole cloth to keep from too much awkwardness (“I have lots of girlfriends!” with a big goofy grin and a thumbs up is silly nonsense, but is an effective rejoinder to “do you have a girlfriend?”). I sometimes wonder if they know I’m not really serious about those answers, though.

More than anything else, my daily interaction with these students, both in and out of the classroom, has helped put a human face on what I once regarded as remote and perhaps even a little forbidding. No matter where you go, kids will be kids, and the ones that I teach here in Matsubara are no exception. But of course, I’ve only scratched the surface here, so expect far more on the subject in the new year. But it seems we’ve got some special occasions coming up, so why I don’t I take a couple of articles to explain those, first?