Peggy’s and my main host family are moving this week so we were placed with another host family until this weekend. Their names are Rakish, the father, Soba, the mother, and Benjamin, their naughty little boy who makes it clear that he prefers that I play with him instead of write.
This week, I’m teaching third and fourth graders math and English, while Peggy teaches the younger classes, with Rakish supervising us. All of us work at the local slum school, which is a meager tent covering rows of desks and chairs, two blackboards, and a plastic tarp for the youngest class to sit on.
The students’ youthful spirits, obedience, and eagerness to learn, fill this poor school with zestful richness. Every morning, I am received by the children with a loud, “Good morning, sir!”, and every student entering after me asks politely with a charming little voice, “Sir! May I come in?” But despite this uplifting energy in the room, I feel a fundamental sorrow for these children each day, for I know that many will pass through undeservingly difficult lives.
6/29 ~ Wednesday at the slum school
Today I taught the children how to subtract a greater number from a lesser one. Only about half of them can do it, but that’s a big achievement for the day. The gratification of teaching a person a new skill runs deep in me; I could see myself getting hooked to teaching.
With each day, I feel myself getting more comfortable with teaching these children. I am increasingly attuned to their skill levels and needs, and answers to problems that arise during work come quicker to me than before. When working with individual children on the previous day’s homework, I have the others complete arithmetic problems on the board. When a student does poorly on one set of problems, say multiplying two two-digit integers, I sit with them and take them through the calculation step-by-step. I choose the quiet kids in class to answer on the blackboard aloud. I still have a lot of work to do, but I feel good about the progress I’ve made, especially because of the language barrier between the children and me. They know very little English, but they do understand that when I say, “classwork”, it means to do the work on the board in class, and when I say, “homework”, it means to do the work on the board before tomorrow’s class. That goes a long way in my instruction.
On my last day at Morningstar School
as expected, you're a great teacher, mr. kotabe.
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