Visiting Principal from India

Last week my school had an Indian principal visit us for a few days so she could observe the Japanese school system and see what she could take away from it and implement in her own school.

She gave a presentation to my students and the major thing I took away from it was that I am doing a pretty decent job after all. I don't mean to sound self-congratulatory but you do start to wonder after a while if you are having any impact on the kids you are teaching. It can be pretty soul-crushing to put so much time and effort into lessons that seem to either bore the kids or confuse the heck out of them. So when I say that the biggest thing that I got out of listening to this principal's presentation was a bit of an ego polishing I say it unabashedly.

Her accent was really difficult for the kids to follow and she spoke at a fast pace even for a native speaker. Add to that the fact that she used really advanced English and you get a room full of kids who quickly lost interest and started talking among themselves. I felt bad for her because none of the teachers were even attempting to get the kids to stop talking and I'm not allowed to discipline them so I just stood there awkwardly and thanked my lucky stars that they were never this bad for my classes.

One thing the girls were interested in though were the henna tattoos. She had brought the paste with her and some of the girls wanted to have a pattern drawn on them. The guest principal was happy to finally have some interest from the kids so she obliged them. The one thing she forgot to mention though was that the ink stays on for a few weeks - but even if she did they wouldn't have understood her. So I ended up acting as an interpreter and let the girls know that unless they wanted the design on their hands for the next week or so they might want to wash it off sooner rather than later. As I suspected, most of them looked panic-stricken and ran to the washroom to scrub it off.

The teachers at my school also seemed a little put off by our guest because as she was used to running the show she would directly ask for things or say what she felt. In Japanese culture this is a bit of a no-no. There is a fine art to dancing around what you actually want to happen so that the person you are talking to is the one that ends up suggesting what you wanted in the first place. So once again I felt a bit of relief in knowing that, if nothing else, I was liked more by my colleagues than she was. It's the little victories that count.

Now I know that that sounds horribly shallow but please keep in mind that I have no idea if the teachers actually like me. Everyone is stand-offish and no one really talks to me about anything other than school related stuff. Even then, they avoid it if they can. So I was happy to see that I could be worse off. At least they don't visibly tense when they are talking to me.