Observation Stranger BBQ

As any educator can tell you, every day of teaching is filled with its own little challenges and experiences from which learn and grow, as both and teacher and as a human being in general. While teaching in another country brings its own unique set of obstacles, the majority of these experiences are rarely noteworthy. This last week, however, was an exception.

MONDAY- English Classes of the 21st Century

One of the schools that I teach at was being observed and evaluated. now I have a few memories of teacher evaluations from high school, and while I remember them occasionally acting a little bit nervous and a little more excited than normal, things pretty much seemed the same. Not so with my Japanese teachers.

It felt like moments before a huge trial. Teachers dashed about like mad and were going crazy over poster details and number of copies. One teacher who normally just briefs me on the lesson as we are walking to class, instead went over a lesson with me four times to make sure I knew exactly what we were doing at any giving moment of the 50-minute class period. She even had me go to the classroom to practice exactly how we would handle applying the little magnets we use on the chalkboard; as if I had somehow forgotten the fundamentals of magnetism and needed a refresher course before the trial. Fortunately, I love teaching with this teacher so having to do all this was more funny than annoying.

Once the actual class began it felt like I was in a bizarre living museum exhibit entitled Japanese English Classes of the 21st Century. Again, during my youth, I remember my teachers being observed by one, maybe two, other teachers. At our little exhibit, no less than 30 teachers filed in and out of the classroom during the lesson, taking notes, snapping pictures, and whispering to each other, building evidence to pass final judgment, no doubt. "And what judgements?" you might ask…well let's check…

The Results

Teacher #1: Not Worthy

Even with all her preparations and magnet rehearsals, the teacher was given a slightly less than average rating and a page worth of notes to improve upon. This actually came as a surprise as I thought the lesson went very well, especially considering…

Teacher #2: Worthy

The shocker of the group, even the vice principal was surprised. This teacher skipped over entire sections of his submitted lesson plan. Even with that, he didn’t reach the end of his plan, and the students were in a constant state of confusion during the entire lesson, teacher 2 received only a few couple of notes and an excellent rating.

So, what did we learn? I’m not really sure, but that’s not important, since Monday’s observations were overshadowed by….

TUESDAY – Stranger Training

The day started normal enough, but after lunch I was informed that we would be having stranger training, or ‘What to do when a you see a stranger in school.’ Thinking there was a mistranslation somewhere, I asked my teachers what they meant by stranger…did they mean thief? terrorist? “No,” my principal replied curtly, “it's just stranger training.” I was asked to accompany the school clerk to the second floor where the stranger training would be held at 1:50pm.

The clerk came over to me, carrying what appeared to be a large pitchfork with the middle prong removed. A U-shaped head attached to a two meter handle. Using the communicative power of gesture, it became clear that this was a manhandling device to be used in the event of a stranger in school. I began to wonder how frequent strangers appeared in schools to warrant such devices. I was about to ask… but just then the alarm bell rung and I heard students scream.

I had thought this was going to be a lecture about the dangers of strangers, but as we raced up the stairs while students raced down, it began to dawn on me that this was not just stranger training. This was stranger drill.

The scene on the third floor hallway was chaotic. Two teachers had a man already pinned against the wall, using the legs of two classroom chairs to entangle his legs. The man, with a heavy black jacket, sunglasses, black baseball cap, doctor’s mask, and... wooden toy knife, was clearly the stranger, and he was trying to break free. I looked at the clerk for some guidance, but he was on his cell phone, fake-phoning the authorities, I think. He saw me look at him, thrust the man-handler into my hands, and pointed at the stranger. After a moment of surprise, I summoned fake confidence and charged at Mr. Stranger. In my head, I yelled ‘GRAAAAAH!’ but it came out more like ‘uuuuh’ as I pushed Dr. Strangeman into the wall with the man-handler, securing him as he swung his toy knife around.

After a minute another guy came up and said that the drill was over. He told me I did a good job, and showed me a better way to use the man-catcher. To be honest, I was a bit too shell-shocked by the whole experience to really listen though.

Afterwards the same man who stopped the drill spoke to the students who were assembled in the field outside, but stranger was no where to be found…which I thought was very odd. Perhaps he was late for another stranger sighting, or maybe he wanted to retain his anonymity for future drills. Who knows?

In theatre, the curtain call serves not only to recognize the cast and crew, but it can serve as closure for the audience. The events you witnessed were staged. See, here is the villan with his mask removed, smiling. The danger has passed, we can move on. I think by the stranger purposely not joining the talk, not unmasking himself in front of the students, he stayed a bit longer in the minds of the students. He certainly stayed in mine.

THURSDAY – 12-year old BBQ madness

When I arrived at school, most of the students were already gone on day trips to nagoya and the surrounding areas. I had no classes to teach and thought it was going to be another day of studying Japanese in the teachers room all day, when one of the teachers asked if I would be interested in joining the 1-2 class on their field trip. Since the 1-2 class happens to by my favorite class at this particular school I immediately agreed. We would be hiking “about three kilometers” to a small waterfall and making BBQ for lunch.

The three kilometer walk ended up being closer to a six kilometer hike, almost half of which was uphill. Though it was worth it as I enjoyed spending the time joking around and talking with the students. Since they had just begun their first year of formal English, our conversations were fairly limited, but we still managed to communicate about BBQ, anime, and video games.

The waterfall was somewhat of a letdown. It looked like someone had set up a water-hose to spray over a two-story man made rock wall. Still, the location itself was picturesque. Shortly after arriving, the students did multiple things which made the word "lawsuit" flash in my mind. Among them were...

• Climbing the two-story wet rock cliff and hopping over the small pool of water at the top. I thought the teacher would yell at the students to come down, but instead just pointed at them and laughed.

• Starting the multiple grills without any supervision. Two teachers did not seem like enough to monitor 40 12-year-olds playing with fire while trying to light 7 different grills. My favorite moment was when the teacher handed one of them a lit blowtorch and walked away.

• Putting meat on the grills moments after the fire started, setting off several grease fires throughout our little area.

• Cooking meat for all of 20 seconds before eating it. One student handed me a bloody skewer of meat still outwardly pink and said, ‘Here you are, Mr. Aaron.’ I thanked him and made my way to another grill and cooked it for another 10 minutes.

• Carrying the grills, filled with hot coals, to dump them in a fire pit. One group dropped an end and sent still-burning coals everywhere

Although all this seemed odd to me and slightly irresponsible of the teacher at first, these events actually made me realize that, while the students on the whole seem less mature in terms of decision-making and drawing logical conclusions than American students, Japanese students are given much more responsibility at a younger age.

Even at the junior high school level, the students run and organize many things that are often the responsibility of the teachers in America. Sometimes they take on responsibilities that would never be allowed to someone their age, and then fill that responsibility without hesitation. They are granted a high level of trust, and it was reassuring to witness on this occasion.

After eating way too much grilled pork, hamburg steaks, chicken, beef skewers, and yaki-soba, we cleaned the area and lazily hiked our way back to the school.