Mista Nishono Part III

Part I here. Part II here.

If Mr. Nishono were a Hasbro toy, he’d be Mr. Potato Head. None of his facial features are quite in alignment, and he’s also “silly talkin’.”

At first I dreaded team-teaching with him, but now I can hardly wait. It’s just so damn easy and amusing. Lesson planning occurs on the walk to class. This after a 10-minute delay where I am instructed to remain in the teacher’s room while he “prepares the lesson.”

While I wait, I comment on the day’s news to the vice principal, who is thumbing through the paper for the second time that morning. I’m not sure what else he does. I can’t read the headlines anyway, but sitting from my desk I can see the lead photograph, which is enough to get simple conversation going. Tragedy in London. Big problem for Livedoor. Angry Arabs.

Once summoned for duty, I’m briefed with an assessment of the class’ behavior, which is usually as piss poor as their English ability. Mr. Nishono wasn’t kidding about one 8th grade section being “the lowest class.” They struggled to respond to “what day is today?” and “how are you?” So I smile with encouragement, pronounce a few new words and spend the rest of class taking real-time notes of unfolding drama.

The 7th graders keep my pen busy. This is the only school where the youngest are the most problematic. Even the 13-year-old devils at Kanokita aren’t this recalcitrant. Here at Omiyada School, each 7th grade class is further split into two sections. The attempt to divide and conquer has only backfired and multiplied the problem. Sort of like trying to quash insurgency in Iraq.

“All teachers get nervous and shout at this class,” he cautioned me upon entering. I immediately recognized them from yesterday’s lesson when their terror level was downgraded because “the worst girl is absent.”

No such luck today.

“Hey mista, mista!!!” she screamed at Mista (Mister) Nishono as we walked through the door – quite literally. The sliding door was torn off its track, and propped up against the back wall. “Mista, I’m hungry,” she demanded. It’s two periods before lunch.

“What smell taste,” Mista muttered, resting his basket on the desk. He totes a collection of teaching materials like a homeless man’s shopping cart of recycled possessions. Teaching aids of the day were dog-eared cards of cartoon animals probably sketched by 7th graders in 1988.

Binder clips and duct tape held the plastic beach basket together. Mr. Nishono reached in for a chalk case, which wasn’t originally designed as such. “Blunt” was stenciled over a cannabis leaf on the metal cover. I’m sure it wouldn’t have taken long to find a student with a lighter.

“Let’s sing song corner,” he announced to the stereo wires he was unraveling. Mista loves to sing. If done properly, songs are valuable teaching tools. Today’s selection was “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” which sounded like a folksy Vietnam-era tune, more recently covered by teen pop divas S Club 7 (anyone have this mp3?).

I hadn’t heard of it, even though it’s an American song and, yes, I am American. Mr. Nishono’s reaction led me to believe that I’m expected to know my nation’s entire discography (can someone please send me the S Club 7 version?).

It didn’t matter because the students, if they were conscious, yawned their way through the song. Mista hummed along. I hugged the window like a lizard trying to absorb sunlight. Hallways aren’t heated, and the missing door was turning my fingernails purple. Toes tingled with a numbness that I haven’t felt since after a full day on the slopes.

The lack of a door was also a problem for the chipmunk-looking science teacher in the adjacent class who appeared at the opening to flash a volume-reducing gesture.

The hungry girl continued to stir the pot. Mr. Nishono had enough of her insolence, and yelled at her to follow him out the door. She wouldn’t budge. Finally, she walked half way, but turned back toward her giggling friends. She wouldn’t get off scot free. Later in the day I spotted her and two boys lined up in the hallway being scolded by two teachers. It takes a village to control Omiyada 7th graders.

It was then time for the guess animal game where I “please become a certain animal and students guess.” Monkey and frog went fine, but spider deteriorated into arm wrestling a boy with shaved eyebrows in the last row.

He tricked me into using my weaker left arm while he added to his advantage by pulling down with his torso to force my biceps to surrender, but not before the already loose desktop became fully unhinged. I don’t go down without a fight. I could only shoot him dirty looks while he gloated over his cheated victory over sensei.

While the bell was ringing, Mista ran out the door. “That was fast,” I said to the student sitting by the empty frame whose cartoons proved a good source of entertainment for us both during the 50-minute “lesson.”

“Baka,” he said. “Hage,” he added. Students have several monikers for Mista. “Stupid” and “bald” are the most popular. I laughed in agreement on both counts.

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.

Mr. Nishono

Familiar shuffling approached my desk in Omiyada School’s teachers' room. I didn’t look up from my book. I knew what I’d see. Mussed salt-and-pepper hair crowning a man with a wrinkled work shirt two sizes too big for his wiry frame. Stringy hair failing to conceal the bald spot creeping forward. Bifocals sliding off the end of a freckled nose. If after lunch, forgotten crumbs clinging to the corners of his mouth. It was time for class with Mr. Nishono.

A fellow English teacher didn’t even know his given name when introducing me on my first day. The students don’t either; they call him hage (bald) behind his back. The hair that remains reminds me of a frayed steel wool pad.

I’m handed a “teaching plan.” It reads, “This class is full of underachievers.” However, Mr. Nishono adds that they are not all “in bad condition” like the class he once abruptly cancelled my services because of their misbehavior the day before. He always does his best to shield me: “First, you wait here while I prepare the lesson.” I read for 10 more minutes while he attempts to subdue the eighth graders.

No such luck. Once permitted to enter the room, I’m instructed to make “daily conversation to each student.” I ask them basic questions like the date, weather or favorite color. These warm-up exercises prove too complex for some.

First up is a boy with a grating voice whom I try to avoid. When we pass in the corridor, he yelps monkey noises loud enough to disturb teachers down the hall. In response to “Hello, how are you?” he recited a list of fruit juices. His writing is no better. I pointed out that his a’s look like u’s. “Yes very much fine thank you!” he boomed.

The rest of Mr. Nishono’s lesson plan leaves less margin for student creativity:
“You Read (P 32) when I ask you to (students listen).
You Read new words when I ask you to (students repeat).
You Read (P. 32) when I ask you to (students listen).
You Read (P32) – students repeat (Phrase by Phrase).
I teach.
(Ending reading)
You read (P 32)”.
I leave class knowing P 32 by heart.

Another week’s teaching plan is also prefaced with a warning: “They are very mischievous class.” I couldn’t wait. The textbook pictured an overweight, unmistakably American lacrosse high school player. Not being a lacrosse sportsman myself, Mr. Nishono decided that I should “please relax” on the sidelines.

I observed the girls paying some attention, but the boys didn’t even have their books open, except for one – a Japanese novel. Behind him a kid fiddled with rounded magnets to form a snake that slithered across his desk with polar attraction.

Others were fashioning fighting sticks out of rolled paper featuring a girl with an anti-drug message. They passed around tape and scissors, with one crafting a ball out of tape. I sat at an empty desk in the back jotting everything down.

Then suddenly sensei stepped out for a few minutes. I assumed control, and plucked a sword off a student’s desk. I turned from the protesting boy to face the student patching together the tape ball. “Batter up!” I cried, managing several swings before Mr. Nishono returned with dittos he had forgotten.

Recently, absent-minded Nishono embraced the holiday cheer with a class sing-a-long to “Wish You A Merry Christmas.” Heavily accented British children caroled on CD. The words completely stumped the Japanese children, whose vocabularies didn’t include “good tidings to you and your kin.” Figgy pudding stumped me. Mr. Nishono blindly hummed along, and pushed repeat to extend everyone’s confusion.

By the fourth go-around, a girl cranked up the volume and positioned her ears next to the stereo. I gasped as one boy jabbed a blunt box cutter blade into another’s uniform. On autopilot, Mr. Nishono just kept humming, his bifocals glued to a page of lyrics he couldn’t articulate. I moved away from the blasting Christmas music to spy on a boy drawing. It was a cartoon caricature of me.