Aretha Commands

[parasitegirl]

The Education of the Milkman’s Sister.

On the days that I go to Elementary schools the Milkman’s Sister usually is with me. This semester she is my transportation between the 15 schools (4 more to go!) but that is not the only role she plays.

 

When we go to a school it is not simply for me to teach a class. We are there to see what sort of English program is already in place, to touch base with the temporary English support staff at that school, to start demonstrating a model of the English class vision we have, and to get full-time homeroom teachers accustomed to the idea of not using Japanese in the English class room. The time between classes where we talk with the principal, the support worker, or other faculty is argueably more important than most of the time I am actually teaching. The Milkman’s Sister and I have a certain back and forth way of explaining things (guess who is the wacky bad cop?) to people, of softening up a room to our ideas. We’re also there to gather ideas about how we should proceed, what each school wants of us and thinks they want of English.

 

At one school a support staff had rather fantastic idea about how much influence I have on the way of teaching. The Milkman’s Sister and I tried best to explain that I can’t simply push my ideas through…I need to suggest, show examples, and lead people into power to think that this is the best way because if I get too pushy my ideas are just going to be excused away as “Oh, she doesn’t understand Japanese culture….rude girl.” The Milkman’s Sister understood me perfectly. She knows the delicate act of trying to get without pushing too hard. It’s still a boy’s club here. She knows pushing the wrong way is going to get her labeled as “a pushy woman who doesn’t get it.”

 

The Milkman’s Sister has seen me teach 95% of the classes and notices small things.

 

We chatter on the way out, team talk once there, and then review on our way back to city hall. When we head back to city hall my Japanese is at its worst, because I’ve recently and rapidly had to switch back and forth between languages and I am hungry…but this is perhaps our most important time of the day together. Once we get back to city hall I return to being quiet and she has to be more serious. She calls this “shell time” when we must retreat back into our shells in order to survive and do what we must do.

 

Recently we walked to a school and on the way back hit the best pastry shop in the area. I bought some sweets for my lunch. She bought sweets for people knowing that she couldn’t very well eat something for herself at lunch without going through the cruel teasing about her snacking. We talked about how made that teasing made me. How she knows she’s overweight, it’s not news to her, but that eating a small amount of sweets at work wasn’t the sort of thing that people should police and mock…unless she asks them to! What a person eats is his/her own business.

 

I don’t like how the men at work treat her, I really don’t. They are cruel. They treat her like she is stupid, fat, and helpless. She is in her late 40’s and is overweight. She’s not stupid. She’s best suited for being in the classroom, I see that when she assists me and I know it is where she wants to be, but she got sucked out of her classroom into the board of education. When we had to eat dinner with the BOE head, the head of our department insisted on driving ahead of her as a navigator until we reached our destination because he didn’t trust her to find it by herself. He made a big deal of it. It was humiliating. There were other people in the car who witnessed this. She knew where it was AND she has a navigation system…she need not be treated this way.

 

Today we drove back.

 

“You need to get an electronic dictionary.”

“Yes, I do.”

 

I went on to explain that it was not just for communicating with me that she needed it, but that she needed it for general English skills. “You need it for the future.” She’s in a unique position and should prosper from it. I think she’s my companion because the men are afraid of even trying and failing at English. They see her time as less worthy, so she is with me more. What I see, and what I told her, is that she’s the one who is going to get comfortable with English. She is the one who will be able to co-ordinate with foreigners or English staff a few years from now. She’ll also be the one person in the department who understands the English program inside and out and who can make suggestions and changes. In two years, English programs starting in the 5^th grade will be mandated nationwide. The need for someone with the skill set she might have in two years is only going to increase, but her male co-workers show no signs of being willing to adapt and learn…

 

“The men are afraid of the English. If you can do that…respect.”

“Respect?”

“尊敬”

“Respect!”

“Yes, you need more respect. You don’t get enough…You know this is out top-secret girl power talk, right?”

“Yes”

“Respect.”