Teaching with Tim

A chasm wide enough for a camry.

The first time I noticed something unusual about high school gender relations in Japan was before one of my classes in September.  While socializing before the bell, all the boys stood together and all the girls stood together.  No exceptions.  No outliers daring to cross over.  Just completely separate.  When I do a group conversation activity, where students are supposed to mill around and talk to each other in English, they usually segregate themselves in the same way.  I have to practically beg them to talk to one another: “Boys, talk to girls!  Girls, talk to boys!”  The school itself seems to actually encourage the segregation.  The required school uniform is very gendered: girls wear grey skirts and white blouses; boys wear dark slacks and sport coats.  There are no school dances whatsoever.  PE is always separated by gender.  And, of course, this reflects the cultural climate of the country as a whole.  With my first-year students, I’m assigning a cooking project—they have to make a food of their choice and teach their classmates to make it in English.  When I first gave the assignment, two girls came up to me and said, “The boys don’t cook.”  They told me this as a serious statement of fact—something they wanted to make sure their foreigner teacher knew.  And cooking is just one of many activities that remains heavily divided by gender in Japan.  I’ve never seen a female bus driver.  Or a female school administrator. 

There has been some U.S. media buzz about this phenomenon—I have seen several articles in The New York Times about Japan’s relatively slow progress on the gender equity front.  It’s a common truism that the high school years are as the best years of a Japanese woman’s life—because they experience a sense of freedom that is not repeated for them in adult life.   Yet when asked to tell me about their goals, many of the high school girls I teach simply say “getting married” and “having children”.  When I taught girls about the same age in the U.S., answers like “become a lawyer” were more common.  Of course, teenagers often just spit back the expectations that are handed to them.   I don’t know enough about gender issues in Japan to jump into the fray here with opinions and prescriptions.  As a teacher, I try to treat boys and girls equally and have high expectations for both—but as a visitor to Japan, I try to be an observer, not a critic.  And I don’t want to paint an overly simplistic picture.  I’ve heard there has been some improvement on gender issues in Japan in the past ten years, and I know many high school girls here who are very outspoken and conscious of their potential as young women.  There are some deep cultural forces at play in all this that I don’t completely understand.  And besides, the U.S. is no egalitarian utopia, either.  But I guess there’s enough of the American feminist movement in me to make me wonder about what I see sometimes. 

 I’m not winning any crusades for women’s rights, but teaching and Japanese daily life are continue to treat me well.  Here are a couple of recent shots:    

Fall colors during a hiking trip in Gifu Prefecture

A common sight of the season: persimmons hanging outside to sweeten.

This man DOES cook: Ron-Sensei produces another masterpiece of Asian cuisine.

Meito High School as seen from my apartment balcony

     I guess I haven’t written much about my day-to-day teaching life yet.  Initially, I found it hard to characterize because it feels so fragmented compared to last year.  I see 12 different groups of students over the course of each week.  8 of those groups I see only once.  These are “general majors”—high school students whose focus is not English.  They are designated by letters (1A, 1B, 1C, etc.), so previous American teachers have referred to them as “the alphabet soup classes.”  Because I see them so seldom, it is hard to learn their names or keep track of where each class left off.  There is one group of students who, because of class cancellations and infrequent meetings, I have still only seen four times—though I have been teaching for nearly two months.  The three groups of “English Majors” I see twice per week (one group per grade—high school in Japan being three years long, starting at the equivalent of the U.S. sophomore year).  And I also have a group of four students in my public speaking elective, which meets three times per week. 

     It’s tough to talk about my experience as a teacher here generally—I work with some students who know a lot of English, and some students who know almost none.  There are some groups I know well because I see them often, and other groups who still feel unfamiliar when they walk through the door.  Some are extremely studious and motivated—particularly first-year students—while others seem distracted.  My third-year (high school senior) students are completely consumed by their upcoming college exam, and they seem to have little patience with homework for other classes.  They are good kids, but mentally a few of them have already checked out of high school. 

My class sizes are small (no more than 22 students), and unlike many other teachers at Meito, I am always teaching in the same room.  In Japanese schools, generally speaking, teachers move from room to room, while students stay in the same room.   But, perhaps because Meito wanted to accommodate its visiting American teachers, Ron and I have classes that come to us.   Also, almost half of our teaching day is planning periods— this is fairly standard for Japanese high school teachers, and I must say that I like it.

     That’s the general shape of things, but I guess it still doesn’t give you a picture of the day-to-day reality.  So, though it may be way more detail than anyone really wants to know, here’s a snapshot of what I did yesterday:

7:30: Walked from apartment to Meito (5 minutes).  Took off shoes at the door and switched to slippers.  Deposited street shoes in my personal cubby (#40) in the massive shoe storage area at the door.  I ordered my “bento” (school box lunch) in the office—410 yen.  Greeted students (many of whom are already at school studying) and colleagues with Ohayo Gozaimasu (good morning).  When a male speaker says this phrase, it often shortened to something that sounds more like “zay-massss.” 

7:45-8:40: Finished planning the day in the teacher office.  At Meito, all the teachers spend their off-periods working in a big communal office, complete with green-tea dispensing water cooler. 

8:45-9:35: A musical bell sounds across the campus and lets everyone know that school has begun.  I taught my speech elective.  We did a warm up where the students had to give a short speech in English to their teacher about why they forgot their homework, then went to the computer lab and worked on outlining and researching the persuasive speeches they’re working on.

9:45-10:35: Taught my third-year English majors.  We started out by talking about gerunds and doing some exercises from the textbook, then did some conversation exercises where they had to interview one another about their zodiac signs.  We spent the last twenty minutes talking about Halloween—I showed them some pictures from Halloween in the U.S. and a short national geographic video clip on the history of Halloween, and then we played a game that involved practicing imperative phrases and eating candy.  Homework was to write about whether they believed in ghosts in their English journals. 

10:45-11:35: Planning period.  Graded journals and made copies of worksheets.

11:45-12:35: Had lunch with another teacher in the office and practiced my Japanese while she practiced her English.  (My Japanese is much, much worse than her English.)  Mostly we stuck to simple topics—food, what we did on the weekend, holidays.  One teacher, fluent in both Japanese and English, noticed this and jokingly suggested “The American and Japanese health insurance systems” as our next topic.  We took him up on it—I didn’t pick up many specifics, but I learned enough about the Japanese system to know that it’s probably better than ours.    

12:35-1:10: Met with a third-year student and gave her a mock-college entrance interview.  Many students have to complete college interviews in English, so they’re eager for practice.

1:15-2:05: Team-taught an English essay class.  I don’t have to actually plan for this class—I’m just the token native English speaker who grades all the essays. 

2:15-3:05:  Taught one of my “alphabet soup” classes.   We went over the homework, then played some games where the kids had to practice the different forms of “can” in English (could, couldn’t, can’t).  One of them involved collecting signatures from classmates in a timed race, and they seemed to like it. 

3:15-4:30: Hosted my English / German “language club”.  Every teacher at Meito is strongly encouraged to run at least one “club,” and this is mine—we practiced a few German phrases, then watched a kids’ movie (Holes) in English and talked about it. 

4:40: Left school and walked to the dentist for a check up on the wisdom tooth I had pulled yesterday.  The total cost of the extraction was the equivalent of US $21.  The same procedure in Seattle would have probably been over $300. 

Evening: Went for a run, made dinner, studied some Japanese. 

A standard work day, I guess—though the schedule changes, and every day brings a new twist.  It still feels like everything is in flux here, and my teaching life still hasn’t really taken on a consistent shape.  But I’m enjoying it—good kids, helpful colleagues, and lots of opportunities to learn and grow.  Loneliness and homesickness still lurk around the edges of things, creeping in during quiet moments, but nothing I can’t handle so far.     

Nagoya from the “Sky Tower”

Nagoya is starting to feel like home–sort of.  People can get used to anything.  Already, things that used to seem new, exotic, and unfamiliar have begun the fade to beige—they’re part of the routine now.  A few examples:

• Hitting my head on low doorways. 
• Sorting all my garbage into different bins for burnables, non-burnables, and two types of recyclables.
• Not being able to read menus in restaurants.
• Trying foods I can’t identify.
• Saying itadakimasu (literally “I’m ready to receive”) before beginning to eat.   
• Always cleaning my hands with a hot towel before eating. 
• Eating with chopsticks.
• Never having paper towels in public restrooms.  
• Keeping a personal towel on hand at all times.
• Taking the bus and subway everywhere.
• Knowing that the bus and the subway will arrive on time.
• Bringing an umbrella when its raining or even looks like rain.
• Being one of the only people I know who uses a rain jacket.    
• Being lost all the time. 
• Taking my shoes off in my apartment, at school, in traditional Japanese restaurants, and just about everywhere.
• Bowing (or at least dipping my head) in a wide variety of social contexts.
• Being stared at by small children.
• Leaving my laptop, projector, and other valuables unsecured at school, confident that no one will take them. 
• Avoiding bicycles on the sidewalk.
• Looking to the left first when crossing the street.   
• Carrying coins in a coin purse. 
• Being welcomed and greeted and offered help constantly. 

All of this now seems normal to a certain extent.  More subtle differences—like the contrasts between Western and Eastern social norms—will take longer to master.  Referring to myself in the third person in conversation and calling colleagues the equivalent of “Mr. Schlosser” (“Sato-san, Suzuki-san,” etc.) even when we’re at a party still feels weird. But I already feel pretty comfortable with Japanese life.  There’s a safety and civility to the culture that I appreciate.  The food is delicious, the people are courteous, and the country is beautiful—there have been a few times when I’ve felt that Japan is only a few short steps away from paradise.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to call it home in the true sense of that word, and I guess it’s possible that there will come a time when everything fades to beige—when the excitement is gone and I just miss friends, family, and familiar things.  Already, especially when I’m alone in my apartment, I often have those feelings.  But the excitement of working with the students at Meito and exploring Nagoya still has the power to put that on the backburner most of the time.   Here are a few recent shots:   

Students give a presentation on Japanese pop star Kaera Kimura

Moving the god's carriage--part of last weekend's Nagoya festival

The paradisal world of Meiji-Mura, a full-scale recreation of Meiji-era Japan

Kyoto Locals

Whenever I read about other people’s experiences abroad, they always seem to be defined by two opposite poles: excitement and alienation.  Broadly speaking, I guess the two extremes look something like this:

Excitement: I’m far away from home!   Everything’s different!  I can’t read anything! 

Alienation: I’m far away from home.  Everything’s different.  I can’t read anything.

So far, I’ve managed to keep the exclamation points in my Japan experience.  I’ve pushed myself to meet new people, explore new places, and learn the language, usually managing to resist the temptation of retreat into a cocoon of American DVDs and pizza.  However, this apparent display of self-control has mostly been enabled by the fact that I still don’t have the internet at my apartment.  The story of why I don’t have the internet is painfully boring—suffice it to say that language and culture barriers have played a role.  So I can either sit on my bed and feel sorry for myself, or I can go outside and do something.  The latter is just the more attractive option. 

My most recent expedition was a weekend spent in Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara—I saw so much so fast that it was almost overwhelming.  A few times in Kyoto the sense of other-worldliness was so strong that I actually felt disoriented—Where am I?  Is this place real? Geisha still walk around in the streets?  Stone footpaths between buildings that look old enough to be stuffed with samurai?  I guess I didn’t really believe that such a place could still exist. 

I put together some pictures and video clips from my first month in Japan in this quick slideshow.

I made myself a promise when I came to Japan that my number one goal was to Be Alive.  I’m prone to getting stuck in my head—to letting experience number two and experience number three slip by while I’m still trying to figure out what experience number one meant.  Japan has been such a flood of new experiences and growth that the very idea of picking through it all and pulling out something notable to analyze is totally overwhelming at the moment.   But Meito just had its school festival—three days of food, performances, and competitions that the students prepare for all year—and I thought I’d at least share a few pictures.  I had some technical problems with the editing at the end, but this slideshow (which includes the goofy festival theme song in the background) gives you a taste.

From the American Airlines in-flight tracker...

There are times when life seems to drag by slowly, and times when it seems to be rushing by so fast that you can’t keep up.  For me, the past 48 hours have been in the second category. 

It began at gate 42 in LAX, waiting for my flight to Tokyo.  A large group of Japanese middle school students, all in identical blue T-shirts, started filing in.   They had been in L.A. on some kind exchange program, and they were chatting in Japanese so fast that I could hardly believe their words were actually intelligible to one another.  A clear thought crossed my mind: It has begun. 

I ended up sitting next to one of the students on the plane, and I practiced a bit of Japanese with him.   He was incredibly polite and mature—“Jozu desu!” (You’re very good!) he said, falsely complimenting my terrible Japanese.  He listened patiently to my inane Japanese 101 conversation starters (Where are you from?  Did you like America?) and answered them in slow, clearly enunciated Japanese that I still failed to understand.  To my American middle school teacher eyes, his politeness seemed so beyond his years I dubbed him “Little Grandfather” in my head. He and his classmates wanted to grill me on English idioms, and they asked me what “Excuse you” meant.  I saw this as my first teaching test, and I tried to explain when one would say “Excuse me” versus “Excuse you.”  I ended up resorting to sloppy ballpoint pictures of stick figures farting and excusing each other.  They liked that (“Very exciting!” said Little Grandfather).  I went on to explain the definition of the English idiom “cut the cheese,” which they promised to memorize. 

After 11 hours in flight, I caught my first glimpse of Japan’s central island, Honshu, emerging bright and lush under the clouds.  “There’s a lot of green!” Little Grandfather told me.  He and his classmates erupted in applause when the plane touched down in Tokyo.  A country they’re happy to return to, I thought. That’s a good sign.  And so far I’ve found that they had good reason to be happy.  My first impression has been of an advanced, clean country full of polite and thoughtful people. I know that this simplistic assessment will change and evolve with time, but for the moment I’m in love with the place.  A few quick examples:

• My Japan Air flight to Nagoya was delayed—from 6:00 to 6:05.  The agent at the ticketing gate came out at 6:01 and apologized profusely in both English and Japanese for the fact that the plane would not be ready for another four minutes.  Then, at exactly 6:05, he and four other JAL ticketing agents came out and bowed in perfect unison before ushering us aboard.  We ended up arriving in Nagoya five minutes early.  
  
• An airport employee in Nagoya walked the entire length of the terminal to personally get me the change I needed for a 10,000 yen note in order to operate the passport picture machine. 
  
• When I dropped my suitcase in an elevator, the woman next to me rushed to pick it up, putting down all of her own bags in the process.
  
• Store workers are endlessly courteous.  At the entrance to every store I enter, whether staffed by an elderly woman or a teenager with long bleached hair, I’m greeted with Irrashaimase! (Welcome!) and all the help I could ever need.  (The only exception to this I’ve found so far is McDonald’s).  
  
• A man I asked for help finding the subway station near my house not only seemed happy to meet my request, but actually followed me there to make sure I made it. 
  
• The teachers from Meito who picked me up arrived with a typed schedule detailing what I would be doing for each hour of the day.  They had prepared an entire folder full of materials specifically for me, and they spent the whole day doing everything from helping me get my registration card to teaching me how to operate my shower.    
  

I guess some part of me held onto the naïve expectation that everything in Japan would be a little different but basically the same.  The influence of the west is clearly visible, but the unfamiliar is still outweighing the familiar for me.  A few culture shock moments:     

• I was sitting on the toilet in my hotel room.  Curious about a little button with a picture of a sprinkler on it, I press it.  Luckily, I had heard about this unique sanitation device before, so I wasn’t shocked enough to jump up screaming.  But it was still an unusual place to be squirted with a high-pressure blast of hot water.
  
• The “pillow” (stone) in my hotel “room” (closet) was just one its unusual features—the electrical system was impossible to decipher.  Switches everywhere.  Combinations of up to three different buttons required to turn on lights.  I ended up stumbling around with my REI headlamp and iPod, unable to turn on a single one of the room’s many lights.  I knew they worked, but they just wouldn’t work for me.     
  
• Here’s a conversation I had with a woman in an airport elevator.  I’ve translated it from the Japanese to the best of my ability:

Woman in Elevator: Where did you come from?

Me: Los Angeles.

Woman: Something something something.

Me: Yes?

Woman: Something?

Me: Yes.

Woman: Somethingelse?

Me: Yes!

Woman: Something!  Something. Somethingelseveryfast.

Me: Yes! Thank You!

Woman: You’re welcome.

I wish I were writing about all this in some other form besides bulleted lists, but everything is happening so fast, and I feel like I have enough material for a hundred blog posts. Not all of the culture shock has been fun—I got carsick from driving on the left side of the road, I’m still not proficient with chopsticks, and it’s so hot and humid that I feel like I’m losing a gallon of water in sweat every five minutes—but I’m still in awe of this place.  Of course I have heard about the less awe-inspiring elements of the culture.  The social distance that all that politeness actually implies.  The difficulty getting students to speak and think independently in class.  The challenge of learning the language.  The bureaucracy.  The closet nationalism.  The misogyny and xenophobia.  But I want to hold onto my excitement about this experience, however naïve it may be, because I believe that new experiences often give you what you expect of them, and if I work hard to learn about this place and these people, I’ll get more back.  Maybe I’ll end up looking back on this post as I sometimes do on my reports from Los Angeles—how bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I sounded, how silly and idealistic—but I know that the experience can go one of two ways (or anywhere in between): on the one hand, you can end up giving up on the language, spending all your time with other foreigners, and feeling like a permanent outsider.  On the other hand, you can learn the language, make Japanese friends, and get an inside view of a fascinating culture.  So my glowing assessment of what I’ve seen so far is, in a way, a defense mechanism—a way of keeping my focus on sustaining the effort it will take to make the most of this.  I know there will be times when I miss my family, my friends, readable street signs, and microwavable burritos.  I know I’ll get lonely.  But for the moment I’m feeling good about being here, and I want to hold onto that for as long as I can.    

Unlike last summer, which I spent methodically tracking the reading and writing I completed each day, this summer has felt like an unstructured blur.  In just one more week, I’ll be leaving the familiar routines of Seattle for something completely new–my teaching contract with Meito High School in Nagoya, Japan, lasts for two years.  I’m optimistic and excited, but still not sure what to expect.  At this point three years ago, when I was getting ready to leave for Los Angeles and Teach for America, I had massive packets of information on what to do and what to expect: online surveys to complete, teaching instructional seminars to listen to, papers to write, and even a novel by a former Teach for America corps member to read and reflect on.  I’ve chosen to stave off anxiety about teaching in Japan by attempting to create a similar preparatory regimen for myself— I took introductory Japanese class at UCLA and worked with a tutor I found on craigslist for about ten sessions, I’ve purchased random U.S. tourist knick-knacks to give away in Japan, and with help from friends I’ve put together a nice collection of Japanese paraphernalia (maps, guidebooks, etc.).  But I still feel woefully underprepared—a feeling that I’m now trying to fight by peppering these languorous Seattle days with my own home-brewed cultural immersion program.  It looks something like this:

• Read Shogun
• Watch corny 80s-era Japanese learning videos on youtube 
• Look up Japanese bands and podcasts on iTunes
• Check out Japanese movies at library (best one so far: Kurasawa’s Seven Samurai). 
• Eavesdrop on Japanese people in Seattle’s international district
• Practice introducing myself in the mirror (Japanese for Busy People: “A typical bow is performed with both feet together, the hands flat on the thighs (for men) or crossed in front (for women), and the torso inclined at a 15- to 45-degree angle.  The eyes remain open during the bow, and the bowing person’s line of sight moves with his or her torso rather than staying fixed on the other person”).

Not exactly systematic.  I’m determined not to be an “ugly American,” bumbling around with barbaric manners and a self-satisfied grin, but I’m also starting to accept the fact that I won’t be able to avoid bumbling entirely.   And when I’m not worrying about walking straight through a paper-thin wall or tracking mud all over someone’s Meiji-era carpet, I’m spending time with friends and family, which has been wonderful.  A few photos from my recent Northwest adventures are below.   I still suffer the usual mid-twenties-life-angst (Am I going in the right direction?  Do I want to stay in this career forever? Should I go to grad. school?  Does my hair look O.K.?) but a steady hum of excitement and preparation is mostly drowning out all that existential terror for now. 

Next blog will be my first report from Nagoya.       

View of Rainier from the top of Pinnacle Peak. My friend Craig and I had a great week of Northwest sightseeing.

BIG rattlesnake spotted in Eastern Washington on a hike with my friend John. The snake rattled in a very nasty way and I think I was about six inches from getting a calf-full of fangs.

A moment's pause before taking the plunge into this frigid alpine lake in the North Cascades.

Costa Rican Coffee Fields

At some level, I was unwilling to believe that my trip to Costa Rica was actually going to happen until I had all the logistics out of the way—plane tickets purchased, bags packed, anti-diarrheal prescription obtained, etc.  So it wasn’t until I stepped off the plane in San Jose that it dawned on me I would be spending the next week in Central American coffee fields.  Earthwatch, a major environmental non-profit, organized the trip, and the Louise H. and David S. Ingalls Foundation funded my particular trip with an “educator’s fellowship”; the idea is that I will take what I learned about sustainability, biological diversity, and fair trade back to my classroom and share it with my students.

Costa Rica has a population of 4.5 million people, 80% of whom are Catholic.  The country has no military and has historically chosen to invest in education and healthcare instead—citizens are justifiably proud of this fact, and it was explained to me no less than five times by everyone from cab drivers to coffee farmers.  There are two well-defined seasons in the country: rainy and dry.  We came during the rainy season, which meant at least one explosive downpour every afternoon.  We worked in the Los Santos region in the central highlands; Tarrazu county (pop. 15,142) has been home to coffee production since colonists arrived from Spain in 1850 and started planting.  Worldwide, coffee is the fifth-most widely traded commodity and is second only to oil in the global futures market–crazy, huh?  Currently, coffee production in the Tarrazu region is very “instensive,” meaning heavy use of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.  Earthwatch organized an ongoing research project in the area in order to help address some of the problems this poses.  For example, in part because the coffee in the region is planted on extremely steep grades, about 70% of the fertilizer used in the area is washed into local rivers and streams, and Costa Rica’s coffee growing regions have some of the highest rates of cancer associated with pesticide use.  Furthermore, the farming practices currently used by many farmers in the region are degrading the soil and contributing to wider environmental problems that are affecting local mammal, bird, and insect species.  The conflict between coffee fields and forests in the region has serious implications for the long-term environmental stability of the area. 

So that’s the big picture.  But a typical day for me in Costa Rica went something like this:

6 AM: A knock on the door of my cabin.  Shawn, a teacher/triathlete from Pittsburg wakes me up for a morning run through the small town we’re staying in.    

Showerhead of Doom

6:30 AM: I get back to our cabin and my roommate announces that our electric showerhead shocked him.  I take my shower extremely quickly.

7 AM: Breakfast with our Earthwatch team leaders (Sebastian & Natalia), two University of Washington researchers, and ten team members.  When it came to meals on this trip, there were three constants: they were always homemade, they were always good, and they always involved beans and rice. 

7:30 AM: We get ready for a day in the field with 100% deet, 45 SPF sunscreen, and duct tape around the ankles of our pants to keep the bugs out.  At the beginning of the trip, one of our team members warned us about “chiggers”—bugs that crawl under your skin and stay there until they’re done eating—and duct tape became a popular fashion accessory for the rest of the week. 

8AM: We pile out of the Earthwatch Land Cruiser (nicknamed The Tortuga for its tortoise-like shape) and into our first farm.  By the end of the week, we had our data-gathering routine down pat.  The goal of the research was to determine how productive and healthy each farm was and then cross-section that data with information about how the farm was being managed (fertilizers, pesticides).  The researchers would usually pick three “transects”—15 meter x 15 meter sections of farmland—for us to study.  In pairs, most of the team was occupied measuring plant productivity.  To do this for one large coffee plant usually took about ten minutes.  First, we measured the height and circumference of each “axle” (vertical trunk), then we counted every bean on every 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, 15^th, and 17^th “node” (branch) down from the top of the plant for at least three plants per transect.  The rest of the group took soil samples and collected mulch in plastic bags. If that sounds tedious, I can assure you that it often was, but we had a great group of team members and the time usually passed pretty quickly. 

3 PM: In a daze, we stumble out of our last coffee field and into the Tortuga.  First, we drive back to the Earthwatch lab to sort all the organic matter (earthworms, sticks, etc.) out of our soil samples. We drive over to the Coope Dota coffee processing plant, where we learn about how coffee is prepared for export. 

5PM: Back at the cabins, team leaders Sebastian and Natalia give us a lecture on sustainability and fair trade.  One fascinating fact: a single centimeter of good topsoil takes over 100 years to generate naturally (underlining the importance of discouraging farming practices that exacerbate erosion). 

7PM: After dinner, it’s time for Gin Rummy and Texas Hold ‘em.  I lose all my colones.

10PM: Collapse into bed and get ready to start the whole process over again in 8 short hours. 

That was a typical day, and it was definitely exhausting at times, but the unique combination of people and place actually made this week one of the best experiences of my life.  Unable to really “summarize” my days in the field, I was often reduced to jotting down bullet-point lists of things from each day that I wanted to remember.  Here is a typical example: 

• Today I realized anew how hard so many people work for so little. 
• Sebastian: “Hey guys, I had trouble getting through airport security the other day” (Why?) (flexing): “Because of these guns and this six pack.”  
• Dinner at Natalia’s home.  Her dad’s dog is trained to find his wallet no matter where he puts it.  Once, he puts it inside the wheel hub of his truck and it still manages to scramble up the tire on all four hot-dog-length legs and grab it.    
• Discussion today after watching a film on fair trade.  I think I will remember it as the soul of the trip—people from all walks of life and all generations essentially in agreement that the system of incentives in our culture needs to be changed, and that education is a major part of the solution.  If only there were a similar spirit and awareness among more people worldwide. 
• Sebastian, while sorting through piles of dead leaves and mulch: “I think the whole purpose of this is knowing a little bit more… learning how to work in this unknown universe.   Although it’s a little bit philosophical, I really believe that.  It’s strange to think that we’re all just part of the carbon cycle.” 
• Natalia on why we should use the bathroom in the field: “Go Green!” 

There are plenty of specific messages I would like to share with my students from the trip about fair trade and the importance of sustainable agriculture.  But one of the hidden messages was that working hard for something you believe in is extremely satisfying.  This was evident not only in the positive energy of our team leaders, but in the positive energy of our group as a whole.  Spending a week counting beans turned out to be a lot of fun.   

Here’s the video I made to commemorate the experience.

And finally, a delayed addition to my last post:  HERE is the goodbye video I made for my students in June.

In some ways, she could have been anyone’s grandmother.  She worried about stepping outside of the car in the rain without a plastic rain bonnet.  She invited me into her home and proudly showed me her late husband’s awards from work.  When a group of seventh-grade girls gave her a welcoming poster, she praised their artwork effusively.  She was sweet and polite.  Yet at the same time, Elisabeth Mann’s experiences in Auschwitz, where she lost her entire family to Nazi gas chambers, have left an indelible impression upon her, and I find it impossible compare her to anyone else I have ever met.

I left during the middle of the school day to pick her up at her home in Hollywood.  It was a bit like riding in the car with a time capsule.  That sounds crude, I suppose, but it’s hard to express the feeling I got while talking to Ms. Mann.  It was strange to be driving south on the 110, cruising by signs advertising an LA Erotica convention, as she told me about her liberation from Auschwitz in May of 1945.  She was released from a cattle car in a Danish village with nothing but the rags she was wearing.  ”God bless them forever,” she says of the Danes who took her in and gave her bread and milk and cheese.  This is a woman who speaks of Hitler, not as a distant historical madman, but as a living, breathing sociopath whose actions had profound and horrific effects on her life.  She speaks of FDR, Churchill, and the Red Army with the same immediacy.  In fact, every experience that she recounted held this photographic vividness that let me actually see the events and places she was describing.  She is an artist, and currently has a collection of her holocaust-themed paintings on display at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.  I think it was in part because of her very visual artist’s mind that Ms. Mann was able to speak of her experiences in a way that made her lister feel that they were actually living those experiences with her.  And it was clear when she re-told her story that she was re-living the experiences to a certain extent as well: as she spoke to my students, her eyes brimmed with tears several times.  She told the students that hatred is “the most powerful poison in the world,” and that they must be kind to one another.  One of my 8th grade boys, a popular football player who has ben failing my class for months, came up to her afterwards and hugged her, sobbing.  That was just one of the moments from that experience I know that I will never forget.  When I dropped her off back at her home, I was a different person than I had been when I picked her up. 

On this interview she gave to CNN, she tells many of the same stories she told the students.  It’s definitely worth checking out.

So I guess that this is probably my last blog post as an LA middle school teacher.  My life has been a tornado of activity:  selling furniture on Craigslist in preparation for my move back to Seattle for the summer, preparing for my trip to Costa Rica in July, learning Japanese for the big move to Nagoya in August, emptying out my classroom.  But in the midst of all these preparations for the future, I’ve been trying to find ways to value the present, to recognize the fact that an incredibly powerful and important part of my life is coming to an end.  I wrote all of my students short letters of goodbye and encouragement, and I created a video compilation of my pictures and movies from teaching for the past two years that I showed to one of my classes last week.  Several eighth grade girls were crying at the end–and a part of me felt like doing the same thing.  Likewise when the teachers in my department arranged a surprise goodbye party for me.  Looking back at all the words I have generated about my experiences here for the past three years, I now find myself at a loss.   It feels too big for words.  Teaching at Southeast has not always been easy, and I know I still have a long way to go before I become the teacher I really want to be, but I can think of no other single experience that has enriched me more as a person.  I’m excited for Japan next year, and the blog will certainly continue, but I already know that no matter what the future may hold, there will be many times when I miss this place, these people, and this phase of my life.  

A view from Mount Baldy, the tallest mountain in So-Cal, which I finally hiked last weekend.

Crossing a river during our return to Malibu Creek State Park on Saturday

Since my return from Ecuador, every day in the classroom has been packed with activity, and the weeks have been streaming by.  It’s hard to believe that I’m going to be leaving Southeast and Los Angeles forever in less than two months.  I’m excited about Japan, but in some ways the time seems to be going too fast.

A few quick highlights from the classroom.

My 8th Grade honors students recently read the novel Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros.  It’s about a Mexican-American girl named Celaya who grows up in Chicago.  All the family squabbles and fiery characters make it perfect for dramatic re-enactment–particularly by Spanish-speaking kids.  I asked the students to create and perform their own skits about selected chapters from the book.  The result was one of the most memorable periods I have ever spent in the classroom.  They memorized their lines, brought in props, and truly brought the story to life, chasing each other around the room, screaming at one another in Spanish, and fully inhabiting the characters of the book.  Not every skit was Oscar-worthy, of course, but watching them act made me wish that I would just sit down and shut up in my classroom more often.  I’ve been told many times that master teachers are usually facilitators of learning rather than lecturers, and that statement seems more and more true with each year in the classroom. 

One of the many characters who came to life during our skits.

Later on in the same week, I took my journalism students on a field trip to the LA Times building.  I am acquainted with a couple of the journalists there from when I wrote for the now-defunct “Homeroom” latimes.com education blog.  I can’t deny experiencing a bit of an ego boost when we happened to run into one of them during our tour of the building–in front of the students, it made me seem like some kind of insider, especially since she had written the front page article for the Times that was out on the day of our tour, and she took quite a bit of time out of her workday to answer my students’ questions about being a journalist. 

Later, Pulitzer-prize winning car critic Dan Neil walked by, and our tour guide called out “What have you got in your driveway this week, Dan?” 

“A Bentley,” he said, and then rattled off some statistics about its torque and horsepower.  My seventh-grade boys’ jaws dropped.  And from the teaching perspective, the pot just got sweeter when our tour guide told the students that Neil had majored in literature in college and then used his love of good writing to create unforgettable car reviews (Here’s the lead for one of his Pulitzer-winners: “Like many great beauties–Marilyn Monroe, for instance–the new Chrysler Crossfire has a faintly tragic air about it.  And like many consumers of beauty–Frank Sinatra, for instance–I’m only too happy to exploit it.) 

Our tour guide was an affable PR employee who called the kids “dude” and seemed to love his job.  He kept the kids fully engaged.  At one point, though, he pointed out the $600 ergonomically-sound desk chairs used by Times journalists–I felt proud (though also a little embarrassed) when one of my Eagle Times reporters asked why the company is buying desk chairs at $600 apiece instead of hiring back recently laid-off journalists.  Our guide was prepared with a solid response–something about carpal-tunnel syndrome and journalists needing good chairs like construction workers need hard hats–but I still liked the lingering look of journalistic skepticism on my student’s face.

It was amazing, though, how engaged they were.  “Deadlines” are sometimes treated more like ”suggested completion times”  at The Eagle Times, and some students can seem more interested in organizing the “Shout-Outs page (“Lakers Rule!” -Miguel) than in doing any hard-hitting journalism.  But when they were in the Times building, overhearing real reporters conducting intense phone conversations about missing documents and walking past secret service SUVs at the building entrance, they were all business, asking insightful questions and paying close attention.  I’ve been spouting vague aphorisms about what it means to be a “real journalist” all year, and I don’t really know if they’ve paid much attention–but for one day, at least, they showed that they had learned something, and they were embryonic versions of Terry Gross and Steve Lopez: fully engaged and critically aware young reporters.

Jobs: 1 Gates: 0

After an intense visit to the LA Times in the morning, we took a break and went to a Mac Store during the afternoon, where Mac “Geniuses” taught the students how to use media-editing software.

And there’s still more excitement to come this year–I just scheduled Auschwitz survivor (who cameos in the Freedom Writers movie) to come speak to my 7th Graders, who have been reading Elie Wiesel’s Night. I’m probably even more awed and excited about it than my students are.  And my journalism kids will be participating in a city-wide Model United Nations simulation in early June… my only regret is that all of this seems to be rushing by so fast.  For some reason, I keep wondering what to do  with all this.  In other words, how can I wrap up my Los Angeles living and teaching experiences in brown paper and take them with me? 

Our Sierra Club Guide took us to the filming site for MASH on our hike, and the kids goofed around on this rusted-out Korean-War-Era Army Jeep.

My urge to write this blog came out of that nagging question, but looking back at a meandering, scattershot entry, I realize that the impulse itself is probably misguided.  I can’t take time with me.  I have to enjoy it and live it fully while I’m still here–and that lesson, at least, is something I can take with me.