Wednesday, June 24, 1998

Wednesday was elementary school day. What an amazing experience.

When we got to Oimatsu Elementary we were shuttled into a conference room for the traditional welcoming ceremony. Once again, we traded speeches and gifts. With the formalities over, we began a brief tour of the special education class at this school. We saw two classes for the hearing impaired. The first had three students and two teachers. They tried their hardest to ignore us and keep working. I felt like I was at a museum.

The tour continued to another class. This one had only one student. The boy looked terrified as seventeen American teachers looked in. When I got to the door, I felt so bad for the boy. Fortunately, the Japanese Fulbrighter with me went into the room and tried to talk to the boy. When his teacher helped him to understand, he began to smile. Tamara and I gave him gifts and nearly melted with his smile.

His smile was the perfect parting gift. We returned to the conference room for traditional tea served by some of the PTA mothers. The tea bowls were exquisite, but the tea was very bitter. Just after the tea, the principal brought in two students. The boy and girl from the sixth grade looked very serious and quite scared. Our gift presenter spoke to the kids who accepted the gifts with an adult maturity. When they got to the hall and thought they were out of sight, they began to jump around and laugh. Finally these two kids acted like kids.

When they left, we began a loose tour of the school. Fortunately, we were allowed to go and out of classrooms to see what we wanted. Several of us went to a 5th grade Social Studies class. They were studying geography, specifically, map projections. They were looking at a world map with Japan in the center, then a map with Africa in the center, then Europe in the center, then America. They were learning that each culture uses a map that is focused on themselves.

In the ethnocentric vein, I asked the teacher if I could share a map of the US. I showed the map and explained where each teacher came from. The teacher looked genuinely interested, students acted interested. The students were eager to ask questions. They mostly asked about what our students do for fun. When the interpreter felt that we had overstayed our welcome, we moved to the next 5th grade social studies class. They were studying the exact same lesson. This teacher was excited to let us come in and talk with the class. Once again the class was eager to learn about American children.

After visiting the 5th grade, we walked through sewing classes and other 5th grade rooms. We stopped for a few minutes in the computer lab. This lab had ten computers that were not networked or connected to the Internet. The teacher in the lab told us that he hopes that the lab will be connected soon. How soon, he did not say.

With this in my mind, I missed the recess bell. Within seconds, I was surrounded by dozens of children. You see, it was raining, so it was the dreaded INDOOR recess. The kids were a bit stir crazy, and we felt the full brunt. Kids were running everywhere and having fun. While walking through the halls, feeling like a celebrity, I realized the power of the bell. Before the soft chimes finished, kids were running to get into their classrooms.

The FMFers also headed to classrooms. I visited some of the lower grades this time. I saw a second grade math class working on addition. The teacher stood in front and explained how to do the problem. Then he gave the class a few minutes to try the problem in their books. When time was up, he gave the answer or asked a student to tell the answer. As I walked around, I noticed that only about 60% of the class got the right answer. The rest of the students did not get the answer and only wrote the correct answer once the teacher wrote it on the board. With forty students, I guess that it is hard to check on each one.

We left and visited a morals class. Although I do not know what the lesson was, I did learn about the morals curriculum. Morals class is designed to teach the students the correct behaviors and attitudes. They learn the rules of society and school. It is such an odd idea to me that school would have separate class to teach these things. As I thought about the class, I realized that we teach many of the same kinds of ideas - just not as a separate subject. We integrate the attitudes and behaviors into our general classes.

One of the classes that I never see in America is handwriting, but I know that it is nothing like the calligraphy class that I visited next. The teacher demonstrated two characters in kanji. Kanji is Japanese language in Chinese characters. The Japanese adopted and adapted the Chinese characters about 1300 years ago. Apparently, they have been practicing ever since.

The third graders learned hundreds of characters during the year and still had thousands to go. I guess this is very different from learning to write the alphabet in English. To make matters even more difficult, the Japanese gradually developed a second alphabet. This one is phonetic and is called katakana. Frequently, kanji and katakana are mixed together to form hiragana. If you are confused by all of this, do not feel bad - so am I.

Anyway, enough history lesson. After watching the teacher, each student picked up her brush and tried to write the two characters. I watched a boy work very hard on his. He brought it up to the teacher who looked at the paper and sent him back. I do not know what she said, but he tried again. After he completed two or three pages, he looked proud (and finished). Then, he motioned to me to sit and try. The interpreter confirmed that he, indeed, wanted me to sit at his desk and try my hand at kanji calligraphy. I, being the great and willing teacher that I am, could not let this moment pass. I struggled to sit at his tiny desk and then picked up the brush. The boy and several classmates gathered around to watch. I dipped the tip like the boy had done and tried to write the characters. My first ever attempt at kanji was great. Well, it was good. Ok, it stunk. The boy tried hard not to laugh. I could do nothing but laugh. The boy was very gracious for an eight year old and carefully placed my effort between newspaper sheets and handed it to me like it was made of gold. He seemed more proud than I. I thanked him several times and left him with a Rashi ruler (a small token of my gratitude).

I was pleased with myself and looked forward to giving out more Rashi rulers. The opportunity for ruler giving came sooner than I expected. As I was walking through the hall, one of the interpreters told me to go my second grade class for lunch. I went to the second grade class that was hosting me for lunch. No one in the class spoke English, not even the teacher. While I was standing around waiting for something to happen, the calligraphy boy came in. He presented me with a small token of his gratitude. He wrote his name, in kanji and in English. A very nice gift.

Back to lunch. After the calligraphy boy left, I noticed that several second graders had gotten dressed for lunch. They put on white lab coats, little hats and face masks. At first, I thought maybe they had been visiting a hospital. Then this group of six or seven left the room. They returned a few minutes later wheeling a cart filled with cafeteria type containers. The masked group was on lunch patrol. A few certain students began rearranging some of the furniture in the front of the room to make a serving line with the cart. They worked hard to get all of the containers lined up and ready for serving. The teacher helped and kept an eye on the other children. The teacher said something to the class and they all sat down immediately (except the food crew). A little girl motioned to me that I should sit next to her. I was worried about being able to fit in the seat they had chosen for me. I did not need to worry because someone had brought in a larger version of the student desk with a larger chair. I sat down.

The teacher began calling rows of students to the line. The line went out into the hall. The students in the row in which I was sitting got up, but I decided to play the teacher and wait until last. That was the wrong decision. The teacher came over to me and motioned that I should get in line. I felt a little silly standing in the hall towering over everyone else in line. I was pretty sure what to do because I have waited in a lunch line before (also, I watched the girl in front of me). I took a set of disposable chopsticks and placed them on my tray. From the other side of the carts, a boy placed a bowl of Chinese style pork with pea pods and pineapple. Another student placed a bowl of soup with carrots and tofu on my tray. Yet another child placed a roll on my tray. How odd I thought, bread, but no rice. The last student server placed two orange fruits on my tray. I sat down and seconds later a student placed a glass bottle of milk on my tray.

My tray was full. I was sure that I would have trouble finishing. I thought maybe they had given me extra, but as I looked around, I realized that I had only slightly more than the students. I also realized that no one started eating. After most of the kids had been served, I noticed that the pork dish was almost empty. At least one child and the teacher had not yet been served. Normally, I would have offered to give up some food for the sake of the children. This time, I was unable to make the offer and I thought that I might offend even if I did. I did watch to see how the teacher handled the situation. She walked around the room with a ladle and a bowl and removed pieces of pork from bowls around the room. The kids did not even flinch as she did this. I imagined an American student yelling at the teacher for taking food away like that. Well, I was not in America. Finally, the teacher had collected enough food to serve the remaining diners.

Now that everyone was served, two students came to the front of the room. Everyone got quiet right away because they knew that they were about to say the traditional, Shinto grace before meals. The leaders clapped their hands together and said in loud voices,

"Itadakemasu." The entire class followed and then the eating began. For the first few moments, I waited and watched. I wanted to be sure that would do it correctly. While I waited, the kids began to wolf down the food. Then, I picked up my chopsticks and broke them apart. About half the class stopped eating to watch me use the chopsticks. After a few rather successful mouth-fulls, the students realized that watching me eat was much less important than actually eating. Even though most of the class was intent on eating, several students stopped to watch me. Each time I did anything, a few kids laughed. I will never know if I did something funny or if the kids just like laughing at me. Whatever the case, I enjoyed listening to their laughter.

After lunch, the food crew gathered up all of the dishes and containers and returned them to the kitchen. While they were doing that, I began giving out Rashi pencils. I know that it wasn't much, but the seven year-olds loved them. Several children were too polite or too scared to come up to me to get a pencil. The teacher had to take several and walk around to make sure that everyone got one.

The teacher then set into motion the most amazing activity I've ever seen school kids do. They began cleaning. Now, I am not talking about straightening desks and lining up books. These kids cleaned. In the hall, was a broom closet filled with equipment. Several kids moved desks, while others swept. A few controlled the dust pans. Other students took rags to the sink and then got down on the floor and scrubbed. Similar activity was happening in the hallway. These kids really did clean the school. This is something we need to bring to American schools. (Although, I know a few custodians who might disagree)

As the cleaning session came to an end, I left the second grade and returned to the teachers room. I realized that each FMF teacher had a similar experience. We all loved it. We also had the opportunity to meet with the teachers. Like the high school, the conversation went through interpreters and was slow to start. After we told them our impressions of their school, we asked and answered many questions.

Although the day was already exhausting, the best was yet to come. We went from the school to the Ryukan. Tune in to the next, special entry to read about the Ryukan.

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