Kyoto-sensei tries to reach Dopey-kun

Today a student whom I have discussed before and is known as Dopey-kun came slithering into the teacher's room during normal class hours. It was my planning period and so I sat there watching this scene unfold. They kyoto-sensei was sitting at his desk working on his computer when this san-nensei kid comes up behind him and starts spying on what he is doing. He got almost over his shoulder when the kyoto-sensei jerked around and faced the student.

The boy didn't even appear startled but continued to stare at whatever was on the computer screen. He then sat down next to the vice-principal and started trying to quiz him about his work. I guess this ticked off the vice-principal because he soon unleashed a tirade on this kid. He started asking him why he was in the teacher's room, why he wasn't studying with the rest of the students, why his hair was hanging over his face, and why his uniform was all disorganized. He wasn't acting mean about it, only a little aggressive. It looked as if he were trying to help the kid to realize what a crappy life that he will have in store for himself if he keeps on heading down the road that he is on.

I guess this ticked off the student enough so that he left the teacher's room. Well not to be ignored the vice-principal followed him out in the hallway and started giving him another earful. Soon however, the kyoto-sensei was joined by a 3rd year teacher and they somehow managed to get that kid back into the classroom. But I know for sure, the moment he returned, he would throw his head down on his desk and sleep because this kid is not interested in learning or anything like that. He is totally unreachable and that's partly why he earned the nickname "Dopey-kun."

A Burst of Energy

Lately I found that as we approach winter my tension level goes down the toilet. I start to slow down, get less excited and basically enter a tutelage hibernation. I loose focus and just don't give it my all. That's not to say I don't teach, or that I am taking time off. I just sort of reduce the entertainment factor of teaching. A skillful teacher combines education with entertainment to really captivate those flowering minds which I normally do, but with the cold comes the slow down.

So it really startled the teachers that I teach with when I started giving it my all. I really laid down quite a show for students, a lot of yelling, cheering, much praise and so on. I even did a little skit or mini-play with the Japanese teacher to get the kids more interested in the content of the textbook we are using. (We are talking about a hearing dog named Mio and how she helps Ms Matsumoto in her daily life). Now I think the content is very important but the way it is presented is boring.

So I acted out the parts with the Japanese teacher and a volunteer student and really gave quite a performance. That set up the class to be more active and proved to work as I had planned it. I am still wondering where this burst of energy came from? Maybe from the sweet potato pie?

Sweet Potato Pie

The other day I posted about digging sweet potatoes サツマイモwith my special education students and how much fun that was. Well today I baked sweet potato pie with those students in their classroom. We brought in a portable oven from the home economics room, all the supplies we needed and went to town whipping up a masterful sweet potato pie worthy of award.

I got the idea to make the pie after browsing the internet and stumbling upon a recipe for sweet potatoes. I knew those students had harvested like 40 kilograms or more of sweet potatoes and that they were looking for a way to get rid of them all. They even sold some to teachers for a 100 yen for a pack of 4. They had made some sweet potato dishes all last week and this week I thought it would be nice to give them an American style dessert.

The actual recipe came from allrecipes.com and just in case you are curious about making it here's the recipe:

SUBMITTED BY: Joyce Waits PHOTO BY: mikamuffin

"This recipe was shared with me by a special friend in Atlanta, Ga. It has long been a favorite, and everyone who tastes it says it is the best they have ever had."

PREP TIME	30 Min
COOK TIME	1 Hr 50 Min
READY IN	2 Hrs 20 Min

SERVINGS & SCALING

Original recipe yield: 1 - 9 inch pie

US METRIC About scaling and conversions

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (1 pound) sweet potato
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 (9 inch) unbaked pie crust

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DIRECTIONS

1. Boil sweet potato whole in skin for 40 to 50 minutes, or until done. Run cold water over the sweet potato, and remove the skin.
2. Break apart sweet potato in a bowl. Add butter, and mix well with mixer. Stir in sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. Beat on medium speed until mixture is smooth. Pour filling into an unbaked pie crust.
3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 55 to 60 minutes, or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Pie will puff up like a souffle, and then will sink down as it cools.

It went rather well and the kids loved the pie. We had extra so we shared it with other teachers who expressed interest in sweets. It was the best sweet potato pie I have ever eaten.

Halloween Party

On Sunday my wife and I held a Halloween party for students in the neighborhood where my wife teaches English. It was a costume party and so all students were asked to wear a costume. So we also had to make and wear a costume too. My wife at first decided to be an angel, but when it appeared that making large enough wings would be a big challenge, she changed her mind and decided on being a butterfly instead. Her costume took all of 30 minutes to make. She used two clothes hangers for wings, and a plastic headband with two wires bent to look like antennae. She covered the wings in construction paper and made polka dots for the wings out of scraps.

I then decided that I wanted to be a robot. We had several cardboard boxes lying in a corner so I figured I should put them to good use. My idea was to make a full body costume with two large boxes and then use some pieces for arms. The head piece I created out of extra pieces I had left over.

Well after three hours of cutting, taping, sizing up and so on I was finished. The robot body looked great with a head hole, and two arm holes. The legs were made out of one large box and they looked ok. The arms looked pretty nice and they were attached with paper string wrapped around and tied tightly.

The helmet looked the best. It reminded me of Optimus Prime from Transformers. In reality it probably looked more like a cylon than Prime. I was fairly proud of my cardboard costume. However, it looked like cardboard and that didn't remind me of any robot at all. So by this time it was late into the night and I had to get up early as this costume party started at 10am and it was an hour drive from our house. Before I went to bed I decided to try out an idea I had to get this robot costume in better shape. I broke out the aluminium foil and covered the helmet with it. When I had finished I knew this costume was going to be awesome. But by then it was nearly 1am so I decided to go to bed and get up early to finish.

It didn't happen. I woke up at 8:30am and had to rush to get ready for the party. Then I decided to finish it before the students arrived. I just had to cover the body, and arms, as I decided to leave the legs because I had limited mobility with them on. So we get to the classroom where the party is and no one was there. It was 9:30am and I figured I had plenty of time to finish. Well my wife needed help setting up the room , getting decorations prepared and so on. By the time we finished it was 9:50. That left me with 10 minutes so I started covering the rest of my costume with foil. Students started arriving and they helped me get it finished. By 10:10am we started the party and the students really liked my costume. They all agreed it was the best and thanks to their help I was able to finish it.

I had even built a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher to give the costume that menacing look. But I wasn't the only aluminium foiled costumed character. Another student showed up in an alien-themed costume complete with aluminium alien antennae. All-in-all it was a great party and the kids had a fantastic time, and I did too. We played loads of games, learned some Halloween vocabulary and ate caramel apples that we made ourselves.

The Balloon Incident

On Tuesday I taught a group of 小学生　しょうがくせい、elementary kids at an elementary school that is near my current junior high school. I have been teaching these kids for two years but only one month a year, namely every October/November.

In the last class I taught they the phrase:

Q. "Can I have a (color) + (animal)?" A. "Sure."

So I run through the names of animals and colors. I taught them ten colors and about fifteen animal names, everything from turkey to zebra. And during this class we reviewed what we learned last week. We practiced as a group and then I decided to try a new game with the students.

I brought some balloons that I purchased at100円ショップ「ザ・ダイソー」,100 Yen Plaza for this game. I had students make 5 groups and form a line. I then asked two vounteers to come up and demonstrate the rules of the game for everyone to see.

I explained to the kids that they had to put the balloon between their knees and pass to the person behind. Before they could pass they must ask the person behind the target sentence, "Can I have a ~?" and that person must reply before they pass. Obviously this is difficult to understand so I asked the Japanese teacher to explain it in detail. He did and so I thought they understood how the game works.

So I asked the two volunteers to demonstrate the game. They started out just fine, the boy in the front turned to the girl behind with a long balloon between his knees. He said, "Can I have a brown bear?" And the girl replied, "Sure." Nothing wrong with that. So I was looking around at the rest of the students to judge if they understood so far. And it looked like they got the just of it.

But the second I turned around to look out our demonstrators I was startled beyond belief. Now, I can honestly say I never expected what happened to happen, and I should have been more thorough in my explanation to the Japanese teacher. I am sure had another foreigner been there or had this happened in America, I might be in jail right now.

What I saw was the boy standing there with this long balloon between his legs, and the girl bent over with her back to the boy. The boy was trying hard to pass the balloon to the girl but if you saw what was happening it certainly would have left you seriously pondering about the innocence of these children. It looked at least to me as if they were doing some sort of hanky panky routine. I wanted to laugh to relieve the embarassment or trepidation, but I knew better.

Instead I jumped up and told them to stop and then I demonstrated with the Japanese teacher the right way. The students should stand face to face and pass the balloon with their knees, then the second student should pass the balloon in the same way to the third and so on. What made it worse was the horrified look on the parents who were watching in the back of the room. I'll never forget that day.

Needless to say in the future I will probably not use this game and if I do, I will make sure to demonstrate it first.

中間テスト Midterms

It's midterm testing and I have absolutely nothing to do. These are the most boring times of teaching as a juinor high school English teacher. I already made the tests with the Japanese English teacher and they don't trust me enough to help grade the tests, despite my offering to do so. So I am stuck for 8 hours today with zilch to do.

Luckily I brought lots of reading material namely "Death by Black Hole" by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I have been reading this book for several months. I find that I jump into this book in spurts and it's taking a while to finish but it is one of the best science-based books I have read in quite some time as it outlines difficult concepts in a simplistic manner, but not so simplistic as to dumb down the information to the point of irrelevance.

I also have a copy of "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac as well as a few magazines to keep my mind active. And there is always online sudoku to keep me puzzled for a while if either books or magazines leave my head throbbing.

Luckily today is the last day of the 中間テスト, midterms and tomorrow will go back to a normal schedule.

Digging Sweet Potatoes ( サツマイモ）

On Friday I went with the special education class to pick sweet potatoes ( サツマイモ）at a field（田圃） near our school. I actually had to join them a little later in the day after 2nd period classes because I had to teach two classes in the morning. We are going to make sweet potato pie next week so we went to the field to dig sweet potatoes.

When I arrived I was mobbed by a gaggle of elementary special education students who basically grabbed me and wouldn't let go. They were asking me all sorts of questions. They asked me if I was American. They asked me if the bike I rode was my bicycle. They asked me how long I have lived in Japan. They asked me my name and so on and so forth for the better part of an hour.

Then they became fascinated with my mountain bike. One girl attempted to ride it that turned out with her almost falling in a ditch. Just imagine a 110 centimeter 2nd grader trying to ride a man's 26" mountain bike that she can barely climb up on much less reach the pedals.

I told her repeatedly not to do it but she continued until almost crashing the bike and falling into a ditch.

Then the kids became interested in me jumping the ditch (溝渠, こうきょ) near the field which was about 4 or 5 feet wide. They kept chiding me to jump and I kept telling them it was dangerous. But no amount of naysaying was going to deter them from getting me to jump. So I stepped back a few feet and lunged across this mini-ravine. You might be thinking I fell face first into this ditch, or upon landing I broke my foot, but somehow I made it. My making it then spurred on some of the braver of the group to try. They made it too, how I seriously don't know due to their being so small and that ditch being so wide, but they did.

Then one curious boy started stripping down naked in the middle of the road. He started with his boots throwing them high in the air and ended with a teacher coming to the rescue before he was down to his birthday suit.
Upon nudie boy's actions, I decided to finally go help my students dig some sweet potatoes with shovels and hoes, 鍬 （くわ）. I came right at the end and was able to help harvest about 30 kilograms or so of sweet potatoes. I then let the teacher who worked all day with these kids take my bike and I hauled the sweet potatoes back to the school in a wheelbarrow with the assistance of some of our special needs kids.

When we got back I helped them wash and place the potatoes on racks to dry. And soon we'll make sweet potato pie with these kids.