The Merging of My Passions

The first time I traveled abroad, I was fifteen. I went to Monterrey, Mexico to do relief work in an orphanage for two weeks. The following year, I returned to Mexico, and when I was seventeen, I spent a month in Honduras. These early experiences with travel were central to shaping how I think about the world.



Any English teacher can tell you that we teach a great deal more than grammar and literature. We teach kids how to think about life, the universe, and everything. To some degree, that's true of all teachers -- I'm looking at you, Social Studies Department -- but in English class, this is at the core of what we do. What is literature, after all, if not a centuries-long conversation about the human condition? We let our kids in on what hundreds of voices from innumerable backgrounds have said, and if we're good, we encourage them to make their own contribution.



Because the time I spend traveling has such a powerful impact on me, I tend to tell my students stories -- sometimes comical, sometimes profound -- about the places I've been, the people I've known, the weird things I've done or seen or eaten. I consider it part of my job to pass along to them what I know of the bigness and richness of the world. Perhaps the most important part of my job.

This June, for the first time, I was able to do that in a very tangible way by taking a group of my students on a ten-day trip to Japan.



Not only did they get to experience first-hand a great cross-section of Japanese culture -- like a karaoke parlour and dinner in an izakaya and yes, even spotting a dreaded mukade -- they also got to see places I'd shown them photos of and meet some of the people who star in my best stories.

What's more, at quite a young age, they've already been to the other side of the world, seen a culture very unlike their own, and gotten a taste of what kind of adventures the world might hold for them if they're willing to go out in pursuit of them. I can't think of a teaching experience more rewarding than that.

Tempus Fugit

This weekend we got our first proper snow of the season. On Saturday it rained and drizzled and froze and culminated in a slushy mess at the foot of the driveway, but on Sunday the snow came drifting quietly down in great clumpy flakes. I tried to explain the significance of this to my nephew; he quickly reminded me that at six months old, he's not quite interested in snowmen or sledding yet. In fact, he's not concerned with much beyond bottles and rattles and his auntie's dangly earrings.

I'm rather enjoying Nephew at this age. He's a profoundly happy child. Every time someone pulls a face at him he bursts into laughter, and he stares at me in awe whenever I play the guitar. (He seems to prefer John Mayer to anybody else. We might have to work on this... Sorry, John Mayer.) But as much fun as he is right now, he's growing like a weed. Every time I see him -- which is pretty frequently -- he has a new trick. His newest trick is the fine art of Mobility. Yikes, baby boy!



And while we're speaking of people growing too fast, my students -- most of whom I met two years ago when they were barely sophomores -- are now well on their way to graduation. When I first started teaching at my current school, I taught 10th grade. The following year, I moved up to 11th grade. This year, I'm teaching seniors. The result of my professional evolution has been that I've had the same base group of students for three years and am now inextricably attached to them. I'm up to my eyelids in college application essays they want me to look over and have already written a couple dozen letters of recommendation, but I still can't quite wrap my brain around the idea that they are leaving.



Of course, I plan to thoroughly enjoy them between now and May, and they're making that pretty easy. Not only are they behaving like angels, they're also working harder than ever, in class and out of it. Every year for Thanksgiving, our school has a massive food drive to benefit the community. The kids pour their hearts into fund-raising for it, and this year, of the 28 kids in my AP class, 18 of them were directly involved in the senior class's primary money-maker -- The Senior Auction. As a proud supporter, I went to the auction and "purchased" a trio of my boys. Their task in return for the money I paid was to each perform a soliloquy from Hamlet for their classmates. They did a fantastic job. In addition to their assignment, they also brought me a mass of roses, a box of chocolates, and a latte; made me lunch; and prepared a little N'Sync dance number for the class.

I love these kids.


For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?

Ask My Kids IV: The Holocaust

Once again, my kids amaze me with their awesome grasp of history, culture, and the human experience. Today's feature: Hitler.

(This is the real deal, in all its raw and unedited glory.)

Hitler was a very cruel person who killed a whole lot of people which were Jewish, he also made them slaves it didn't matter how old you were he would make them work in open land and he would have his soldiers wip them if they did not work fast or if they said anything back to them. The reason he chose to pick the Jews instead of any other culture was because he did not like Jesus, and Jesus was Jewish, he also didn't like God because he herd from many people that God owned the world and that was what he was trying to do.

Fair enough.

Ask My Kids III: The Apocolypse

*Disclaimer: This first drawing was done by my cousin. I feature it here because I favor her shamelessly. And because the guy with his head on fire is funny.

In conjunction with studying e.e. cummings' "what if a much of a which of a wind", I asked my juniors to sketch and/or describe how they imagine the world might end. I expected to get some religious reflections on the Second Coming, perhaps some geopolitical analyses... I pretty much got action films, but a few seemed worthy of sharing with you.
For your enjoyment, Expatriate Games presents:

"The End of the World"
*cue foreboding brass theme*




My favorite on this list is "massive floods", although the guy warding off aliens with a slingshot is pretty sweet too.





"The end of the world will be like a light getting switched off. All of a sudden, everything will go dark and everyone will be dead."










"George 'Dubya' will launch a 'nuculer' missal at China or somebody. They'll launch one back. And everyone will die. Dumb@$#!"


"Either we'll discover that iPods give you brain tumors, the entire population of every developed country will die, and the world economy will collapse into another Stone Age, or this will happen:"

Ask My Kids II: Relationship Counseling

A conversation between two of my 17 year old students about the nature of love:

"You ever cheat on your girl, man?"

"Naw, man. I love my girl. I am a man in love."

"Yeah, I hear you, man. I love my girl too. But you know what I'm sayin', sometimes even if you in love, you still be tempted, you know?"

"Naw, not if you really in love. I mean, everybody tempted, but if you in love, you don't do nothin'. You don't act on that temptation."

"How you stop yourself? You know, like, some ho gettin' up on you, and your girl ain't there, whatchou do?"

"I tell you whatchou do: you get on your phone and you call the woman you love. Soon as you hear her voice, you ain't gonna be tempted."

"Well, what if she don't answer her phone? My girl be busy, ya know what I'm sayin'?"

"If she don't answer her phone, you go to her. Wherever she at, you go."

"See, but I don't gotta car."

"Then you walk, man. Whatever you gotta do, you get to where your girl at."

"But she live on the south side. I can't be walkin' that far. I got asthma."

(At this point, a third party chimes interjects: "You got an inhaler, dumbass!" She is promptly told to C her way out of this A/B conversation.)

"Look, it's like this, man. When you really in love, you need your girl, like you can't breathe without 'er. So, you don't care if you gotta be a little uncomfortable on the way over there, 'cuz you know as soon as you next to your girl, you gonna be able to breathe easy."

"You full of it, man."

"You not really in love."

:-)

Ask My Kids I: Conflict Resolution

Some days I just can't find words to express how much I love my kids. They make me laugh 'til my sides hurt.

I was having a little trouble last week with my plans for traveling to the UK. First off, as you know, our housing arrangement in London fell through. S & I decided we're going to stay in a hostel. I told my kids. They think I'm insane. They insist I'm going to be robbed, raped, and strangled with my own intestines. They are genuinely concerned for my health and well-being. Of course, this all stems from the movie "Hostel" which they have seen and take to be Gospel truth.

A few days later, S emailed me and said her roommate, Tara, wanted to come on the trip with us. The more, the merrier, I always say, so Tara bought a ticket. The following day, we had a three-way conference call to discuss our plans. S and I had already decided we'd stay for a week in London, then spend a week in Dublin. We're both seasoned travelers and prefer spending more time in fewer places to rushing all around the countryside, so two weeks, two cities suited both of us fine.

Well, five minutes into our phone call, Tag-a-Long (which shall henceforth be the roommate's pseudonym) starts to whine about wanting to go to Paris. I've already been to Paris, and to be frank, I wouldn't cry if I never went back, but what bothered me about Tag-a-Long's little Detour de France was that it would add well over $500 to our expenses (each) and take time away from our stays in England and Ireland. Even that didn't annoy me nearly as much as her basic violation of vacation etiquette -- when you invite yourself on a trip and people are gracious enough to take you on, you do not whine about the itinerary. As a final straw, she insisted that she wanted to go to Paris because she'd never been there before. Unfortunately for her, that doesn't hold much water when you've never been anywhere before! I firmly believe everyone should travel, no matter who they are or what their station is in life. That doesn't mean I like traveling with rookies.

I tried to be diplomatic with her, but by the time we got off the phone I was seething mad. Naturally, the next day I told my kids. I asked them what conflict resolution suggestions they had. Their responses were as follows:

• "Aw, man, Miss G. You shoulda callt me! I'da come ovah there 'n busted her in'a face straight up!"
  
  
• "Naw, look, doh. Here's whatcha do, doh. She all like 'I wanna goda Paris" and you go "Fine. We goda Paris witchou. Da's coo. Butchou payin'.'"
  
  
• "She can't come 'round like that bustin' up y'all's trip! Tell her she can stay the f*ck home! She ain't invited!"
  
  
• "No, mira, Miss G, she ain't been like nowhere, right? So she don't know. So you jus' get to London and go like 'Wow, isn't Paris great? It's like so beautiful here in Paris.' And she won't wanna look, ya know, stupid, so she'll be like 'O yeah, it's so cool.' And she'll never know. Maybe pay somebody to like come up and pretend to speak French to her. That's what I would do."
  
  
• "No, see, here we go. I got 'is, doh. You tell ya friend 'Okay, since you bringin' somebody on 'a trip, Imma bring somebody too.' And 'en we all go witchou!"

Remarkably, their advice actually helped me a great deal. I didn't take any of it, but I did have a chance to cool off and see the humor in the situation. The actual way I'm solving this conflict is thus: If Tag-a-Long really wants to go to Paris, she can go ahead, and I'll just hang back in London on my own. S can do whatever she wants too. We're all big girls.

The Daily Grind

Every job has its perks and its quirks. In college, I managed a little coffee bar and had the delightful privilege -- nay, the duty -- of starting my day with a free 20 oz. latte. Every day. This was important because as I sat at the register drinking my cup of joe, I demonstrated to the passing populous that I believed in the quality of our product. It also served as the "test run" to insure that the machine was working properly and that the grind was up to a Goldie Lockean standard of excellence.

On the other hand, my coworkers insisted on watching Dawson's Creek from 10 to 12 every morning. The only thing about that show that I ever enjoyed was the time that Jen's dying wish was for Joey to make up her frickin' mind!!!



*ahem*

You don't often see those moments of raw honesty in teen dramas.

Speaking of teen drama...

(Wasn't that a good segue? I knew you'd like it.)



Teaching high school is a bit like being in a very bad spin-off series of Dawson, but with fewer moments of inane personal reflection and more hip-hop. Regardless of the official curriculum, every group of students is an entirely fresh experience, so while I should have only two preps (that's teacher talk for two different courses), I actually have four. This year, I am inadvertently teaching the following courses:

Writing in the Hood -- In Writing in the Hood, we explore what it means to string two or more sentences together coherently in an attempt to convince the tax-payers that American public education is not an utter charade. Please do not be offended when I tell you that "You be trippin'" is not grammatically correct. I do respect your culture; it's just that you're about to graduate, and I want you to be able to get a job that doesn't involve a funny little hat.

Just Trying to Make it to May -- The students in the Just Trying to Make it to May course skim dutifully over the surface of many interesting pieces of literature. We can't be expected to remember to do work outside of class, but in class we will not protest to doing copious amounts of reading and grammar exercises. Occasionally a fiery discussion of some kind will spring up, reassuring the instructor that all pulses are still pumping. We're not really here to learn, but we don't mind if it happens accidentally.

Modern Women for a Matriarchal Utopia -- Extra credit assignments in this course consist of such lofty aspirations as "Create World Peace in Seven Steps or Fewer" and "Become the Supreme Ruler of the Earth Using only the Internet and Four AA Batteries". The name is not deceiving -- this group of students is, by some fluke of scheduling, 100% female. I estimate that the probability of one of these young women actually becoming a world leader is about 7:1 for. Not only does this course cover the required federal, state, and College Board material for both eleventh grade English and AP Language & Comp, but discussions very often branch into the realms of philosophy, international politics, religion, and art, as well as the finer points of linguistics. For example, the other day a student quite astutely observed that the word "of" sounds like "uv". I responded with a somewhat brief explanation of the concept of voiced and unvoiced sounds (in this case, fricatives). This blossomed resplendently into an intricate exploration of the evolution of language in general and English in specific, including -- but by no means limited to -- Indo-European roots, the Battle of Hastings, and why we shouldn't be so quick to judge those who say "aks" instead of "ask". In a normal classroom of 16/17 year olds, I'd have lost them at "fricative" (Hu hu! She said "frick!"), but my Modern Women were on the edges of their seats, all attention riveted on the discussion, every voice chiming in to confirm that they really did a) understand and b) care.

and

I Think I'm Smart & My Mom Says I'm Special -- The title of this fourth and final course really says it all. This course was originally supposed to have the same material as the Modern Women course, but as I said, no two groups of students are the same. The major flaw in the I Think I'm Smart & My Mom Says I'm Special class is that sometimes there just isn't enough Smart and Special to go around. When Student X receives some Smart in the form of the instructor saying "Yes, X, that's correct," Students A-W universally resent Student X, feel it necessary to defame and slander Student X behind his/her back, and may eventually make Student X feel so uncomfortable that he/she refuses to speak up in class again. It's important to note that Student X is not one particular student -- simply whichever student has answered the question correctly. The equal distribution of Special is also cause for malice and unrest, but this is aimed particularly at students who have long-standing relationships with me, the instructor and Highly-Qualified Distributor of Smart and Special. These unwitting victims include students who had me last year, students who participate in a club that I advise, students whose brothers or sisters are friends of mine, and my second-cousin-once-removed who simply can't help coming from a long line of literary geniuses.

With a day as colorful as this, who would want any other job?




Okay, I do kind of miss the free coffee...

Lockdown

Today is Thursday, the 29th of November, 2007. That means I've been home from Japan for exactly one year, six months, and twenty-six days.

In that time, many strange and incredible events have transpired. Despite all odds against, I finally got a "grown-up" job; I had my first adventure with downhill skiing; I went white-water rafting; I drove down the West Coast; I turned a quarter-center old; and I nearly died from mono, which no one ever nearly dies from.


Today for the first time I locked myself and my students in my classroom to ensure that none of us got shot by a crazy gunman the police (or the "po-po," as my kids call them) were chasing past our building. This is extra hilarious since "running from the po-po" was the first action in our game of charades yesterday.

No, really. In the immortal words of Sir Konrad the Bewildered, "You think I'm joking, but I'm serious."*


I faced an interesting moral dilemma when our building principal came over the PA and announced a Code 1 Lockdown. You see, at the time, I was on my lunch break and having a conversation with a student about whether he should purchase an HP or a Mac. (Silly conversation, I know, but hey, enlightening teenagers is part of my job, as is trying to make them a little hipper every day.) We were just getting into the finer points of GarageBand when the lockdown commenced. The choice I had to make was this: send the student to another room without knowing the nature of the emergency and risk him getting shot on the way; or lock myself alone in my room with a male student for an indefinite amount of time and hope that no one notices the blatant impropriety of the situation.

We went with the second option and had a good laugh about it -- "D's life vs. G's job... such a tough call..."

We were in lockdown for over an hour, but you'll be relieved to know that nobody died or was fired. In fact, the guy whom the gunman shot "repeatedly"** before he headed our way didn't die either. That's how you know you're a truly crap gunman.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

*"Sir Konrad" with a "K" is the actual fake name of my ex-boyfriend's ex-roommate, who is a pharmacist by day and a Medieval warrior by night. He has absolutely no sense of humor and is constantly under the impression that we think he's joking about things. We're actually just laughing at the uncanny combination of wire-rimmed spectacles and chain mail.

**Such was the local news report this evening.

The Big P/T C

so... let's talk about parent/teacher conferences.


the first time i ever went to a parent/teacher conference was when i was student teaching. my mentor teacher, yvonne, thought it would be a good experience for me to come along and listen in, though i didn't really have much to contribute, since i was just a stupid college kid. (my words, not hers.) we sat in her classroom all evening as the parents filtered through and asked about how their little susie or billy or whoever was doing in english class.

three years later, i don't remember much of that evening. i do remember one parent. she came in, quite flustered, sat down, pulled out her daughter's progress report, and burst into tears. TEARS.

for a moment, i thought maybe it was because her child was failing the class.... o no. she had a B. probably even a B+. how unstable of a mother do you have to be to weep in frustration and disappointment over a B? how screwed up will your child be by the time she graduates from college? even the wisest cannot tell.

somehow yvonne talked her down and we all survived the horrifically embarrassing encounter, but i've got to admit: it's sort of tainted my idea of conferences. every time a parent walks up to me, i always think "i wonder if she'll cry. what will i say if she does?"



the building where i work now is absolutely huge, so we don't do conferences in our classrooms. parents just have too much trouble navigating the corridors and hoofing it up and down the four stories worth of stairs. instead we all sit at tables in the gym in alphabetical order and the parents wander around to find us. (incidentally, you'd be surprised how difficult the concept of "alphabetical order" is to a lot of parents.) i was on the lookout for a weeper again this week, but luckily she didn't come.

most of my conferences go well, as i have a lot of high level kids who basically do their work and behave themselves. i was a bit nervous about this year, since i've been out sick -- nervousness spurred primarily by a dire warning i received from a coworker -- but none of the parents took issue with that, and many of them were genuinely concerned about my health. (i've got to remind myself to stop listening to warnings from people who don't have the same charisma points i have. parents friggin' love me.)


at any rate, i did have a couple awkward encounters i want to share with you.

the first was a darling little mexican woman whose son is in one of my writing classes. she sat down and we exchanged pleasantries for a moment. i told her that her son is delightful to have in class -- great sense of humor, really neat kid. then i pulled out his grade report and gave her the bad news. he's not failing. he has a "0%". that's right. he has NO grade in my class because he has turned in absolutely, positively, not one blessed piece of work all year. i know he does his work. i sit there and watch him do it. then i go grade the stack of papers and he never, ever, even accidentally turns anything in. *shrug* i dunno what you want from me, lady.

only a few minutes later, another mom sits down and asks how her daughter is doing in my class. well, i say, i had her last year, so i know her pretty well, and i'm sure she'd be doing fine in the class if she was ever IN the class, but she's not. ever. i haven't seen her in two weeks. at least. she's been marked absent every day and you should be getting phone calls from the attendance office every day. mom looks puzzled. "she leaves the house every morning..." well, yeah, they all leave the house every morning. they don't all come to school.



but the true delight of parent/teacher conferences comes the next day. the "0%" kid hands me a folder with every assignment for the entire year in it, all beautifully done. the truant kid shows up at last, grumbling about how i "hoed" her out to her momma.

:-) i love my job.

Pretending to Be Well

Today I went in to work. This is one of the curses of teaching -- I actually care (a great deal) about my kids and what they're doing/thinking/learning. Therefore, even when my head is pounding and my lymph nodes are swollen, I can't spend too many days sitting at home not knowing what's happening at school.

I just wanted to check in with them, make sure they had gotten everything they needed out of last week, make sure they were ready for what's coming next, etc.


Well, we got into a discussion about Native American cultures. The basic idea I wanted them to get out of the reading was the image of time as a cycle -- everything repeats, everything decays and is renewed.

In an attempt to juxtapose that with our Western Civ concept that time is linear -- a constant parade towards *insert your personal philosophy here* -- I asked them how Europeans thought about time.

A girl in the third row raised her hand:

"Don't they have, like, really long lunch breaks?"

.
.
.

What?!?!


It kind of reminded me of this infamous youtube video.



(On a side note, I just realized I'm using capital letters. I don't know why. Hmm...)

The Clinger Jr.

I thought that one of the big advantages of my new job would be the consistency. I would know which students I was going to be dealing with at any given time on any given day. Better yet, there would be no clingers. Even the most obnoxious of adolescents would only be in my room for fifty-five minutes a day.

Theoretically.

You should really never make sweeping generalizations about teenagers.

I had a problem child in my sixth hour. To sum up, he watched too much South Park and thought that it was so funny, he should model his own behavior after it. This essentially meant that he spouted obnoxious, and generally racist, remarks almost constantly. Throw in a dash of potty humor and a "your mom" quip here and there, and you'll have a pretty complete picture of him.

Just as Japanese Mr. T's rambling tales of erectile dysfunction made his classmates squirm and look at him sideways, this student's crass remarks made his classmates squirm. The building tension finally came to a head one day when he turned to a girl in the back row and, for all the class to hear, referred to her Pakistani boyfriend as a (and remember, these are his words, not mine) "sand n*gger." I was completely dumb-founded. She was in the social worker's office in tears. Parents were on the phone in a rage. All signs pointed to Little Mr. T on the fast-track toward expulsion.

What happened next is a bit hard to explain. After a few days of exchanging emails with the social worker and speaking to both sets of moms and dads (which, in Little T's case is actually dad and truly Disney-style evil stepmom), I pulled him out of class. I asked him if he wanted to be expelled. He insisted fervently that he did not. Then, I explained, the only person who could save him was that little girl in the back row, so he had better fall down at her feet and beg for mercy.

This he did, though I don't know exactly how he managed it. What I do know is that it involved apologizing to both her and her boyfriend and that when he was done, she dropped all the charges against him and after that they got on like a house on fire. What's more, all my problems with his outrageously inappropriate sense of humor vanished into oblivion like a politically incorrect ninja.

Truly miraculous.

So all was well, you assume? O no. Never make assumptions about teenagers.

Very shortly after the dust settled on this one, Little T started developing another peculiar quirk. He started coming to my room on his lunch hour when I was teaching another class. He insisted that this would keep him out of trouble, as lunch hour is normally fraught with mischief-making and shenanigans of all shapes and sizes. We struck a deal -- as long as he behaved in sixth hour, he could stow away in my room during lunch hour.

The arrangement worked well for a while... 'til he came in my room one day during fourth hour. When I inquired as to where he was supposed to be, he explained that his math teacher told him to get out and never come back. Ever. She didn't account for the fact that there are no refugee camps for geometry exiles, so the child had nowhere to go. "You can send me to the principal's office," he suggested, "but I won't go -- I'll just go out to the parking lot and smoke pot with *insert names of two other miscreants here* 'cuz she threw them out too and I know that's where they are."

*sigh* So I told him to sit down and be quieter than a deaf, blind, and mute mouse. In fact, quieter than a mouse that was actually dead.

By the end of the year, Little T was attending my class for three and a half hours a day. Three and a half hours! He was a Miss G junkie! He truly must have been Mr. T's much younger and much whiter twin. The other option is that some time before Mr. T's current erectile problems, he fathered a son...

Ew.

The Clinger

Scheduling English lessons at a Japanese chain school is basically like scheduling a dentist appointment. You call. You tell the Japanese staff what day you want a lesson; she'll tell you what times are available. If you're picky about which hentai no gaijin you have for a teacher, you express your druthers, and she'll try to make you happy.

From the teaching perspective, this has up-sides and down-sides. On the one hand, it provides a lot more variety than, say, teaching mandolin lessons, which traditionally meet at the same time with the same students every week. Variety is cool. You work with a much wider range of students, and you get that little element of suspense as you stumble into the office and scan through the schedule to see what the day holds. On the other hand, you work with a much wider range of students, and you get that little element of suspense as you stumble into the office and scan through the schedule to see what the day holds.

No, not a typo. The up-side and the down-side are the same side. Have you ever seen that stupid party trick where someone takes a strip of paper, twists it, and tapes it into a loop so that it only has "one" side? It's like that. (If you haven't seen the one-sided paper, let me know. I can provide some diagrams. Also -- by "stupid party trick" I don't want you to think I'm being critical. After three or four beers, this trick will blow the mind of anyone at your party. Try it. Impress them. Be adored. You deserve it.)

The disadvantage of dentist scheduling is that you never know what you're in for. At least with mandolin scheduling, you know which days are going to be hellish and which days you will probably survive. At the chain school, you're blind-sided. (Unless you've done something to piss off the Japanese staff, in which case you can pretty much count on a hellish schedule, but that's a special exception.)

The major difference between scheduling at a dentist's office and scheduling at a chain school is that at the dentist's office, patients only come twice a year. At the chain school, they come as often as they want. They also stay as long as they want.

Now you ask, "But what sort of person would want to hang out at an English school all day long? Don't they have anything else to do with their time?"

What an excellent question, O Perceptive Reader!

The sort of person who would hang out at an English school all day long is the sort of person who has nothing else to do with his time. He has nothing else to do with his time because a) he has no job (typically because he is emotionally or mentally unable to keep one); b) he has no family (or they have long since abandoned him); c) he has no friends (see previous brackets); and d) at least at the English school, people will talk to him, even if it's because they're being paid to.

I'm serious; if I was trying to be funny, it would be cruel. This is all very true. It's also very sad. A simple truth in Japan -- if you are a misfit, there is absolutely nowhere for you to even pretend that you fit. You might as well hang out with those freak foreigners.

And so they do.

I call them "clingers," though they have a variety of more colorful labels as well. Every branch of every chain school has at least one -- because I was in a mid-sized branch in a mid-sized city, we had a handful of them. We also, just because we were lucky, had their king.

This is not bragging -- I worked for an incredibly large chain school and this man, T-san, (or "Mr T" as we call him) has the longest running student career on the books. He started when the chain school opened its first branch twenty years ago. TWENTY YEARS AGO. And for twenty years, every Sunday, he's scheduled as many lessons as he could manage and stayed all day long. He can do this because somebody had the clever idea to put in an English conversation room where students can just hang out when they don't have an official lesson and speak English at each other under the casual supervision of an instructor. It's important to note that by "all day" I don't mean 9 to 5. I mean 10 in the morning until 9 at night. The man is a chain school junkie.

Try teaching an English lesson to a chain school junkie. For starters, even though he's been coming for twenty years, his English is still absolute crap. His ability level has "plateaued," to put it politely. That being said, he still knows the lessons in the book better than you -- but he knows them by rote, not because he understands them.

He's also thoroughly awkward. You suspect that the reason he doesn't have a job has nothing to do with his skillz and everything to do with how uncomfortable he makes people around him. Especially other Japanese people. He defies the very definition of "Japanese." If you have him in a lesson with other students, he will make them wiggle and squirm and peer at him sideways for the entire forty minutes by doing the following things: 1) He will answer the question "How are you?" truthfully in 500 words or more. 2) He will mention some incredibly intimate and un-Japanesey detail of his personal life, including any recent diagnoses from new doctors or how well his antidepressants are or aren't working. 3) He will ask intimate and un-Japanesey questions about your personal life or those of the other students, with a special emphasis on your health, your sex life, and anything else that makes you unhappy. 4) Once he has quieted down for a bit and you have finally gotten some momentum going in the actual lesson, he will interrupt, completely out of left field, to bring the conversation back around to something, well... un-Japanese.

After he's taken all the official lessons he can afford for the day, he'll hole up in the conversation room and repeat the same antics in there for hours on end.

And the worst part is, of course, you never know which Sundays you can tease your co-worker for getting stuck with him and which Sundays he's going to be ruining your lessons and contributing to the early demise of your liver.

Our office looks more than a little bit like an asylum.
Coincidence? I think not.

A Note of Discouragement

I just received this email from one of my students here... one of my honors students here:

Ms G -

wahd up doe, a man, whatz crackin' lackin' but fo reel doe how u been? r u enjoyin' yo summer vacation? most of my friends r leavin' over the summer. We might move to Georgia.

- E

*sigh* An English teacher's work is never done.

Spheres of Influence

Before you become a teacher, you're always hearing about what an incredible influence they have over students. People tell you "O! You're going to be such a role model! Students will hang on your every word" etc. They tell you that, but you don't believe it.

Then you have students.

When I was teaching in Japan, I was fortunate to be in a position where I had a very wide variety of students, in terms of both age and skill. I taught group children's classes with kids as young as three and adults, in groups and one-on-one, of all ages. One of my favorites was a woman named Nobuko. She was an older lady with three grown children of her own -- a son and two daughters, all older than me. Like many retired Japanese people, she took English lessons as a hobby, but unlike most of them, she was very, very good. Her son was also a student at our office, and her superior skill in English was a constant source of irritation for him.

Because she was so fluent in English, we very rarely used official lessons from the book; we just chatted about anything we could think of -- her life, my life, men (in general and in specific), current events, and especially Japanese and American cultures. One morning, we got to talking about kimono. She was trying to sell her house and move to a smaller one, and in order to do that, wanted to unload about fifty kimono, most of them antiques. She said she wanted to give one to me. After the three customary exchanges of refusal and insistence, I caved.

Socializing with students is officially forbidden in our company. "Socializing" includes not only going out to a club with them or taking them home to bed, but any contact outside of a lesson. I believe "the giving or receiving of gifts" is stated verbatim in our contract as a forbidden form of socializing. Nobuko took this incredibly seriously and actually slipped me a note in the middle of a lesson telling me when and where to meet her. When I arrived at the appointed place and time, she was standing with a bundle in her hand. A quick exchange of bows and arigatos and, just like a real ninja, she vanished into the crowd.

The kimono, shown here, was not a simple cotton yukata like I'd expected. I got the full story the next time I saw her. It went something like this:

"This kimono was my mother's. I'm sorry it is not long. When I was married, she re-made it for me, half, so I could wear it over my wedding kimono. Also, when she did this she put a new lining in. I'm very sorry this lining is only cotton, not silk."

I insisted that it was gorgeous and perfect and flawless and absolutely amazing, as it truly was. The fact that it was lined at all made it approximately 385% more awesome than the other two kimono i owned (one blue silk that I'd bought at a temple market, the other a yukata from another Japanese friend). And the personal history of it -- unbelievable! I wonder if her son knows she gave it to me. I wonder if he's pissed.

Of course, we had to repeat another ninja ritual gift exchange when I thanked her.

But making such an impact on your students is not always a good thing. My high school students, for example, actually do hang on every word out of my mouth. They think they're really hip and independent, so they will deny this 'til hell freezes over, but it's true.

Here's how I know:

To kill a little extra time one day, I started showing a couple of my juniors how to write their names in katakana. This is a neat trick because it looks really difficult but is actually quite simple to learn.

One of the kids was getting pretty excited about it. He sleeps a lot in class, doesn't do any homework, and is generally drifting through life waiting for a lightning bolt, so seeing him get fired up about something was, I thought, pretty cool.

No, not cool.

A few days later he came to class with my sketchy little katakana version of his name tattooed on his arm. TATTOOED. FOREVER. FOR E VER!

Seriously, what are these kids thinking?