This was the first week of classes at Tonaki elementary and Jr. High School and is it ever different from any of the schools I attended. First of all, check the location, and secondly, the building is far bigger and more prestine than I would have imagined a small island school to be. The class sizes are an obvious reflection of the size of the community. Of my jr. high classes, the larges consists of 8 students and the smallest, 5. The grade 5/6 class I taught last week was only slightly larger than my gr. 7 class. I really like the smaller class sizes (some of my colleagues on mainland Okinawa have up to 40 students per class) because it gives me a chance to actually learn my student’s names, which is difficult enough given the challenge of even getting the pronunciation right.
Even after having their names literally spelled out for me, I still have a hard time trying to determine which of the “u”s and “i”s are silent (they’re really not silent, but their pronunciation is so subtle, that to the untrained North American ear it seems they wouldn’t even appear in written form). So I’ve had an entire week with three jr. high classes and I can only barely remember two of the student’s names. How embarrassing. I have a few strategies in mind to accelerate the rate of uptake. I have it easy: some of the mainland teachers have upwards of 15 different schools to teach in, whereas I only have this one with a student body population of 49!
I was asked to give a speech at the school’s opening ceremony on the first morning of classes. Thank goodness they didn’t request that I give it in Japanese, or rather, if they had, it would have translated thus: “Hello. My name is Jon Wieser. I come from Vancouver, Canada. It’s nice to meet you.” I’m gradually increasing my vocabulary and beginning to understand sentence structure; and those of you who have tried to learn a second language later in life, having no previous experience doing so after half-hearted attempts to pass French (or other language) class in high school know what a slow and frustrating challenge this can be. The entire speech was in English. Half way through, Minako-san, my team-teacher, came to the front to translate, as it was apparent that I was merely a view-piece with strange chatter vaguely recognized as English coming from my mouth. Those that were there understood that I was extremely happy to be placed in their community and that I looked forward to being a part of the learning experience of the children at Tonaki School. I also talked briefly about the increasing importance of English as the distance between communities at the global level decreases...blah, blah, blah.
The first week of classes consisted of giving a self-introduction in English, complete with powerpoint slides containing pictures of some of my friends and family. Mom & Dad, Carmell & Brian, Myles, Dean, Joel, Bruce, James, Erin, Adam, Shar, Aaron V., Joey, Craig, Michelle, Brandon, all made appearances, with Captain Haircut showing up for a special number. Carmell and Brian, you guys were answers to the Jeopardy game we played afterwards. The kids were especially stoked when I brought out the Google Earth to show them satellite images of where they lived (Tonaki, surprisingly, has high def. images uploaded) and Vancouver/Surrey, with many exclaims of ‘sugoi’ going up from the crowd. I showed the classes where each one of you, my dear friends live (kidding).
At lunch, all students and teachers eat together a meal that has been carefully planned by the school nutritionist and served by students. I have been assigned different spots around the dinning hall throughout the week, sitting with the cuties at the kindergarten table one day and the studious jr. highers the next.
After lunch, the brush-your-teeth song plays over the loudspeaker indicating that the time has come for everyone in the building to pull out their brushes and paste and spend the next ten minutes cleaning their pearly whites. Then the music changes and everyone knows its time to clean the building. Students and teachers go to work sweeping the floor, cleaning windows, dusting, working in the yard, watering plants, etc. One day we even spent the entire afternoon preparing the school ‘farm,’ a rather large garden on the campus, complete with rabbit and chicken cages, for the new planting season. What would happen if we could get North American students to clean the school and work in the garden pulling weeds? Ponder that.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings a loud chime rings from the school at 6 pm for the community morning exercises. I actually made it up for one of these…so fun.