Short Anecdotes From "Last Week"

Last week saw two rather strange events take place one after the other. When I came to the junior high, I rushed up to help 3-A with their cleaning time. On that day, they were cleaning the windows as well as the floor. One of my students got the great idea of standing on the window ledge to clean the tops of the windows. So far, nothing out of the ordinary as I had seen several kids do the same. He then decided to try and clean the outside of the windows by putting one foot on the outer ledge. This was a bit more alarming to me and I tried to tell him it was dangerous. These kinds of things are tricky, though, when you’re not used to having to discipline the kids in any capacity. He didn’t keep it up for long, returning back to the inner windowsill. Then one of girls closed the windows he was working on, which through off his balance. Before I had time to react in any way, he had toppled over backwards onto another student. His foot smacked one of the desks and, worst of all, he had spilled all the water they had used to clean the floor. The kids frantically grabbed as many students’ rags as they could and tried to clean up the mess. It took a good ten minutes of soaking and squeezing to get the floor dry again. Even after cleaning time was over, one of the girls was still working on wiping up the mess her classmate had made. I chipped in for the cleaning effort once I made sure everyone was all right. Hopefully, my students learned a valuable lesson from this fiasco.

Immediately after that was over, I had a far less dangerous yet far more bizarre experience. I came across a number of my second graders acting as they usually do, which is a little crazy to be honest. Ren had gotten a hold of Shoko’s shoe, which she proudly told me in English. I walked on to the second grade class and had a few short conversations with the students before returning to the teacher’s room. On my way there, I was joined by Shoko, who was still shoeless, as well as Saki, Ms. Mori, and a few others. I asked Shoko what happened to her shoe, pointing to help make my meaning clear. I asked if Ren had taken it, but she pointed instead to Saki, who pointed down at her right foot. I asked Saki what she had done with her shoe, and she pointed down at her foot again. Upon closer inspection, I found that Saki had put Shoko’s shoe on over her own. Why she would want to do this is still a mystery to me. I left them as they were, with Shoko having to hop the rest of the way to their next class.