The Mysteries of Weather, Romance, and English Language Instruction
10月6日 (火ー水) 12:53am JST
Toyama’s high school teachers’ conference was today. The kids got the day off. I got to be part of a panel. My line on it is, “We faithfully demonstrated the degree to which we are dedicated to professionalism.”
Which is to say, while we didn’t plan the event (unprofessional), we at least we kept it from collapsing catastrophically (semi-professional).
The whole thing was Y-sensei’s project. T---, another teacher, his ALT, and I were put behind a table in the front of a room in order to enlighten the unwashed masses of Toyama’s education community with our superior understanding of team teaching. Y-sensei’s carefully plotted plan was for us to have each circular table discuss problems and solutions in team teaching, then share their ideas with the group as a whole. This was a stroke of brilliance as it fobbed most of the work off of us and onto them. Basically, our job was to introduce the format, semi-moderate, and wrap it up with some concluding remarks. I think the crowd noticed that we were less than fully prepared, but Y-sensei bought their silence with a ton of chips and candy at each table “to make it more casual.”
Toyama continues to drizzle day and night. Also, it’s starting to be semi-dark by the time I get home. These trends bode not well for future mental health.
The mountains of Toyama are quite lovely until you realize that they impose endless Seattle on their residents. But, as I concluded my remarks to the panel, gambaru is all.
10月7日 (水ー木) 12:57am JST
The mystery of S-sensei only deepens!…
She has a thirteen year old daughter.
She is also emphatically without ring.
In fact, the topic of wedding rings somehow came up between us. She talked about her sister having a big, expensive one. I talked about my sister’s mother-in-law keeping her rings from old suitors, and she said she wasn’t that popular in her youth. No mention of a husband. No explain why she doesn’t have a ring but does have a daughter.
So, from whence the daughter? Abortion is an accepted practice in Japan, so long as one takes steps to pacify the child’s restless spirit. So, if she doesn’t have a man, why did she keep her child?… Married and widowed? … Married and divorced? … A committed single mother? … Or is she just an insufficiently demonstrative wife now?
Still, no ring? There must be a story at the bottom of this. Maybe her husband went deaf and then died. Or better, killed himself, because he couldn’t face the shame! Or maybe, he was already deaf, but tragically mauled by a bear! Or maybe he was a Korean spy, executed from crimes against the state. Or maybe…
The mystery only deepens…
10月8日 (木ー金) 12:37am JST
The weather has pleasingly changed for the better. Wednesday morning, it was so bright outside that I feared that my clock had malfunctioned and I had overslept. With the air autumn crisp and clear, you can see those weather inducing mountains in their glory. They really are quite beautiful. Having sunshine in the afternoon makes me feel less like doing nothing after school. Not that it stops me though.
Classes today were decent. I got to hear short collaborative stories about Snoopy. In one, he ate bugs and died. In another, Marcy died in a traffic accident. Other common themes were rain and baseball.
A lot of the things the kids do have an element of plagiarism to them, and the contents of these stories were undoubtedly influenced by the topics in the book. Electronic dictionaries are even worse usually, and surpassed only by the students’ own phrase making instincts in unintelligibility. Not that I mind at all. Good English or bad, I get paid.
That’s the true meaning of professionalism.
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