Mixed bag...

I am training up again for the local Interactive Forum tournement.

For the uninitiated; Here in Japan we have a local competition every year for speaking English. The idea spawned from having speech competitions. Speech competitions are all well and good for memorization, but the ministry of education decided that it wasn't really helping to promote the actual speaking of the language.

So, they invented the Forum. Three kids from different schools in the area sit in a circle and have 3 minutes to talk about a certain topic (Which is picked from three pre-decided topics just before the forum starts), for example; My School or My Dream. Then these kids must talk about their dream or their school for three minutes and then they are graded by judges. The best 8 out of the group (There are 12 kids that are in the competition for 2nd grade and 12 for 3rd grade) then move on to the next level, and so on until they reach National Championships sometime in September...

Anyway, we have been heftily beaten every year because Miss Turtle, who is very young, and is still absolutely sure she is right when she employs tactics she learned in College (Which she is newly graduated from) like writing things down for Forum (Erm... Miss Turtle, this is a spoken competition... Yes Guy, but they have to input data somehow... Erm... why not have them talk to each other? That won't work, you just don't understand) insists on having our kids memorize phrases "I have two cats, their names are Bob and Pooky." "I like apples, especially I like green apples". You might imagine that my poor kid goes in and proudly announces that he likes green apples at which time the other kid says, "I don't like green apples, they taste like dirt, don't you agree?" at which time, since my kid has never practiced "Don't you agree?", my kid just stares at them... and loses the competition.

I struggled last year to actually teach them to talk, but I was overruled and we lost again... this year, though Mr Woods, my good friend, is in charge of the English Department, and he (Finally) let me run the show. I actually convinced the other teachers (Not Miss Turtle though, she's really stubborn as only the youthful can be) when I went up to Summer-chan (My really good kid, who lost last year because she was forced to memorize things), and I asked her:

M: Summer-chan, do you have a brother?

S: Eto (Um).... Ano (Um).... yes, I do.

M: Summer, How old is your brother?

S: Eto... Nandake (What's that again?)... He's 16 years old.

M: Summer, What school does your brother go to?

S: Eto.... Ano.... He... Eto.... Goes to Countryside High School.

M: Summer, what color is my car?

S: Eto.... Your car is... nandake... black.

I turned to the other teachers, "See? She can answer anything in English, she's just too slow... in Forum, by the time she gets through her "Ano"s and "Eto"s and "Nandakes", the other kids in Forum have moved on without her... but her skill is actually far better than there's."

It sold everyone except Miss Turtle, who is, as you might expect, having them write out all their sentences in a notebook.

That's alright, I got free-reign finally on the kids.

So we started a game; I gave them 30 seconds, one kid was the asker, the other was the answerer, they had to ask as many questions as they could in 30 seconds.

Then I wrote the number of answers on the whiteboard... NOW it was a competition! The kids started out with 3 questions in 30 seconds, but in less than a half-hour, they were suddenly at 6 or 7 questions in 30 seconds... Then Summer's team broke the 10 question barrier, so I went up to her and said: "Okay, now you can only talk about "Your Dream"." Summer gives me her "You want WHAT?" look, but I just smile and you can see it go through her brain... then she gets it and she grins mischeviously back at me and is at it again. Her team is bumped back to 5, but it only takes a few minutes to get her back up to 8 or 9...

After practice was over, they all plied out of the classroom with huge grins on their faces, planning new English phrases to use tomorrow... and Summer runs back over to me and says "Guy-sensei, thank you! That was really fun!" and she meant it (No one has ever liked Forum practice, much less thanked me for it).

This is what it means to be a teacher.

After this, I come home, but for the first time in a month or so I decide to stop over at McDonalds, I go in and I recognize the girl behind the counter. She was one of my third years my first year here. She recognizes me too and she smiles, "Hello Guy-Sensei" she says in a whisper (It's really not appropriate for workers to be unprofessional here, even at McDonalds, something I really like about Japan), I smile and ask her which High School she's going to.

"I didn't get into High School." She says with a sad smile, "I failed the entrance exams."

This was like a bullet to my gut, I swear... I knew she wasn't doing good, but it was my first year, and I really wasn't very clued in... I feel responsible for this... I feel like I let her down...

Wow... Talk about your highs and lows... Summer, she'll be fine, she's only worried about getting to the TOP school or the second school... This girl... who is a bright young woman... will be stuck at McDonalds, aspiring to one day be a manager... And that's her life outlook.

Interesting day in the life of a Junior High School teacher in Japan.

---Me.