Apples

They`ve finally let me at the little ones.

Three weeks with sullen, bored and horny teenagers and hyperactive, noisy and demanding ten year olds, and I have earned my stripes; I am now allowed to teach groups of thirty-five 3, 4 and 5 year olds. And by “teach”, I obviously don`t really mean “teach”. I mean “govern over absolute chaos, get climbed on and pray with every fibre of my being that nobody gets hurt or ends up crying.”

This is impossible, obviously. They`re four years old. Somebody will always end up crying – for no apparent reason, often just because they`re overexcited or a friend looked at them strangely - and somebody will usually end up hurt: often by me, because I`m very big and my feet are very large and I can stand on at least twenty five tiny toes at once if I`m not extremely careful.

Luckily, after eight months with Kou, I now know how to deal with any kind of small child. When I started teaching, I used to get incredibly stressed; shouting, waiting for them to pick up vocabulary, trying to make them do the games I wanted them to do at the speed I wanted them to do them in. And then – after a month of going purple and crying and screaming “stop running!” at the top of my voice – I suddenly realised something I hadn`t fully worked out before: they`re little children. At which point it all became easy: as long as they`re laughing and listening and vaguely safe from their own clumsiness, then learning will happen. At that age they`re like sponges, and they`ll learn things whether you want them to or not (like my one year old whose first words – in Japanese or English – were “stop running”, said with a distinctly British accent that delighted his mum).

My first lesson at this school was therefore very different to my first lesson at my last school. I walked into my first school and politely introduced myself to the children, tried to shake their hands and then – very seriously – focused and worried and checked my plan a million times and got blotchy when we didn`t manage to achieve anything on it. My first lesson at this school involved silly voices and playing with a ball and simply enjoying a crowd of beaming, adorable little faces. When it was over, I knelt down on the floor, and it took three seconds before I was covered in children; all trying to climb as high as they could on me, as if I was some kind of tree. As one particularly small and noisy child tried to get a strong foothold on my shoulder, another climbed onto my lap, stared into my eyes, gasped and shouted “Midori!!!”

“Green,” I corrected (my diligent learning of Japanese colours just paid off).

“Green!” he shouted at the other children, and they all raced to get a better look. At four years old – two weeks into their first time at school - I am almost certainly the only person they have ever seen with eyes that aren`t black. They probably weren`t even aware that we existed.
“Green!!!” they all shouted, and then one bright child added “apple.” “Ringo,” she told the other children solemnly (the Japanese translation), and they all immediately named me “Apple Sensei”. That is my new name, apparently. The Apple Teacher.

I love little children; there is something so exhausting, and so invigorating, about their enthusiasm and their energy. Nothing in life has dimmed them, or drained them, or made anything boring or routine; everything is fresh for them, even the shade of somebody elses` eyes.

On the first day of school, children are supposed to bring an apple for their teacher. And, in a way, mine brought two very different ones.