From the classroom...

When I lived in Niigata, I had a class of 6-year-old boys who would tramp in on a Friday night for their English lesson. They would answer my cheerful, "How are you?" with a continual, "I'm hungry!" Between extra-curricular activities and the extra lessons deemed necessary by most caring parents in Japan (in my experience, at least), the boys had at least five 10-hour days a week. I felt bonded to those boys simply because I felt so sorry for the small, tired faces and the squirming bodies still too small for their desks.

Fast-forward to the present. The most common answer to my opening "How are you?": "I'm sleepy." And I still feel sorry.

The students' stories can't be blogged because they are personal, but the theme of the stories remains one and the same: Just need to push a little longer, a little harder, a little more...can't stop now.

Is it American or the Christian in me that wants so often to say to them, "Stop. Rest. You're okay."...? Probably some mix of both.

Cindy and I often talk about how all cultural values or traditions have sin in them, because there is no one perfect culture. I wouldn't say that Americans have the perfect education system, or really wonderful methods of encouraging and giving grace and meaning to students. Neither does Japan. And so, as a Christian teacher who is flawed working within a flawed system...how do I respond to my sleepy sixth-graders? The high-schoolers who walk in a monotonous haze of tiredness and hunger? The students who speak at a whisper and refuse to speak louder because they have been taught to never stick out and are so fearful of making a mistake?

Sometimes I spend the whole class period wanting to bluntly say, "You are more than the grade you get. Than the hours you put in studying. More than the opinions of your teachers, your classmates, your parents. More than the fear you have of failure or the successes you take pride in..."

Even said bluntly, I know those sentences would not communicate what I want them to say. Grace and love are not easily understood--for all of us flawed people with flawed cultures. They are illogical concepts to minds that only understand the cold logic of rewards won and punishment deserved.

I believe that the small things communicate. Smiling. Laughing. A high-five or a "good job!" Sometimes I get impatient with the small things and just wish freedom, hope, and confidence could be given in gift-boxes to my students as they go out the classroom door into the pressures of life.

So...we pray for those things.

Heading back to the classroom. :)

Love,

Haidee