When I first arrived at my school in Gunma my co-teacher, Sakamoto-sensei, was apprehensive. I was very different from all the other foreign teachers he’d worked with. 1) I had more years of teaching experience than he (he had been shown my résumé), while most were new university grads for whom this was their first real job. 2) I am taller than him by at least ten centimeters. And he has a complex about his height. 3) I am older than him. In the Confucian scheme of things, the older person has the upper hand. Then again, also according to Confucius, men are superior to women, so whatever. And 4) I am Black. New territory for him. So, until he got to know me and got more comfortable, Sakamoto-sensei was extra-careful not to offend.
The special education class at that junior high school only had two third grade (same as grade nine) students. Early on, I noticed that my co-teacher made an absolute minimal effort to teach their classes. He was content to let them do the same exercises and play the same games over and over because “They’re not taking the entrance exam to get into one of the better high schools, so they don’t need English” (as if tasking an entrance exam for a competitive high school is the only reason to learn foreign language). So, although we planned and taught all the other classes together, I took over planning and teaching of this class, and he was happy to let me. He’d show up late to class, do grading for another class, and sometimes leave early.
I told him, in the most diplomatic way I could, that if I were the mother of a child with a learning disability, I’d want his teachers to put forth their best effort. Both students happen to be only children of single mothers. I even brought that up. These boys are precious to their mothers. We should do our best for them. It was like talking to the wall, so I quit trying to convince him and channeled my energy to working with them. I was dismayed to discover that this is not an uncommon way of thinking among educators, in general, and my co-workers in particular. Japan is a place where uniformity is of utmost importance, so if you learn differently, you aren’t going to find a whole lot of understanding or accommodations. For the most part, the Japanese educational system is one-size-fits-all, and if you don’t fit the mold you’re considered mendokusai…troublesome, bothersome and not worth the extra work.
Instead of standing over the boys, I’d sit between them so I could help them with their assignments as needed. One morning, in my first month there, I sat between Junki and Kotaro as they did their work. At one point, my arm got tangled up with Kotaro’s and he accidentally marked my forearm with his pencil. He promptly grabbed his eraser and began to rub my arm with it. Mr. Sakamoto, who hadn’t been paying attention to us, looked up in horror at that moment and, not knowing the context of Kotaro’s actions, immediately commanded him to stop and to apologize. I tried to tell the man to calm down, the kid wasn’t trying to erase my brown skin, he was only erasing a pencil mark, but he was so busy scolding him that he could not hear me. The confused boy apologized to me and didn’t know why. Being new to the country, I didn’t even know how to say “It’s okay,” in Japanese. So I said it in English and hoped that, he would understand my tone, if not my words.
March 5, 2020
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