“Frankly, it was difficult for me back then,”
I told Maru. She nodded silently.
I told her everything: how I looked up to her
mentor, Koseki-sensei as my new “big-brother” and often imitated his teaching
style without fully trusting or understanding his eccentric educational values;
how, at the same time, I wanted to be recognized as a competent teacher from
other colleagues who seemed more traditional and proper and said all the right
things; how, as a result, I lost the coherence of my words and actions as well
as my students’ confidence in me….
I will never forget the unbearable lightness of
my own words that I experienced back then. It is perhaps an axis of beliefs, if I
were to describe in a word what I lacked back then.
Junior high school, caught in-between childhood and adulthood, is an unstable and difficult developmental period. That’s why I think adolescents, especially during this period, require adults whom they can trust and whose values they can always refer to navigate tumultuous adolescent days. As I have written in “Should be taught is character and principle,” it’s not the clear rules or guidelines that children really need from their parents and adults around them; rather, it’s the never-changing characters and principles that they can always come back to. That’s what gives children comfort; that’s what gives them the solid ground on which they could develop their own principles.
Junior high school, caught in-between childhood and adulthood, is an unstable and difficult developmental period. That’s why I think adolescents, especially during this period, require adults whom they can trust and whose values they can always refer to navigate tumultuous adolescent days. As I have written in “Should be taught is character and principle,” it’s not the clear rules or guidelines that children really need from their parents and adults around them; rather, it’s the never-changing characters and principles that they can always come back to. That’s what gives children comfort; that’s what gives them the solid ground on which they could develop their own principles.
This was a perspective I did not have back
then.
“How did I appear in your eyes back then?” I
asked Maru.
After some silence, she said,
After some silence, she said,
Now I think I should have listened
to you because I’ve heard so much about you from Koseki-sensei. But, to be
perfectly honest, I had no intention of listening to you back then.
Of course, I said.
Honestly, it was not easy for me to have her in my homeroom class. Now I think about it, this was a sign that she was “beyond my capacity.”
Maru began to practice kendo seriously in the 7th grade upon entering Koseki-sensei’s junior high school team. In the 8th grade, she earned a starter position in the team that was known throughout the prefecture. She went on to become the team’s irreplaceable ace and captain in the final year of her junior high school.
“She understands me more than anybody,” Koseki-sensei used to say.
That was Maru.
Of course, I said.
Honestly, it was not easy for me to have her in my homeroom class. Now I think about it, this was a sign that she was “beyond my capacity.”
Maru began to practice kendo seriously in the 7th grade upon entering Koseki-sensei’s junior high school team. In the 8th grade, she earned a starter position in the team that was known throughout the prefecture. She went on to become the team’s irreplaceable ace and captain in the final year of her junior high school.
“She understands me more than anybody,” Koseki-sensei used to say.
That was Maru.
I would try my best to share “valuable life lessons” with my class, but I always felt that Maru saw all the private corners I had…my weakness, shallowness, and lies.
Looking back, the lesson the fourteen-year-old Maru was teaching me was the absurdity of trying to teach someone who already had a teacher.
(To be continued...)
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