The Elective Class

Only one period stood between a typical weekend of doing nothing and the end of teaching at Omiyada for the week. It was an elective class with 9th graders who had signed up to improve their English, at least in theory. I had taught them once before, but couldn’t remember. Thus, Mr. Nishono forewarned me of their low ability, but added that they didn’t “misbehave as badly” as other classes. He was right about their language skills.

I chuckled at “seX’mas,” a now unseasonable joke still on the board. The classroom was seldom used. As a result, I broke out in goosebumps. A space heater in the front of the room offered little relief. A boy with a shaved head shaped like a phallus (no, really), picked up chalk and drew a naked woman spread eagle with hardened nipples. Yes, it was that cold. The picture was manga (comic book) quality, but I censored it before Mr. Nishono got around to focusing his glasses on something other than the floor.

While the fifteen students may have elected to take an extra class of English, they clearly had other plans for the period. Mr. Nishono labored to pass out a sheet of irregular verbs to be conjugated in the past tense. It was a hopeless challenge. Monkey Boy and a friend with the intelligence of a banana peel sat in the back, shredding the handout with a pizza slicer-like like tool I recognized from the ceramics studio.

I encouraged students to trade their frivolous pursuits for verb conjugations. I looked to Mr. Nishono for support, but discovered that he was no longer with us. I asked phallus-head boy if he knew of his whereabouts. “Masturbation,” he said calmly without looking up from sketching, fittingly enough, various sized phalluses (yes, really). Doubtful, I thought, unless he stocks Viagra in chalk case.

“Do you eat girl? Do you like sex?” phallus-head then chirped with a mischievous grin. Before turning my back, I slipped him a piece of chalk as creative license to amuse me on a larger canvas.

Mr. Nishono returned 10 minutes later. He sat down to chat with two girls in the back. He soon closed his eyes and stopped moving. If he wasn’t going to take class seriously, then neither was I.

So, if you can’t teach ’em, join ’em. After writing “1. bought 2. visited 3. carried…” on the board, I joined two boys huddled by the heater and checked on their drawings. One drew two circles. “Meatballs,” I said. He then sketched a “sausage” in between them. To finish off the meal, he added curly wisps, and pronounced, “spaghetti.” We both laughed hard. Thankfully, this was after lunch, the special having been – you guessed it – with meat sauce, cucumber, egg and spinach toppings.