Ikushina Shougakou

AKA: Where Cute Comes to Stay

Today marks the end of my first day of classes at the elementary school. I taught the special education class (one child - shy, but very willing to play games, etc) and three classes of 2nd graders.

Diagnosis: SO. FREAKING. CUTE.

As soon as all of the students were in the classroom and sitting down, I said hello to everyone. I said it to the group, I said it to individuals ... they were all giggling by the time I was done. After a long string of "hello"s, I suddenly switched to "goodbye"...and left the classroom. My first class of 2nd graders nearly died. A loud "EEEHHHHH????" came from the room, and lots of laughing when I re-entered with a loud "hello!"

After that, we practiced the vocabulary I had decided on - fruit. The noteworthy part of this was what I'm going to start call "Emotion Repetition," something I got from another ALT here. I drew four faces on the board: happy, sad, angry, and surprised. The kids were already getting wound up as I was drawing, yelling out "Oooh! It's crying! How sad!" or "Oh!! That one's angry!" in Japanese. We then practiced saying the names of the fruits with that emotion. I had a hard time not laughing after every single one of the repetitions. Kids are such great mimics, so I kept hearing my exact inflection being thrown back at me (something that doesn't happen at all in the middle school). Add to this the fact that they really, REALLY loved the "angry" repetition, and, well... you don't know cute until you have a room of 30 kids growling "WATERMELON!" at you.

After I was pretty confident of their abilities to identify the fruits, we played a game called "Fruit Basket." It's a Japanese game that's sort of like a mix of duck-duck-goose and musical chairs. I gave everyone a card with a fruit on it and then stood in the middle and said the name of one of the fruits we had studied. Everyone with that fruit on their card had to switch places, while I took someone's seat. Thus, there was a new person in the middle who had a yell a fruit, and so forth. The trump card was yelling "fruit basket!" at which everyone had to change places. It was incredibly fun and cute. We ran around like crazy people. Kids wiped out trying to sit down first. There was utter chaos. But we played this game for some 25 minutes, an impressive feat for 8 year olds, and they LOVED it. I had another activity planned, but the kids were having so much fun that I just made them change cards and let the game continue.

My face hurts from smiling and laughing. It was incredible. Kids are not allowed to be that cute.

I also ate lunch with one of the classes, which was insanely adorable. After much debate as to where I would sit, I ate at the front of the classroom so everyone could see me. They were asking me a bunch of questions the entire time ("How old are you? EEHHH?? 22!!"; "What is your favorite fruit?"; "What is your favorite vegetable?"; "What is your favorite sport?"; "How do you write your name? EHHH!! It's so long!!"; "Do you have a boyfriend?"; "What is your favorite bug?"; "Can you speak Japanese?"). One kid kept running up to my desk and babbling at me in Japanese; he even started reading to me out of a book at one point. I don't think he managed to eat half of his food because he was too busy chattering at me. Other kids in the class kept coming up and either steering him back to his desk or physically picking him up and moving him there, which would last for some three seconds before he was back at the desk and chattering away. It was hilarious. The teacher told me later that he usually hates English class, but he enjoyed class today so much that he got excited when he saw me at lunch, too.

What do we call that? We call that "the BEST COMPLIMENT EVER."

This experience is completely different from what I have gotten from my middle school. The kids there are so jaded by studying and school that they can't be bothered with games and fun. On the other hand, the kids here are almost too excited by the foreigner making a fool of herself at the front of the class. It was a tiring but wonderful experience, and I can tell it will always be the highlight of my week.