Nose pickery

I so wish I had brought my camera to class today, because one boy in the 2nd row from the front was going at his nose in such an industrious fashion that one could practically hear the drill bits whirring from a distance. I hope he didn't hurt himself. Both Sugar and Saint are out on business trips today, so I had this sannensei class to myself. Since last year, the sannensei classes have been divided into advanced and basic classes, a tactic that is at least in theory a great idea. The basic division moves through the textbook at a slower pace, covering the fundamental grammar points the kids need to learn in greater depth, and the upper division moves through at a faster pace and eventually delves into adventures like free conversation, one of the greatest acts of comedy ever visited upon this quiet mountain town.

Anyway, this class was the basic division of sannensei English, and they should ideally be covering material like the passive voice and present perfect tense, but in reality have trouble counting past ten. And yet, I'm obligated to stay more or less on track and teach them the prescribed grammar of the week...regardless of how each lesson builds on the previous one, and without said previous knowledge one can't be expected to be promoted much beyond the rank of CLUELESS.
It's not like there are security cameras in the classrooms, though, so on the rare occasions when I have a class to myself, I have a bit more freedom than usual. At first, I (foolishly) thought that a review of the grammar at work here would be a good idea, but these kids were radiating such profound disinterest that I nearly lapsed into a coma, right in the front of class.
OK, no grammar. Time for a little song and dance act. If they were going to view me as the bad guy here, I was determined to at least be a villain with personality, so I started picking on them. See, the lower division kids may rarely study English and they may be completely unable to hold a conversation, but they do still know more than they are willing to let on. It's getting them to admit that (both to themselves and to me) that can be akin to pulling teeth. With the grammar already up on the chalkboard, I had them fill in the blanks with words they knew to make a present perfect sentence. The trick with getting even the most basic crap like this to work, though, is to ignore no one. Single out the quiet kids, stare, tease, dance circles around them - anything to make them laugh and realize that it's acceptable to have a little fun here. Even the most apathetic always break, eventually.

Students slip through the cracks of society and become destined for futures of absolutely nothing here only because too many teachers let them get away with it. After all, what the hell kind of junior high school student is going to step up to the plate if nothing is expected of them? The ones who really make an effort to disappear, though, are ironically the ones who fail most spectacularly at avoiding my attention. There's one in particular that comes to mind - for the sake of this blog, we'll call her Clam, since she closes up just like the real thing whenever she's in a classroom desk. She's one of those whom I know to be perfectly socially capable, since I see her talk - usually quite animatedly - with her friends, and have also spoken with her in Japanese in between classes. Any time a lesson starts, though, that clamshell comes down and she closes up tighter than a...well, insert your favorite metaphor here.
I'm a little shocked that most teachers here are content to ignore a giant mollusk sitting in (on?) a desk; I think Clam's attempt to crawl into her shell makes her stand out quite obviously amongst a sea of uniformed, black-haired children. It's actually a little funny to watch, because as you approach her, her head instinctively lowers as she makes an intensive study of the pleats of her skirt. Back away, head comes up a bit. Forward - down again. Students here won't flat out disobey a direct instruction from a teacher, though, and my first one is always to make eye contact with me. So, the shell comes up eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever so slightly...she peeks out...giggles when I make strange faces at her, but usually lightens up a bit. It seems to have become a running joke - I'm aware she's trying to remain unnoticed, and she knows this. She still acts as though she is trying to avoid my attention, and makes a dramatic show of how much it pains her whenever I call on her. Anyway, I hope she's getting something out of this big pony show, because I'm not sure any other teacher here, no matter how young or liberal they are, would upset the "harmony of things" to mess around a bit and draw this girl out of her shell for even an hour.

Anyway, that's that. There is also the upper division, though, and managing their classes has been one of my favorite experiences here so far. Anyone who has worked as a teacher before (or even just tried to impart information to the apathetic) knows how much it sucks to struggle with unmotivated students - it's not that they're necessarily stupid, they just don't give a shit. This is the complete opposite. My upper division kids are the biggest reason I miss last year's sannensei, many of whom have gone on to the better high schools in this area. Sure, their skills are more developed because they actually study on their own from time to time, but more importantly is the fact that they're just fun to work with because they want to be there. Free conversation was something that Saint and I came up with for last year's class after they finished the prescribed, brain-numbing, gov't-stamped-and-approved New Horizon textbook that really should be burned on sight.
The process is simple enough - giving the students a topic and then leading them in some conversation activities that require them to speak entirely on their own instead of parroting cheesy dialogue from a textbook - but it was the result that often slew me. Some of the real choice ones (and yes, these all really did come from 14-year olds in free conversation in English without any assistance) were:

• "Don't pretend to know everything."
  
• "I like George Bush because he is strong and he has many chemical weapons."
• "Shut your face hole."
• I want to meet Arika Takarano because she is my goddess. All of her music is very good. I think she will become a religion."
• "When we got on the ship, I saw some dolphins. They were cute. I like their fins. Maybe they were delicious."
• "The person I want to meet is a secret because I'm embarrassed. He is very beautiful!"
• "I don't remember why I was an elementary school student. It was annoying."

Beyond that, there was something just priceless in seeing my students get into savage, cutthroat arguments in English whenever a difference of opinion came up. Considering that they barely knew more than a thousand vocabulary (at least, in theory) by the time they finished the 3rd year textbook, it was rather amusing to see what they managed to put together. To this date I still haven't quite nailed down the right adjective to describe the scene where a cute little uniformed Japanese schoolgirl points her finger at her classmate and shouts in heavily accented English, "Shut the fuck* up!"

Surreal, maybe?

*No, that wasn't one of the vocabulary in the textbook.