Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Recent Updates Make the Work Day Faster

The word of the day shall be loquacious.

So everyone's in a meeting today- I'm not invited, but I'm also not allowed to go home. Funny, eh? So I'm taking a break from the mountains of student reflection papers to let you in on a touch of the good work we're doing over here. As you can see by the following quotes from student papers, as far as English instruction goes, I'm a horrific failure.

The kids have just finished reading a depressing little story called The Fall Of Freddie the Leaf. The linked document is a fulltext of the story as written by Leo Buscaglia- the edition my students slugged through is slimmed down for the ESL community. It's developed a bit of a cult following here in Japan- the Japanese-language edition sells like crazy, and I've been told that it was in fact originally a Japanese story (fun fact: I have been told on multiple occasions with perfect seriousness that absolutely all stories were "originally Japanese"- the West hasn't come up with something on its own since the beginning of time. This includes the Bible. Willy Wonka? Japanese first. Roald Dahl or Roo-ru-do Dah-ru must be spinning in that grave of his)- with a name like Buscaglia, how could it NOT be Japanese?

Anyways, so they plowed through this real feel-good story about death, and then wrote short reflection pieces on how it made them feel, what they got out of the experience. All of my kids write reflection pieces, or talk about them in our debriefs- an idea that I blatantly have stolen from the ancestral masters over at Project Adventure (FYI: Originally a Japanese Company, should you ask my coworkers)- we debrief kids about every silly game we play, and believe it or not it's churning out some pretty interesting uses of the language. For example:

"When I go to sleep, I want to be smile... making people happy is important."

This is okay. This is not too strange- just MILDLY creepy, when you factor in that the story (above) uses sleep as a metaphor for death. This is the exception to the rule.

"This story is very short. So it story didn't make us boring."

"I'm good to read this story. Became very hot mind. I want to study hard in High School."

"I want to find my purpose in life. And I want to quietly die."

"I had the good things. I want to read it again."

"I feel something. I understand. A leaf give many happy for people."

"I think 'Change is Nature' is nice words. Because this words say real."

"I hope Freddie meet Daniel again. I think Freddie was happy and died."

These poor kids are TOO YOUNG to be thinking about how and when they want to kick it. Tragedy and psychiatric bills for them, strangely touching comedy gold for me.

There is one quote- just one (though I love "hot mind" up there)- that I think I'm going to treasure for the rest of my life.

"Art is long, life is short. I don't know what I mean."

I love my kids.
pax

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What about charlotte's web? Thats a sad story we read to kids involving death. There is also the fact that at some point in their lives someone they know is going to kick it and if they are at least familiar with the topic they will perhaps take it a bit better.

Lauren

Anonymous said...

That last quote is a truly profound treasure. It reminds me of the zen a day calendars I recieved for a few years from my friend's new-age mother each christmas. A lot of Yogi Beara and "zen modo"s and all of it as totally and ambiguously profound as "art is long, life is short. I don't know what I mean."
Also, wow is there a discernable difference between some of your students. This english is really on of the big reasons I love Potshot. Any other culture's butchery of English is usually evocative of the frustration involved with communication. It seems to me that the Japanese just confidently tumble a parade of english out of their mouths just as charming and endearing as a parade of kittens. Yep.

aho