HERE!!”
Then I lose control.
“Talk to me! Say anything!! Anything! I don’t care! Just speak! Please,
They remain silent. Maria takes notes. I excuse myself and walk out of the class to take a short breather in the teachers’ room. I sit down and inhale deeply before going back in a little calmer. This time I skip the small talk and get straight to the topic of the lesson-giving directions. Resisting the temptation to give them all directions to my ass so they can kiss it, I make it through the class, but I start having real doubts about my ability to continue this job.
Something is wrong with me. I am not the same champion teacher I was before, one who can handle the weird neuroses of his classes with grace and humor. Someone has swiped my mojo, and I need it back.
Other teachers have started to notice my slip in enthusiasm for the job.
“What’s wrong? You look nauseous,” says Grant, whose limitless gusto in the classroom I’ve always admired.
“I’m out of ideas,” I weep, looking down at my roster of students, fearing the worst. “I can’t bear the thought of facing another classroom full of blank stares. My self-esteem can’t take it.”
I have an advanced discussion class coming up, and I have no idea how I am going to jump-start it. So Grant tells me something he’s been doing in his classes lately.
“You should just walk in, say hello to everyone, then clap your hands together and say something like, ‘OK, someone give me a good topic to start things off with.’ Usually someone will pipe right in with something from the news or about a movie they just saw or something.”
I look at him, dubious.
“That actually works?”
“It does for me, I swear to God. But you have to make sure that your tone is the perfect mix of friendliness and authority. You can do it, I’m sure. You’re really tall.”
I’m not so sure it will work. In a perfect world, one that I’d created, someone would suggest something like “bad TV shows” or “hideous fashion trends” or maybe even “most unique forms of suicide.” But this is far from a perfect world.
Grant senses my apprehension.
“Listen, in a discussion class like that, there’s always at least one person who wants to talk himself silly. If all else fails, just sidle up to that student and ask him for a suggestion. Once they’re forced to speak, they’ll give you something good you can use. Then you should clap your hands again and say, ‘OK, everyone please get together with the person next to you and talk on this subject for three minutes, then we’ll all come back together and share stories.’”
I look down at my list of students. All the usual suspects. Shizue and Takehiro, an old married couple, both in their seventies, who lived in England a long time ago and still take English class together once a week. There’s Kumiko, a college student who checks herself in her pocket mirror at least six times every class. There’s sweet Kayoko, a young travel agent who looks exactly like Minnie Mouse. And Tomo, a surly, aloof, soon-to-graduate high school senior who is intensely obsessed with J. D. Salinger. But there’s one name on the roster I’ve never seen before. Naomi. Hmm. She could be just the wild card I need. I decide to take Grant’s advice.
I walk in, say hello, write my name and the class number on the board as always, clap my hands, and say, “OK, let’s get started. Someone give me a good topic.”
Silence. A tumbleweed rustles past the open door.
“Anything’s OK, you guys. Someone just give me an interesting topic.”
I look around the room at each student. The students look around the room at each other and then me. I feel a lip wobble coming on.
Just when I’m about to collapse on the floor at Kayoko’s feet and offer her money just to recite her ABCs, Naomi the new student chimes in. She is very slim and stylishly dressed and has the severe facial angles of a hard- nosed businesswoman or perhaps a television executive. The world seems to hang off her cheekbones. She also has a blank, completely unreadable expression on her face. She could have just killed someone, or she could have just baked a chocolate cake. Who knows? She is a femme fatale, a Japanese Marlene Dietrich, and a stunning contrast to the rest of the class, which is stubbornly cute. Naomi, in her charcoal-gray pinstriped pantsuit, occupies a world of her own, one of film noire ambiance, long white cigarettes, and women in dark glasses with secrets for sale. Yeah, like that.
“You said anything is OK, right?” she asks in a husky voice.
Now, that is a dangerous question in this job, one that can lead down paths you’d rather not tread. But there’s no saying no to a dame with this much moxie. I want to hear what she has to say. Plus, she’s the only one offering to speak. So I nod and say, “Sure.”
“Well,” she intones enigmatically in nearly flawless English, “I was reading the newspaper this morning, and it was interesting, an article I read. It was about a group of women who were drinking in a bar, and they saw a guy and, how do I say, surround him and make him to take his clothes off and they assault him.”
I look around uncomfortably at the pensioners in the class, poor Shizue and normally unflappable Takehiro, but it is impossible to read their expressions. Tomo, the catcher in the rye, looks at Naomi and rolls his eyes like he’s never seen such a total phony in his life. I look back at Naomi and brace myself for the rest of her story.
“At their court, they were punished, but it was much less than if the same thing was done by men to a woman. I thought that was interesting.” She smiles in the manner of Cruella De Ville.
I ask her, “Do you think their punishment should have been more severe?”
“I’m sorry,
“
She pauses and looks around the class that she holds transfixed.
“No,” she says with a giggle and another quick look around the classroom, gauging the reaction.
Wow. Now here is a woman who clearly likes to bait people. Japanese folks are generally quite loath to speak about contentious topics like, say, public sexual assault. Naomi-san is obviously not. What she wants, it is becoming increasingly apparent, is to get a reaction from her fellow countrymen.
She is a troublemaker. A breath of fresh air. I love her. I am afraid of her.
“OK, anyone have a comment?” I ask. No one has a comment. I am uncomfortable because, even after teaching over two million lessons, I still never know exactly how to read a class of Japanese students. They like to preserve the appearance that nothing is wrong, while underneath that polished surface likely lurks irritation, fear, loathing, dread, and/or arousal.
I don’t feel comfortable giving the class this topic to discuss for three minutes and report back on. Naomi wouldn’t mind, but I will not fall into her trap, no, no, no. As much as I appreciate her left-field suggestion, we will talk about civilized things in this class, like good ways to stay cool in the hot Tokyo summer or favorite amusement park rides. Not reverse-gender gang rape. Definitely not reverse-gender gang rape.
“OK, great, thank you, Naomi. Anyone else have an interesting topic?” Shizue quickly comes through with the lifesaving-if boring-suggestion of favorite restaurants in Tokyo. The next three minutes go by without a hitch.
After this warm-up activity, I broach the topic of the first hour of the lesson, which, in our appalling textbook, is “Expressing Thanks.” Now, the good thing about these high-level classes is that, once the class gets warmed up, the students should be doing most of the talking, making the teacher’s role that of advisor and confidante. Just give them some things to discuss and let ’em go. But don’t be fooled. It’s harder than it sounds. After all, these students have taken a lot of lessons by the time they reach this level. So the threat of repeating an activity that a student has done recently with another teacher is very real. There’s nothing worse than being informed by a student, “We talked about our most embarrassing moment in my last class.”
I pair them up and then write a few questions on the board to give them something to talk about: “What is something that someone did for you recently that you really appreciated? How did you show your thanks?”
Innocent enough questions. I envision answers involving taxi drivers who are nice enough to help their passengers get their heavy bags to their apartment on the second floor or young boys helping old women pick up the change they dropped at the station ticket machine. They all begin talking, and I sit my chair in the middle of the
