Are you smarter than a 5th grader?

I had elementary school yesterday and as usual, it was less awful than what I had anticipated. I don’t know why I am always paranoid about my elementary schools… It’s like I’m reading the crap all the other JETs have to endure and I interiorize their fears or whatnot that my day is gonna be a new form of torture. Though the predominance of the Fruits Basket game (and all its derivatives – animal basket, color basket, numbers basket) is still ever so painful, the truth is that for the most part, my day is quite bearable. Even sometimes… fun!

I believe I have Inaka King Luc to thank for that. As I step out of my house every elementary school day, feeling my stomach churn in unwanted anticipation, I close my eyes, take a deep breath and hear his voice in my head. “JUST LET GO!!!!!” And then I open my eyes and feel much better.

I get to school as early as they request, read whichever book someone generously lent me until it’s time for me to get to class. Then I go, practice the good morning greeting, and teach whichever boring topic they’ve asked me to teach for the lesson, turning to the homeroom teacher when my kids’ drooping eyelids and yawns tell me we’ve practiced enough and they’re bored with this crap. Usually, that’s the teacher’s cue to make me endure the Fruity torture of watching the kids run around, switching chairs with glee while I call out whatever three words are used in the game for that day.

However, sometimes the thought of over 25 minutes of Fruits Basket is unbearable even to the teacher. And so, yesterday, as my kids had recited animal names for the past 15 minutes, got them all down, plus pronunciation practice, I turned to the teacher. She looked at the clock, her expression clearly telling me to go on as it was “Too early for game yet”. I shrugged. And turned to the board. And before anyone could stop me, I wrote down: “My favorite animal is ________________.” And started teaching THAT, to the great distress of the teacher. And what a surprise, the kids ALL said it, nearly perfectly, with barely any prompting. I think I nearly gave her a heart attack when I substituted the word "animal" for "color" though.

Seriously, we wonder why these kids don’t know English… well if the homeroom teachers didn’t force us to drip-feed English to them, maybe they’d stand a better chance at learning it! But, heh, in a way, I can understand why the teachers do that… after all, you wouldn’t want a 5th grader to be better at something than you, now would you?