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Wednesday Writeup September 29, 2010

Posted by Earthdragonette in Student Moments.
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So, after the somewhat intense events of Tuesday I’m happy to say that Wednesday has been more positive and gratifying. Specifically, three things happened that give me reason to hope that I’m on an upswing.

1) The Child was in one of his, “Hello Julie, I love you” moods. He was affectionate and talkative before class, and went on to be both engaged and interested in the Stevie Wonder PowerPoint that I showed. After class, he took me by surprise and brought up the Othello rap that I’d tried to get him to do with me back in May. The conversation kind of went like this:

The Child: So, we’re not doing that stupid rap thing, right?
Me: No … because you said you didn’t want to do it.
The Child: Exactly. I don’t want to do it. It’s stupid and boring and embarrassing.
Me: Okay. We don’t have to do it.
The Child: Good. Because I don’t want to do it. I definitely don’t want to do it. I couldn’t do it, anyway.
Me: Yes, you could do it. I’m not sure we have enough time to prepare it for the festival, but you could definitely do the rap.
The Child: Except I don’t want to do it. … … … … But you think I could? Not that I want to.

You get the idea.

The Culture Festival is on October 30th and I really don’t know that we have enough time to put it together. Still, it sounds like he may want to give it a try, so I’m going to bring in the script next week and see if I can do a run through with him and Clemente. Who knows? My crazy idea born of Spring Fever and Big Dreams may in fact produce something interesting.

And you know, speaking of Clemente

2) I had lunch with him today. Or, rather, I had lunch at his table. This is something that I haven’t done in a while, and I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder because he was super enthusiastic about talking with me. We discussed Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, the lyrics to We Are the World and how he can go about memorizing them, the Japanese band Monkey Magic, and (of course) soccer. I think it’s probably one of the most thorough conversations I’ve ever had with him, and it was even nicer because I totally wasn’t expecting it. It reminded me why I like this kid so much.

3) We have a new character! I’m going to call him Mr. Bayblade, after his favorite comic. About a month ago, one of the first year boys did something kind of unfortunate to his leg and so he was on the sidelines a lot during all of the sports festival preparations. I took the opportunity to talk to him and get to know him better and now I have a new friend. He likes to talk to me before and after class, and he’s also started to come and talk to me during lunch time. He usually comes with his friends and they like to teach me about whatever it is that they’re obsessing over. I now know more than I ever thought I would about Bayblade, as well as the different spinning tops that each character controls within the Bayblade universe.

What’s extra nice about my new friendship with Mr. Bayblade is that he’s using the opportunity to practice his English. He tries to explain his interests to me in English, and I’ve noticed that he’s become one of the more vocal and active participants during class. This is a big surprise because he wasn’t all that interested in the subject when he was in elementary school, and he began the year … creatively.

Still, it’s nice to see him opening up to me and how, along with him, I’m getting to know a group of the first year boys that I’ve never had many opportunities to interact with. They’re good guys, and setting up this level of camaraderie with them has been a lot of fun.

O-oreo
What’s in the middle?
The white stuff

Because children are the future… February 16, 2010

Posted by Earthdragonette in Student Moments.
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Which is to say The Child may be in MY immediate future if nothing else.

Unfortunately I don’t have time for a terribly substantial post today, but I did want to capture this memory because it just made me so happy. Just like that last firefly in summer that you don’t expect to see and capture in a mayonnaise jar (with a leaf and a stick to recreate what it’s used to) so it doesn’t get away, let’s discuss Tuesday’s English class with The Child.

Right now, my first year students and I are preparing for a rather intense speaking check. They’ll have 1 minute to answer 12 questions from me. The questions are all things they’ve studied to some degree before, but the time limit is the real key to this exercise. I told The JTE about it and she requested that I prepare it for the second year class as well.

Now, the theory behind this exercise is fairly solid. The students have an opportunity to practice writing, speaking, and listening. It’s a good opportunity to review different grammar points, and the time element gives me a lot of wiggle room to adjust the difficulty level of the speaking test so that I can keep it challenging for everyone. I felt confident that this activity would fly with about 99% of my students.

The Child, I wasn’t so sure.

He’s been remarkably good and productive recently. Class, as always, begins with him telling me he hates English, me, the world, what Angelina Jolie did over the weekend … but it’s more of a routine by this point and I haven’t had problems getting him to do his work. Still, The Epic Speaking Test is exactly the kind of activity that he has been known to refuse to do and it was anyone’s guess as to how he would react.

So, how did it go?

Initially, he told me that it was “mendokusai” (troublesome, boring, a pain in the ass) and said that I was free to help other students while he slept. This is pretty much his standard response to any kind of stimuli from the outside world, though, so it didn’t exactly faze me. A heartfelt admission about how smart he is and how much I’ve been looking forward to helping him with this activity, an oath that I would never lie to him, a pinky swear, and the confiscating of three erasers later and we had productivity!

Now here’s what made me really happy. During this exchange, and throughout our interactions until the end of class (and actually, the day), he kept asking me about the Othello rap. He wanted to know why I was bothering him about it, why did I think he could rap, was his pronunciation really that good, and by-the-way-just-so-you-know-he-will-never-ever-actually-perform-with-me.

I do believe I smell victory on the horizon.

Here’s my thinking. If he really, REALLY didn’t want to perform this with me, he wouldn’t say anything at all about it in the hopes that I would just drop the idea. Yet, he brought it up every time he saw me and only seemed to become more interested in the idea when I was somewhat noncommittal about the details of my scheme. I told him just to wait and think about it and I would get more information to him later on in the term – this is usually when he would inform me that he wouldn’t do it. In fact, the more that he tells me he won’t perform with me, the more I am inclined to believe that he wants to do just that.

I think that he’s just nervous, and he’s really not sure if he’s up to the challenge. But he’s definitely interested, and after the brief (and if I may say, ceremonial) display of resistance during the classroom activity, he worked harder than I’ve ever seen him. I don’t dare to suggest that he has been energized and inspired by my display of trust in his abilities … but I think that the potential for such a scenario exists.

It’s as though I planted a seed and I saw a tiny shoot pop out of the soil on Tuesday. The Child’s trust and willingness to work with me is a fragile thing – I have to be careful and very thoughtful about how I proceed with this project. This could very well make or break our relationship.

But I have hopes that my universe might be elegant afterall.

And who am I to know what I feel?

My Elegant Universe February 15, 2010

Posted by Earthdragonette in Just Bizarre, Student Moments, Taking Initiative.
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It seems funny to me that I’ve been watching (and re-watching if you must know) the Nova special on Brian Greene’s book, The Elegant Universe. I find this funny because the premise of string theory is to reconcile quantum mechanics with Newtonian physics – to unite the forces of the universe into a single theory and (although this parallel is a little heavy-handed) I, too, feel as though I’m trying to unite two irreconcilable realities – U.S. Julie and Japan Julie.

Today’s memory comes from an attempt to do just that. I’m not sure how successful I was.

I think I’ve mentioned recently that I’ve been sort of obsessing over The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Part of this play involves the following rap about Othello:

Pretty cool, right? I have it on several driving mixes and so it’s probably not surprising that I’ve had it memorized for the last couple of months. The more that I practice this, though, the more I want to perform this in front of an audience. Although I’ve managed to get one of my friends back home to agree to put on the entire production with me at some point, that future promise of Reduced Shakespearean Glory doesn’t help with my pangs now.

But today, on my way to work, I was struck with inspiration. It occurred to me that, with the right forces at work I might be able to persuade Clemente and The Child to perform this rap with me at the culture festival in November. The Child has a really great sense of rhythm – he’s quite fond of repeating random things that I say and turning them into his own little chant. Clemente has great pronunciation and he also has an unquestionable work ethic, so with our powers combined we might be able to keep The Child somewhat focused.

I probably should have given this entire scheme a little more thought, but when My Ideas call, I usually have to follow their whimsical demands. So, I asked Clemente and The Child to stop by the staff room during lunch so that I could show them the video and pitch them my idea.

To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what they thought of it. Clemente seemed interested to know when we would practice the rap, and he asked some questions about the English. The Child told me outright that he wouldn’t do it, but that doesn’t really mean that he won’t. He was actually quite funny because he made the claim that while he loves Shakespeare, Othello is the least favorite of his plays. He said that he can’t handle the tragedy and so he doesn’t want to do the rap.

Again, the use of sarcasm here is surprising since the Japanese are notoriously not sarcastic.

Still, at the end of the conversation, Clemente seemed thoughtful and The Child was grumbling about how I would probably force him into doing it against his will no matter what he said. I’m going to give them some time to think about things and get back to them before spring break with more information and more assurances that they won’t be overwhelmed or expected to do more than they feel they can.

So, how elegant is my universe?

Can I unite my love for classical English literature and my love for my work in Japan?

Well, I have high hopes. I figure that since I’m probably not going to have to resort to a particle accelerator to make this happen, things just might be in my favor.

Code monkey get up get coffee
Code monkey go to job