The year's last classes were seasonally themed for the children and
involved more crafting than English. That had not been in the contract. Had I
been asked for a crafting demonstration in my interview I'd never made it off
American soil.
The day was a blur of red, green, and white, felt, glue, and confetti.
Of the fifteen minutes between my classes, I usually spend five minutes in
the bathroom relieving myself of coffee and another five at the vending machine
getting more coffee. This leaves me the final five minutes to prepare for my
next class. This is enough to allow me to learn the lesson's objective and
memorize enough of the lesson's outline that I can wing it.
Looking back I should've been more aware of my gross crafting ignorance and
used my prep time more wisely. After all, I'd spent five years of my childhood
failing elementary school crafting 101. It seems five minutes may have been an
inadequate amount of time to overcome my lifelong difficulties with skills like
securing thread so that the anchor knot doesn't pull through the fabric when
you sew your first loop, or gluing cotton to felt so that it actually sticks
long enough to dry, or folding a letter into even thirds with only a few
attempts so that it doesn't end as a disfigured wad stuffed into an envelope.
My kindergarten aged students were making cards with a Christmas tree on
them. First I modeled how to build the
tree in only two, easy steps that even a five year old can handle. First I
glued my brown rectangle of construction paper at the base of the card, the
stump of the Christmas tree. Then I modeled how to tier three green triangles
atop the stump, overlapping them to give the appearance of a robust fir.
As I was handing out the pre-cut
triangles I became alarmed to find out that I only had enough green triangles
for 2 and 1/3 of my seven students. I spent several minutes throwing upon
drawers and shaking bags upside down. I concluded that a child amongst us may
have stolen the other triangles. I tried to lure the thief out of hiding with
promises of stickers in exchange with the return of the triangles. When that I
failed appealed to the snitches by making the same promise for the name of the
thief. Their ears perked up at the mention of stickers, but they said nothing
but rapid-fire Japanese back and forth with each other and shrugged. I
concluded that either I had a group of exceptionally tight-lipped kindergartners
or that they simply didn't understand any of the English I was using beyond
"many stickers".
It would be another several minutes of bribes and coercion before I
realized that the instructions only called for a single triangle per tree.
Seven triangles for seven trees. It all made sense, now, though I maintain that
a single green triangle makes for a very shabby, Charlie Brown tree.
I tried to remedy my mistake by peeling off the extra triangles from the
cards of the students who'd received them. Unfortunately, the glue had already
begun to dry. This led to tearing and a quite a lot of fuss.
I resorted to cutting more triangles from some outdated flyers that'd been
lying around in my teaching box. I instructed them to simply flip it over and
use the blank backside.
"Ohhh, look everyone, white paper. Now we have snow covered
trees!"
I nearly got away away with this whitewash. Unfortunately, the application
of glue made the paper transparent and left 4 and 2/3 of the Christmas trees
displaying snippets of November's newsletter.
I desperately began cutting out
impromptu ornaments from colored paper scraps in the hopes that if the students
glued on enough, the ornaments might cover, or at least, detract from the
tree's font.
I rightfully didn't trust my students with scissors so the workload fell on
me. But I'd devised no distribution system for these ornaments and the students
mobbed over them as they fell from my scissors. In this chaotic environment,
the strong wrested possession of the ornaments from the weak, leaving the weak
to pick their noses and poke at each others' genitals and butts. The look of
disappointment on their parents' faces through all of this was only surpassed
at the lesson's end, when their children presented their shitty cards.
I found sweet respite in the middle of my day with my youngest student, a
four year old girl. There were no complex crafts; I simply I read an unknown
holiday story while she colored in a picture of a winter wonderland using only
the red crayon. Dad sat on a cushion, drifting between day dreaming and
repeating the words from my story that he remembered from middle school
English. Besides the holiday theme, it was like any other class.
The calamity resumed with my preteen students. Our lesson centered around
sewing stockings.
I'd only ever tried sewing once, nearly a decade before. There'd been a
tear in the seat of my pants so I'd found my mom's sewing kit and chosen a nice
navy thread. When I'd finished the hack job and tried on my pants not only did
the stitching rip apart, but somehow the hole tore even wider. The pants had
been ruined
The modeling of the activity included lots of accidental self-pricking. It
was only helpful as a demonstration of the need to exercise caution with sharp
objects. Though it may have also demonstrated the proper pronunciation of
several mild English curse words. A merciful student took my stocking and got it started for me. The rest of
the students followed her lead and began.
After the classes the students exchanged treats with each other. I received
a decent haul, too. There were the usual chocolates and sweets, including a
lollipop shaped like a turd. I also received some strangely flavored seaweed.
Perhaps funky seaweed is the Japanese equivalent of a fruitcake. I waited until
I was home to throw out the seaweed. It sat in the garbage alongside one card
of a slumping Christmas tree and one stocking that'd been mostly stapled
together.
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