Four to the Floor

Wow, four in a row. If I keep this up I might have a weblog on my hands. The end of my fourth week finds me taking it easy thanks to Golden Week after a few days off and a trip to the cinema. Still, it wasn’t all fun and games. I did have to pop into school for Tuesday and Wednesday and that meant a showdown with Maeda-sensei.

I say showdown but I’m being a little melodramatic. Although there were only two days of actual school this week, one of them – Wednesday – had my current leading class, 2C (at least I think it’s 2C – it’s one of the second year classes). This meant the first run at Lesson 20, a lesson about comics. After the relative success of the sports lesson last week I had hoped that picking another topic most students had at least a passing interest in would be a sure-fire winner. Not quite, it seems. Of course there was another reason to teach a comics lesson: finally a chance to do my own version of the Penny Arcade Remix Project. It was this that was at the heart of my altercation with Maeda-sensei.

For those that aren’t familiar with the project it basically takes a Penny Arcade comic, removes all the text in the speech bubbles, and lets Japanese kids’ imaginations run wild. Or at least that’s the theory and it relies on one particularly important presumption: that the Japanese kids have an imagination to run wild. You see after ten soul-crushing years within the confines of the Japanese education system there are a few things that get beaten out of students – creativity seemingly being the foremost of these. I exaggerate the situation only a little. Students aren’t complete automatons but their imaginations have been severely sapped by the age of 16. Given this, having them perform an activity that required the students to make up their own dialogue (in English, no less) was perhaps not the best idea. After class Maeda-sensei shashayed over to me and proceeded to let me know he felt the same way (although it took him a little longer to say it).

Now I don’t know what it was about this that annoyed me. I didn’t disagree with what Maeda-sensei was saying so I’m at something of a loss. Maybe it was that he gets on my nerves (although I am steadily numbing to his irritating quirks). Maybe it was I was at work while everyone else I knew in Japan was on holiday. Maybe I really wanted it to be lunch. For whatever reason part of me refused to be conciliatory toward anything he said. His point, which wasn’t entirely ridiculous, was that although this might be a fine activity for some classes it was a difficult task for most of the students in this class, difficult tasks frustrated the students and frustrated students became disruptive. He suggested that instead of tasking the students with creating a dialogue I instead leave blanks for them to fill in. It was at this that I dug my heels in. In what must have made me look like an incredible jerk I told Maeda-sensei that I didn’t care if 90% of the students didn’t do an activity because I didn’t care about those students.

The timeline of the entire conversation is a little hazy so I’m not sure exactly how we got to the point where we were commiserating about the unrealistic expectations of teachers to control unruly students but at some point I decided to stop being such a dick and told Maeda-sensei I understood it was going to be him that would get in trouble if the students weren’t paying attention, not me. While I said I didn’t want to change the activity I said I would at least find a cartoon that was easier for the students to work with (that’s a lot of I’s). I (ooh, another one!) also worked out with Maeda-sensei that he would play a more active part translating in class. This has been a particular frustration and I’m hoping that if he does do that it helps me feel more positive towards him. We’re also going to try to have the students take more notes.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Maeda-sensei often wants to do things I always wanted teachers to do. I don’t know what explains my reluctance for ideas when they come out of his mouth. The notetaking is something I imagine might help the students with focus and if he translates more of what I’m saying I think there’s a good chance more students will participate in the lesson. We only had one class in this week past so there’s still plenty of chances to kick it around and see what we can come up with. We’ll see how it goes.