musical schools
Ahh, it’s a beautiful day in the inaka. My worst class of the year is officially over, how can I not be happy?
One bit of sad news: the names of 4 or 5 leaving teachers were revealed, among them one of my favorites, a Japanese teacher of English and team-teacher who was always quiet, but not afraid to speak English and respected by the students.
When we first met I thought Keiko-sensei was very sweet and shy to a fault. My second year we started teaching together and my [ever-ready and unquenchable] opinion dropped from shy, to hesitant-bordering-on-stupid.
Our teaching styles never quite meshed, but I learned to back off a little and let her personality set the tone of class, and we got through it.
Even though our team-teaching wasn’t brilliant, as a result of teaching Keiko and I spent a little more time together outside of class. I learned that if I listened more and spoke less, she always had something to say. Maybe reserved and deferential, but not shy.
Keiko-sensei seems older than her young-thirties, and not so much sweet as graceful, and a lady. She practices ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement), which suits her well somehow. In fact, being gracious and reserved (and pretty too) as she is without even trying, she is probably the personification of the ideal Japanese woman on somebody’s list, but she doesn’t seem in a hurry to get married.
Eventually she replaced Chatty Supervisor as my goto woman in the staffroom, always willing to help me and a vault-like keeper of confidences. I’ll miss her come April when she leaves for her new school. Which will be the alternative high school I visited, as it turns out. I hope she likes it there.
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