TEACHING KIDS TEACHING YOU

Japan was getting colder and I have to admit, I was a little nervous. We were told that we had to teach primary school children for a few days. As a kid, I’d always hated other kids. Why did we have to be so honest? I tried as hard as I could to swiftly abandon the Childishness and become as wrinkled and jaded as a grown up. I even scowled my face that little bit more in hope that my skin would droop all over my forehead.

We arrived at the school. After taking our shoes off and replacing them with slippers, we were told to wait in a room where we were given tea and a piece of cake. Every five minutes or so, a pair of kids would enter the room, call one of my friend’s names out, and then take them away to their class. It was cold but I was sweating. I was misguided as a kid – what the hell did I have to teach? Natalie put her hand on my shoulder and muttered something that wasn’t important.

Soon, these two, chubby kids entered. One was a boy, one was a girl. They yelled my name out and smiled at me when I quickly stood up and knocked a chair over. They took my hands and guided me to their class, which consisted of about a thousand noisy kids and a tired looking teacher. I’d never seen a teacher who looked so tired.

“Go to the front of the class!” She yelled, so I went to the front of the class.

“Tell everyone about yourself! In Japanese!” she yelled, so I went and told everyone about myself. In Japanese.

I drew a funny shape on the blackboard. “Do you know where Australia is?” I asked the kids. They all put their hands up. I pointed at one of the chubby ones, the one who held my hand earlier. He said something that I didn’t understand.

“Damn I didn’t know that,” I said.

The kids then lined up and introduced themselves to me individually before making up their own rendition of the high five. My favourite high five came from this boy who spun around three times, said something funny, and then repeatedly slapped my palms.

“Okay now play a song and dance!” the tired teacher yelled.

I went to the front again and played the Chicken Dance. I told everyone,

“This song is called the Chicken Dance.”

Now I’d only ever danced the Chicken Dance about once in my life so I made a lot of it up. Nonetheless the kids loved it. They ran around everywhere, bumping things, pushing each other, screaming; they were truly having fun. I then played Wake Up, by The Arcade Fire.

“This is how white people dance!” I said, jumping around everywhere and rocking out. The kids followed and also jumped around and rocked out.

Somethin’ filled up my heart with nothin’
Someone told me not to cry
Now that I’m older,
my heart’s colder,
and I can see that it’s a lie.
Children wake up,
hold your mistake up,
before they turn the summer into dust.
If the children don’t grow up,
our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.
We’re just a million little gods causin’ rain storms
turnin’ every good thing to rust
I guess we’ll just have to adjust –

The teacher turned the stereo off about halfway through the song and told the kids it was their turn to teach me a dance. They formed a circle around me and started doing these complicated hand movements that made me laugh.

After that was lunch time. I had to follow a little girl and a little boy to the kitchen to fetch a bunch of things, like milk and large trays filled with small trays. We then set it all up in front of the classroom; the children in charge of the food and the milk put these little masks and gloves on and served everyone; another kid went to the front and said some speech, and everyone else responded with their own, shorter speech.

The lunch was great: there were beans, there was rice, there was meat, there was miso, there was milk. I wish I grew up on that kind of lunch. I felt awkwardly large in my table full of kids. They asked me what I eat, if I eat rhinoceros, if I eat elephant, if I eat giraffe, if I eat cow, if I eat eel. There was one smart girl who spoke to me almost completely in English.

“Here, I made origami for you,” a kid from another desk said, giving me a box.

“Here, I made origami for you,” another kid from another desk said, giving me a frog.

“I wrote you a letter,” someone else said.

I suddenly remembered the bag of candy Natalie told me to bring. I opened it the hell up and gave everyone candy. They loved the candy.

I did several other things in that classroom. Although I had nothing to teach, I tried my best to share a part of who I’d eventually become. If we were able to travel back in time and speak to the eight year old versions of ourselves, what would they think? If we were able to travel forward in time and speak to the eighty year old versions of ourselves, what would they think? Something about that class changed me, something about it opened my eyes. We taught for a few more days. I truly enjoyed teaching. I wondered if it would become something more than temporary some day, if some day it would become something I care about.

By the end of it all my friends were happy. We went to the city and got ourselves incredibly drunk.

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