Tears

My Third years are embroiled with testing. You see (And I think I've mentioned this before), High School isn't a given to students here... Rather, a good high school isn't a given. So every year at about this time, all the Junior High School 3rd years begin the rituals of testing for getting into the good High Schools.

Not all of them make it, of course. And a few of them fail so badly they can't even make it to the lowest ranking High Schools. There are a handfull (Not many) who will go through life here with a 9th grade education.

So Wednesday started with me confronting 3-3 on the first day since many of them have tested for High School.

I notice one of the girls who participated in the Interactive Forum back in May, she is a loveley young woman (Seeing as how she is 15), with a pretty smile and a great, lovely manner about her (I believe I talked about her before, the one with the long hair...).

She cut her hair. And she looks very down.

"You cut your hair." I say as I look at this rather boyish cut (She really cut it short, it's not a buzz cut by any stretch, but her long, black hair is gone). I give her a look to either side "Not bad!" I say with a smile (I'm not going to tell her that I'm horrified she'd do that to herself, she's a teenager...).

So I ask her what has her down.

"I think I failed my High School entrance exam." She says with a very apologetic sad smile.

Now because this girl is a star pupil, you must understand that this means she might be stuck in a state-school instead of a elite private school. She's not in danger of being a 9th-grade-only kid...

"Are you sure?" I ask.

"I know I made some stupid mistakes in English." She replies.

Later I ask Mrs. 3rd Year about her.

"No, I think she's being too harsh on herself, I think she did just fine."

"Did she cut her hair because of that?"

There's a pause.

"I don't think so." She replies.

It's a long standing tradition in Japan for a woman who has failed at something (in the old days it was for widows who had lost their husbands) to cut their hair as a sign of mourning and dispair. More recently it has come to mean failure too... Though in this day and age it's a little more out moded (This happened more commonly during the WWII era) I have a strong feeling, though, that this girl is just smart enough to know and do just that...

Sometimes Japanese shed tears without shedding tears.

Later, we have our normal Advanced Class with my second years. I have pulled out my Sherlock Homes game again. For those of you whom didn't read about it before, the game consists of a series of clues (in English) which lead to where the culprit is. This time I'm concentrating on directions, so this one is particularly hard "I followed the Blue car west three blocks to the third stop light where he turned left and went to the fourth stoplight"...

It's the unit we are on, and it is misery...

So, as before I let the kids clump up in as many groups as they want and work on the project.

I wander around the room translating words for them.

Then I notice one of my girls is sitting on the outer edge of another group of girls...

And her face is red, with that "I'm not crying! Really I'm not" look to it.

I come up to her.

She looks at me, and two tears escape her eyes.

I look at the other girls, they have obviously excluded her, probably with some evil words (Which is odd, this particular girl seems to be rather popular).

I nod in understanding, grab a copy of the map and the clues, and pull up a chair.

One of my other girls (Another one from the Interactive forum), sees me sitting down, and leaves the group and sits with us too.

The first girl asks for the second girl's handkerchief, and she wipes the tears from her eyes.

We work on the project for the remainder of the class.

The chime rings and I stand up, "Are you okay now?" I ask.

She smiles at me and nods, "Thank you Guy-Sensei."

I tell you, those moments make up for so many of my daily stupid mistakes.

---Me.