8.25.09

"The good fight" is what I called Nagawachu last entry, but to tell the truth, there's nothing good about it.
This morning pulling myself out of bed was an agonizing ordeal. I went to bed especially early so I could wake up early and psych myself up for the day. Instead I laid in bed until 8am exactly, 20 minutes before I'd have to run out the door, and it was only the habitual stress of knowing I had to haul ass that got me up at all. I was turning things over and over in my head. I could cry to Takekawa-san that I was being abused. That I didn't want to go back to that place again. I could lie and say I overslept. I could do nothing at all and wait for the phonecall. And then what?
I thought, "It's not so bad. You know what she is now. You know how to deal with her. "She's not so bad. The kids get good grades. She's a good teacher. But she is an awful human being. Go and fight. Go and ignore her. Go and enjoy your day. Don't let her take it from you."

That's the real zinger of this place. Nothing has to happen to send me into a tailspin. I'm defeated before anything even begins. Just thinking about that woman makes me start doubting and doubling back and driving myself crazy. I've spent the last several years of my life teaching myself tolerance, acceptance, and love. I come into contact with someone whose method of teaching directly challenges and belittles what I believe and I automatically start trying to absorb it, to understand it and make it work with what I do. But it won't mix. These things are oil and water, and taking it into myself in any amount upsets things, makes it so I can't focus and I can't shake it off. Just thinking about it, I set myself up so I can't enjoy or focus or be at peace. I end up having to spit it out and trying to forget the flavor, but it lingers.

Riding my bike there I was anxious, stomach all tight and head buzzing with contradictions and paranoia. I hate that woman- no, I don't hate her- she does know how to teach, but she upsets me. I'm going to just go along with what she says and not do anything. I want to stop at the store next to the school and buy a snack, but if she sees me, she will criticize me for not coming straight to school. I wonder if she can see me riding in now. I had better just head straight in. How whipped she has me.
Because of my own shyness, I haven't talked with the other teachers much before- I've kind of faded into nothingness. Judging by the student desk haphasardly left in the corner for the AET teachers, approached only because it is in the way of some books in a cabinet, I suspect I am not the first to have done this. So when I started talking to one of the lady teachers this morning, I found that she was not just surprised to hear anything from me, but a little hesitant herself, as though I had been quiet for any other reason than fear of the English tyrant. Just as the teachers started warming to me, she arrived and I retreated again. My strategy, as it was during my own middle school days, was to punish her by making everyone see how bad she was to me, by becoming tiny and timid when she was near, by only opening up when she was out of the room. I tried this out today and found the tremendous flaw that had me flunking most of my middle school courses- people don't really notice self-punishment, especially when they have no frame of reference. If I am never seen as being outgoing, being quiet will not seem odd to them. If I never speak up, I will not be reprimanded by her and they will not know that it is what she does. They may already know, but if I want them to really know for my case, I have to be bold and walk into the line of fire.
I am not looking forward to this. When all is said and done, I do not fight. I run.

Alternatively, what I thought of this morning as I lay buried in the covers stubbornly clutching Hatim, was that I would find everyone this woman hurt, establish a petition and collect statements, turn it in to the Board of Education, and see to it that when the school closes this year, so does her teaching career. That would be the right thing to do. Stop her from hurting any more kids. I think that's what it would take to get her ousted, too. I don't think it's going to happen on its own, because no matter how widely spread her bullying, how useless her technique in the long run, her kids must do fabulously on tests. They have no option but to do so.
The problem with this "Gather an angry mob" idea is that #1- I am a foreigner here. My ways are not neccessarily the ways here, and I have just as much of a chance of deeply offending my host culture as helping it. There is nothing worse than assuming inherent correctness in ones own way of doing things to the extent of stomping around imposing it on everyone. That is not what I want to do. #2 - I do not know that anyone else would be willing to incriminate themselves by openly condemming this woman. I feel confident I am not alone only because of Debra, a young teacher friend of mine, and Lydia. Again, though I am certain there are many others she has hurt, I do not have solid, referencable proof except for a few foreigners and an off-handed comment. Finally, #3- I do not know how to go about getting this problem recognized in a delicate way. Language and cultural barriers aside, I am dreadfully young and have no clout in this world, nor the experience to know how to handle something like this.
I just feel overwhelmingly deflated.

Much as I feel in class when she has told me, "You only watch today. I'll do everything."
She tells me this in Japanese, of course. English isn't really a language to her. Only phrases in textbooks and endless rules. If you can recite the conversation on the page from memory, if you know all the verb forms, you speak English. Actual conversation is never mentioned, because you will not be having it on the test.

I feel so bad for these kids. My first class I read a few new vocabulary words and the short essay I prepared. I wanted so badly to be good to those kids. As much as I resent her, she's got excellent students. They work their asses off and they're all as sharp as knives- even the ones she calls idiots. And somehow, despite how depressed I am in that school, they seem happy. They're young people, after all. The world is unfair and they just have to get through it. It seems that way to me, anyway. I wonder if I'm not just hideously biased and they really are happy how they are. But then I think maybe they just don't know anything different. I'm left just not knowing. I can't really say that I know, because I don't.

And maybe that's what gets me. I openly admit I don't know best while she bellows that she does. And I am not the type to shout back just for the sake of 'winning' the shouting contest.

But I do know that it feels awfully, awfully wrong to hear a grown woman nastily yelling ばか at the new first year student because he forgot his book and then ripping him apart in front of his silent classmates for fifteen minutes, goading them to laugh and criticize him too, finally turning on several other students she's had trouble with in the past, sharply reminding them to stay in their place. This time I watched the clock and kept track. I watched it when I wasn't looking at the floor so maybe the students wouldn't see the look on my face.