Not Much to Report

Lots of planning is going on- there's some big stuff coming up that I'll allow to remain a mystery until I'm sure I can pull it off- but planning doesn't make for interesting reading. So, rather than a blow-by-blow of my boring weekend, have an anecdote from work today. Great taste, less filling.

My third-grade students are now less than a month away from their High School entrance exams- which means that the focus of all our lessons has shifted entirely towards preparing them. As such, the speaking tests have become daily events, and their homework has risen to ridiculous, unenviable levels. I've got moral issues saddling middle-schoolers with piles and piles of homework. Given my past performance in that department, handing out assignments and expecting them to get done is an exercise in grandiose hypocrisy. The prisoner is trying to run the jail.

That said, the preparation for these tests is not a laughing matter, and it certainly doesn't matter what I think about the philosophy of crushing students under metric tons of xerox copies. Not up to me. On top of all this work (but wait, there's more) today we held mock interviews.

The high school acceptance process is finely crafted cruelty. Not only do they have to take a test just to get in, each school has their own tests- and the tests all happen at the same time. You may take ONE. This is not your father's SAT. If you mess up the test, you have to wait a year as a ronin (the old word for masterless samurai) and retake it the next year- there are no "second choice schools". After the test, the aspiring student then has to survive a battery of interviews- and one of these interviews is held in English.

So, behind a comically small desk, I sat today and interviewed students as if I was a member of the review board. CHILDREN ENTERED MY ROOM CRYING. They're insanely afraid of even practicing for this. So I followed the script, and did what I could. Here's a from-memory pseudotranscript of one session. Names are changed to protect the innocent. Italics are in Japanese.

Child enters the room. "Excuse me."
Teacher: "Please, sit down."
Child: "Thank you."
Teacher: "May I have your name?"
Child: "Akiko Tanaka."
T: "And how old are you?"
C: "I'm 15."
T: "What middle school did you go to?"
C: "Ehhh? Ano... Pardon?"
T: "What Junior High School did you attend?"
C: "Ritto Junior High."
T: "Why do you want to study English?"
C: "Eto....ano... English is Fun!"
T: "..." (Directions were to wait, and make them say a bit more)
C: "I want to interpreter. I want to study... ryugakusei wa... study abroad."
T: "Good! Now, we're going to look at some pictures. Who is the boy playing guitar?"
C: "Mark."
T: "What are these people doing?" (Picture is of about fifty people cleaning up a river)
C: "They are volunteer."
T: "Have you ever been a volunteer?"
C: "EhhhHH!? Er... One more time?"
T: "Have you done an activity like this before?"
C: "Yes. I have."
T: "When?"
C: "I cleaned a river in elementary school."
T: "Very good! Thank you. We're finished."
C: "Thank you. Excuse me."

Child stands, goes to leave. Now is when we (myself and my wingman, who has been sitting silently next to me THE WHOLE TIME) take five minutes to offer a critique. The wingman TEARS INTO this kid, just goes nuts on her, picking apart just about everything she did. I had absolutely no material I could touch on that he hadn't, so I just extended a fist forward in the universal gesture of support. "You rocked. Calm down, have fun with it, and you'll do even better on the real thing." (All my students can conjugate "to rock". I am a proud man.) She smiled, tapped my fist with hers (I am as proud as a new father- I taught the fist-tap to one class of first-graders, and now it's all over school), and sent in the next victim. They all went about like this.

These poor kids.

To change topics just a touch, the following is an open letter to the American Beef Industry:

JAPAN IS LAUGHING AT YOU. Evidently, your guys sent our guys a cow spine, violating Japanese standards for prevention of Mad Cow. It's all over the news. There have been countless reports showing American officials bowing and scraping, emphasizing that their meat is safe. Bush even went so far as to say that if Japan wasn't going to open their ports, he'd have to be "more aggressive (long pause) in convincing them." (paraphrase). The anchors on the news show wasted NO TIME comparing this to Commodore Perry's Black Ships- the first time America decided to aggressively convince Japan to open trade. They still haven't forgotten. Black Ships are a byword for "terrifying foreign action", and is a sure way to swing public opinion against capitulating and accepting American beef. Nobody likes getting pushed around.

You also might like to know that placemats in Japanese Mcdonalds proudly proclaim that their beef hails from Australia. Even your own guys know what's good for business. I have no solutions- I'm just an English teacher- but I figured you guys ought to know how things are going over here. It ain't too well.

Now, American Baseball is WORLDS more popular than American cows. The Seattle Mariners just signed another Japanese guy. This news spot took ten minutes. Mad Cow took only five, and three and a half were the anchors suppressing smirks and saying "Black Ships again, eh?"

pax