So now that I've discussed the Insane Asylum in its entirety, I'd like to turn to things a little bit more positive, my little school by the sea.
This school is maybe about fifteen minutes just outside of Murakami, and it's literally right on the ocean. When you walk into the entrance way, there are big, beautiful bay windows that look directly out onto the ocean and out, several kilometers away, is a small island called Awashima. On a sunny and clear day, the ocean is a stunningly awesome shade of blue, which finally made me understand why the the Japanese differentiate between regular Blue and a color they literally call Water (light blue!).
This school has a total student population of 33 kids. 33! And every time I show up, they're pumped to see me, ready to play some games, and all in all have a good time.
Today the kids practiced Yosakoi, a traditional form of Japanese dance, during afternoon break, and then we rode unicycles around the gym -- or at least we tried to.
Having come here after two days of insanity at my middle school, I feel like I can breathe. I can do the activities I want with the kids, they listen, participate, are great, and remind me that not every day is as crazy as others.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
By now you know that my middle school, the school I spend most of my time at, is a bit of a nut house. Sometimes I call it a zoo, sometimes I call it the Insane Asylum, and sometimes I can only imagine that all the students here are actually monkeys flinging their pooh at each other for hours on end.
Granted, yes, I have had some good classes here. Some of the kids here are amazingly smart and talented and great.
Others are not.
Several students in particular are doing everything they possibly can to drive me nuts -- i.e. Stealing the head 1st year teacher's chair and then racing it up and down the hall way in the middle of third period while I'm trying to run an activity. Oddly enough, he is pursued by no one. Teachers walk by him in the halls with nothing more than a "You shouldn't be doing that," and it isn't until yours truly steps in and grabs the chair out from under him that the other teachers stop, take notice, and do something.
Cut to fourth period, two students barge into the class and then climb out the window of the second floor to hang off the edge of the class. By this point my mind is unsure what to do, since the teacher doesn't do anything aside from... ask them to stop. As lunch time rolls around I'm wandering through the halls and find that, upon looking out a window, that about six or seven students have climbed up on the roof of the school shed and are playing sumo.
Walking away from lunch I see several students have made a mess in the hallway by throwing water balloons at each other, and one of the kids is cut up and covered in blood from his ascent up to the shed roof.
I stop some bullying in fifth period, throw a student out of class because I can't handle her screaming any more, confiscate some playing cards and a letter, I come real close to confiscating an iPod but the girl was a bit too quick.
But the pièce de résistance, the thing that finally throws me over the edge, is when I go back to my desk and see one of my little Hellions chatting with the teacher that sits next to me. Now behind me, sitting on the desk with other things we used for the field trip last Friday, is a megaphone.
A megaphone.
This Hellion sees the megaphone and picks it up. My "AW HELL NAH" radar starts to ping wildly, but I sit there as he's talking with the head first year teacher who's trying to convince the kid not to take the megaphone. "Surely," I think to myself, "SURELY this man has the foresight to see what's about to happen. Surely."
"No, no, just let me see it!" the kid says. And for a split second, in a moment of weakness, the teacher lets him have the megaphone.
In the blink of an eye the kid has run out of the staff room with one or two teachers trailing behind him and (while I'm making my way to my last class of the day) he begins marching up and down the hall way between 5th and 6th period announcing to everyone "It's 6th period! Let's hurry to class everyone! Let's get going! We've got one more class today!" with the teachers pleading desperately with him to stop as he evades their capture up and down the hallway.
At this point, I lose it. I can no longer contain my "This is serious and I disapprove" face and I simply burst out laughing, and I continue laughing for the next five minutes as I walk with an English teacher to class. I can't do it anymore. I just can't take anything here seriously anymore.
This is an insane zoo that I work in, and the only thing that's surprising is that every day that I come here I still managed to be surprised. And then when I tell people these stories, I'm surprised at their reaction because this has become my norm. I am accomplishing complete cognitive dissonance in feeling that this must be what working in every school is like. Right?
So my English teacher takes one look at me as if to say "Bryan, you're not supposed to think this is funny!" and as I continue laughing, he asks if I've had a rough day.
I have.
And then I taught him the word "conniption."
As in "I have completely lost it and am having a ____."
Granted, yes, I have had some good classes here. Some of the kids here are amazingly smart and talented and great.
Others are not.
Several students in particular are doing everything they possibly can to drive me nuts -- i.e. Stealing the head 1st year teacher's chair and then racing it up and down the hall way in the middle of third period while I'm trying to run an activity. Oddly enough, he is pursued by no one. Teachers walk by him in the halls with nothing more than a "You shouldn't be doing that," and it isn't until yours truly steps in and grabs the chair out from under him that the other teachers stop, take notice, and do something.
Cut to fourth period, two students barge into the class and then climb out the window of the second floor to hang off the edge of the class. By this point my mind is unsure what to do, since the teacher doesn't do anything aside from... ask them to stop. As lunch time rolls around I'm wandering through the halls and find that, upon looking out a window, that about six or seven students have climbed up on the roof of the school shed and are playing sumo.
Walking away from lunch I see several students have made a mess in the hallway by throwing water balloons at each other, and one of the kids is cut up and covered in blood from his ascent up to the shed roof.
I stop some bullying in fifth period, throw a student out of class because I can't handle her screaming any more, confiscate some playing cards and a letter, I come real close to confiscating an iPod but the girl was a bit too quick.
But the pièce de résistance, the thing that finally throws me over the edge, is when I go back to my desk and see one of my little Hellions chatting with the teacher that sits next to me. Now behind me, sitting on the desk with other things we used for the field trip last Friday, is a megaphone.
A megaphone.
This Hellion sees the megaphone and picks it up. My "AW HELL NAH" radar starts to ping wildly, but I sit there as he's talking with the head first year teacher who's trying to convince the kid not to take the megaphone. "Surely," I think to myself, "SURELY this man has the foresight to see what's about to happen. Surely."
"No, no, just let me see it!" the kid says. And for a split second, in a moment of weakness, the teacher lets him have the megaphone.
In the blink of an eye the kid has run out of the staff room with one or two teachers trailing behind him and (while I'm making my way to my last class of the day) he begins marching up and down the hall way between 5th and 6th period announcing to everyone "It's 6th period! Let's hurry to class everyone! Let's get going! We've got one more class today!" with the teachers pleading desperately with him to stop as he evades their capture up and down the hallway.
At this point, I lose it. I can no longer contain my "This is serious and I disapprove" face and I simply burst out laughing, and I continue laughing for the next five minutes as I walk with an English teacher to class. I can't do it anymore. I just can't take anything here seriously anymore.
This is an insane zoo that I work in, and the only thing that's surprising is that every day that I come here I still managed to be surprised. And then when I tell people these stories, I'm surprised at their reaction because this has become my norm. I am accomplishing complete cognitive dissonance in feeling that this must be what working in every school is like. Right?
So my English teacher takes one look at me as if to say "Bryan, you're not supposed to think this is funny!" and as I continue laughing, he asks if I've had a rough day.
I have.
And then I taught him the word "conniption."
As in "I have completely lost it and am having a ____."
Monday, May 2, 2011
Disclaimer: This is going to be a highly opinionated entry. Feel free to opine in the comments, as I welcome open debate and believe that peaceful discussion is a great way to exchange ideas. But if you get your underwear all knotted up because of something I say, deal with it.
So, Bin Laden is dead.
I can't help but wonder, if we were to go back to 9 years ago and ask the majority of Americans what they'd be willing to give up in exchange for the death of a terrorist, what do you think they would say?
If we had to spend one million bucks to get a hold of Bin Laden, would you be willing to pay it? How about a billion? One hundred billion? How about 3 trillion dollars? How about the invasion of two countries over the course of nearly a decade resulting in the longest war in US history? How about the death of 5885 of our troops and tens of thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis?
What about the eroding of American freedoms with the passage of the Patriot Act (which 78% of the time is used for conducting drugs raids and not counter-terrorism), the searches conducted by the TSA which have never resulted in the capture of a terrorist but instead have led to children getting stripped in public and pregnant women and the elderly being nearly molested.
How about all this while we have a hurricane that destroys the southern states and an oil spill that contaminates its waters. Don't forget the bank bailout that resulted in golden parachute bonuses for CEOs and 10% unemployment for everyone else.
All that to fight a War On Terror -- a war on an idea. Not on a country or a an army or a group of people, we were trying to crush an idea which we already learned we couldn't do sometime between 1955 and 1975.
What if instead, assuming that the average cost of tuition in America is $30,000 for four years, we had sent 100,000,000 Americans to college for free? Or built a train system? Or built levees in New Orleans? Or insured every American in the country? Or given teachers a raise? Or caught up to every other 'first world' country in the world and lawfully required that every American get 4 weeks paid vacation per work year?
So when I look at all the celebrating taking place because we caught some terrorist that after a decade of war probably doesn't really matter any more, when I look at the lives lost on both sides and the alternatives we could have pursued, I can't help but think about what it feels like to me that America actually accomplished without a bitterness towards the futility of the past decade.
Hurray. We got Osama, who I will agree was essentially evil incarnate. But I can't help but feel we've lost way more than we bargained for to get here after all this time.
So, Bin Laden is dead.
I can't help but wonder, if we were to go back to 9 years ago and ask the majority of Americans what they'd be willing to give up in exchange for the death of a terrorist, what do you think they would say?
If we had to spend one million bucks to get a hold of Bin Laden, would you be willing to pay it? How about a billion? One hundred billion? How about 3 trillion dollars? How about the invasion of two countries over the course of nearly a decade resulting in the longest war in US history? How about the death of 5885 of our troops and tens of thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis?
What about the eroding of American freedoms with the passage of the Patriot Act (which 78% of the time is used for conducting drugs raids and not counter-terrorism), the searches conducted by the TSA which have never resulted in the capture of a terrorist but instead have led to children getting stripped in public and pregnant women and the elderly being nearly molested.
How about all this while we have a hurricane that destroys the southern states and an oil spill that contaminates its waters. Don't forget the bank bailout that resulted in golden parachute bonuses for CEOs and 10% unemployment for everyone else.
All that to fight a War On Terror -- a war on an idea. Not on a country or a an army or a group of people, we were trying to crush an idea which we already learned we couldn't do sometime between 1955 and 1975.
What if instead, assuming that the average cost of tuition in America is $30,000 for four years, we had sent 100,000,000 Americans to college for free? Or built a train system? Or built levees in New Orleans? Or insured every American in the country? Or given teachers a raise? Or caught up to every other 'first world' country in the world and lawfully required that every American get 4 weeks paid vacation per work year?
So when I look at all the celebrating taking place because we caught some terrorist that after a decade of war probably doesn't really matter any more, when I look at the lives lost on both sides and the alternatives we could have pursued, I can't help but think about what it feels like to me that America actually accomplished without a bitterness towards the futility of the past decade.
Hurray. We got Osama, who I will agree was essentially evil incarnate. But I can't help but feel we've lost way more than we bargained for to get here after all this time.
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