On Thursdays, I rotate between three elementary schools. These students haven’t really had any formal English instruction yet, but my role is to get them excited for when they learn it later. The elementary schools are lots of fun. The teachers give me the lesson plan and tell me exactly what to say. I pass out lots of stickers with lots of smiles and say “good job” many, many times! This week I was given a lesson plan on foods. So we went through a poster of foods and I taught them the vocab. Usually the elementary school teachers speak very little English, so I’m pretty much dependent on charades to get my message across. The kids all claimed to like practically everything except eggplant! And they appeared to know what a persimmon is, while I pretended to!
When there is a period when I'm not teaching, I am usually brought to the Special Education room to play a game (not in English) with the kids. This week we played a game of scooping paper turtles into cups. We all counted how many turtles we got, and we got a slip of paper according to how well we did. One little girl proudly brought me her yellow slip of paper. I sounded out the word on it and asked the teacher what it meant. They headed for the dictionary and then showed me. It means "pitiable, regrettable"! Another slip of paper translated as "disappointing"! Luckily the kids didn't seem to know what these words might mean because I would never want to play a game again if my score was "pitiable"!
The most interesting thing at the elementary schools is lunch time! About seven students put on white chef coats and hats, and a face mask (like a surgeon’s mask) and head to the school kitchen. There the cook has pots of food prepared and labeled. The students take their classroom’s pot, bread, 36 trays, bowls, sets of chopsticks, etc and go back to the classroom. In the meantime, their classmates have transformed a little table into a serving counter and put on a tablecloth. Each student puts on a face mask and takes a tray. Other students are serving the food into bowls. Everyone gets a little carton of milk and sits down to wait for everyone to be served. Someone says the word “itadakimas”, I guess it’s similar to Bon Apetit (it literally means "I receive") and everyone digs in. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but the Japanese are really fast eaters. I’m always the last to be done eating by far! And the school lunch meals are quite big – a big dinner roll, soup with noodles, and a main dish. Plus milk and sometimes cheese. When they finish eating, all the students rinse out their milk cartons and fold them in a special way so they can be stacked for recycling, and then put their bowls, plates, chopsticks, etc in the appropriate containers. The teacher checks that they’ve eaten enough, and sometimes sends them back to finish their food! I felt very badly the first time, as the dinner roll had walnuts in it and the main dish was deep fried tiny sardines. Luckily, he didn’t send me back to finish my food!
But except for lunch, the elementary schools are lots of fun. The kids ask me to autograph their school supplies! And they make origami, and crocheted necklaces, and other little things for me! I really look forward to Thursdays because you can never have too many origami cranes!
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My elementary school used to make us eat a certain amount off our tray--hated it. I hated the peas. I found that if I put them in my mouth and pretended to eat them, I could get them off my back and then spit it out back in class. Figures now I like peas. Can you imagine if they made us do that in training with ugali? Would have died.
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