Them Shy Japanese Kids

Posted on October 9, 2013

Japanese students. Ahh, to know what makes them tick. I’m ashamed to say, I too was a bit of an introvert in my “Growing Up” days. I can’t seem remember the reason as to why I was like that, and why I kept on being one till college, but I’m proud to say that I have grown out of my shell and am now a functioning normal human being of society.

But I digress. Now, let’s get back to them shy Japanese kids.

I work at an elementary and junior high school this year, so I get to experience and observe a wide range of different behaviors in the classrooms. And one of the big problems that the homeroom teachers and I have are the children who seem to poop out their energetic genkiness everytime they go to the toilet.

For example, in one of my schools I started out this year with a very fun and lively class full of bright-eyed 5th and 6th graders, their hands always raised so high it’s like staving off a horde of gaikokujin-eating zombies. Wow, I thought, I’m gonna have fun this year! Yeah!

NOT.

Puberty has hit them sometime between June and September, and now almost half the class seem to have decided to make Sadako their role-model. I’m not talking about the hair (although there’s this girl… nevermind), their personality now sucks. Wait, no. Their personality got sucked. By what? I’m guessing their growing body parts.

Darn it. And here I thought having a full room of ghosts in my junior high school is bad enough.

Don’t get me wrong, teaching at both schools is still very fun. Not everyone has mutated… yet. There are still a lot of solid beacons of hope who are enthusiastic to learn English, and those are the kids that I use to anchor my lessons in each class. I do my best for them, and they do try their best to pull their classmates along with them. Mostly unsuccessfully. But anyway, its those earnest kids that makes it all worthwhile.

It goes on both sides of extreme: I have this ultra-wild and crazy class that you have to shout the whole time and still not accomplish anything. Then I also have this silent and dead fish kind of class that won’t budge even if you fart in their bags.

I guess they all have their own reasons on being the way they are. The rambunctious class I understand, they’re young and they have all the energy in the world to spend talking with one another or just fidgeting in their chair and yelling loudly. It’s the silent ones that trouble the teachers much worse. It’s not just one or a handful of quiet students, it seems to be infectious and affects the whole classroom. You can’t make them to do anything.

I just hope this is just a stage and they’ll grow out of it (like me, hee hee). But I pray they do it fast. Their teachers are going to go crazy pretty soon.