Can I Just Add...

Back to Jr High.

Second week of classes. No wonder the kids don't speak English well. Still %75 of English class is conducted in Japanese. I am supposed to stand at the front of the room, even if I am not going to do anything for the whole class period, so I have started walking around the room. I pace on the side, or wander through the desks. I am not standing up there pounding my vertebrae to polvo waiting for the teacher to decide to turn on the human tape recorder. And I don't stand still well anyway.

Had my first 1年生 class today, as well. Poor JTE was worried the kids would be too loud and crazy, just like elementary school. They were. But at least they were animated and totally into it. They spoke Japanese the whole time too. It's really irritating to be listening to a kid's self-introduction and know that they don't understand what they are saying to you or how it all fits together. They are just reading it off the board, often with the teacher prompting and translating. But that's okay. It's not the kids' fault. It's probably not even the teacher's fault, if it comes to that. Most of them came up through the system the same way and now they are English teachers, so it must be alright, right? Not if your inspirational note to your kids is, "Nothing is possible with a willing heart."

Sigh.

The kids really are cool, though. I went to music club this afternoon and site-read a horribly hard trombone/piano duet. We tried to argue about major and minor and how to pronounce them, and even though I understand the do system, I don't think I understand it in Japanese. The trombonist made me site-read the accompaniment twice, and the whole rest of the club sat and listened. I pointed out a quote from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and the kids were all totally excited because they hadn't noticed it before. I played scraps of pieces from memory and wrote down titles to go print out and bring tomorrow. One of the percussionists taught me the correct way to hold marimba sticks (?) and play a little ditty. He was actually quite good, surprisingly jazzy. And the trombone player showed me how to hold a trombone and let me try to play a few notes. Horrendously squeeky and fart-like, but I did make sound, to their hilarious amazement.

When we were all done, we packed up the room and some of the kids walked out with me. My trombone player was very concerned that I take my business name tag off, since work was over. We wandered back to our respective homes in jocular camaraderie.

I heart Jr High.