Run Like the Wind

During a typical day at GEOS we would have 7-9 classes of varying length and level. We were also expected to interview prospective students whenever one walked through the door. The manager would usually coral the victim into the interview booth- called the fleecing chamber by the foreign staff- and give them the whole spiel.

One day the manager came up to me and asked me to do an interview. "No problem."

I said. "Oh thank you thank you thank you thank you, Chris-san!" the manager gushed. I could never understand why the managers made such a big deal out of any of the foreign staff's accepting to do an interview. We understood that it was part of our job. We always tried to co-operate. The managers always made a big scene about it.

"Can you tell me something about the person I'm going to interview?" I asked.

The manager couldn't speak English except to gush "Thank you thank you thank you thank you" when needed so she got a Japanese teacher to translate.

"He's thirteen years old. His name is Hiroshi. He either dropped out of or got kicked out of the junior high school he was going to, it's not quite clear, and now his mother wants him to study English so he'll have some kind of skill in life." Ako translated.

"Oh. OK. Thirteen, huh? Can he speak any English?" I asked.

"No." Ako replied for the manager. "Well, I'll give it a shot." I said.

"Thank you thank you thank you thank you..."

I met the boy in the reception area of the school and led him to my classroom for our interview. He sat down and I closed the door behind us.

"Hello. My name is Chris."

He didn't answer. He stared at the floor.

"Hi! My name is Chris!" I tried a little more cheerfully.

He still wouldn't answer. He wouldn't even look up from the floor.

"Oh boy, take it nice and easy here," I thought.

I reached over to my desk and got some paper. On the paper I wrote, "My name is Chris"

"Hello? Hiroshi?" he looked up at the sound of his name. I slid the paper towards him and read carefully while pointing towards myself, "My name is Chris."

Then pointing at him, "What's your name?"

I put the pen down in front of him and asked again, "What's your name?"

He picked up the pen and printed his name on the paper: HIROSHI.

I started again. "Hello, my name is Chris." I pointed to myself then gestured towards him, "What's your name?"

"My name is Hiroshi" he said in the smallest voice I'd ever heard a thirteen year old boy use.

"Good!" I said. "It's nice to meet you, Hiroshi." I said as nicely as I could.

I saw an accumulation of perspiration on his upper lip. I didn't want to traumatize the lad any further and I had to get ready for my next class starting in four minutes so I decided to leave it at that.
"It was nice to meet you Hiroshi. That's all the time I have right now. I hope to see you later." I got up out of the chair and motioned towards the door. We walked back to the reception area where his mother and the manager were waiting.

The manager, Ayumi, pulled me and Ako aside and started grilling me.

"He can join your High School kids class,right?"

"No. I don't think so." I said.

"Why not?" Ayumi demanded.

"The girls in my high school class (there were only girls, too) are at a much higher level than him. He can't even say, "My name is..."" I said.

"But there are no other high school classes..." she went on.

"I'll teach him if he's in a private class with a lower level textbook. He needs all the attention and help he can get." I said.

The lowest level textbook I used at the time was Interchange 1. Any teacher who is familiar with that book knows there a lot of booby traps in it. For example, in one of the earlier chapters there's a picture of Princess Dianna, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and country singing sensation Dolly Parton. The exercise is helpfully prefaced with the instructions: "Discuss."

!!!!!! Discuss?! With a group of Junior High School students?! After falling into that mess once, I learned to either skip the exercise or bring in lots of pictures of talento to "discuss". Can you imagine me and Hiroshi "discussing" a picture of Desmond Tutu let alone the talentos? Not bloody likely. The point is I didn't have a textbook that was appropriate for him. At that early stage of my career, I didn't know of any textbooks that may have been appropriate for him.

"Put him in with a Japanese teacher. He really needs to start with the basics." I said.

"His mother won't sign him up unless he has a native speaker as his teacher," Ayumi pleaded.

"Then I'll take him private and try to work something out. Maybe the Japanese teachers can give me some textbooks and ideas on how to teach the basics." I tried.

"His mother can't afford private lessons!" Ayumi continued.

"Well then Ayumi, I don't know what to do! I just can't put him in with a large group of kids who are way ahead of him. He'll get discouraged and quit." I said with a note of finality.

Ayumi looked upset.
"Go ahead and pout all you want. I can't in all honesty say that I can give that boy a good English lesson in the circumstances you're pushing us into!" I thought.

I know I should have said it out loud, but I was already skating on the thin ice of being labeled "difficult" and I did want to be a good employee.

Ayumi turned and went back to the waiting mother. The woman looked up like a relative waiting in the Emergency Room of a big hospital. She looked as though her son was involved in a terrible car accident and she was waiting for the professional diagnosis of the doctor.

When I saw the look on that woman's face, sitting there next to her sullen boy, I felt a terrible feeling. It was a feeling that I don't ever want to have to feel about someone with a healthy, strapping 13 year old boy: pity. Here we were, in this cramped, dark eikaiwa in Odawara. The school was more of a social club than a place of education.

Sure a lot of people studied and took English seriously. I felt, however, that most of the students were there to enjoy their time and be entertained. GEOS was more than happy to oblige, the social calendar was full: Christmas and Halloween parties, karaoke at least once a week, barbecues once a month in the summer, and all sorts of unofficial get togethers every weekend. The boy's mother wanted him to be educated. This "school" was all about entertainment.

If I had the Japanese speaking ability, I would have gone up to that mother and said, "Run! Run like the wind! Run as fast as your legs will carry you! Get as far away as possible from this place! They'll attach themselves to you and suck all your money away! He'll be trapped in an endless spiral of parties, events and campaigns. He'll lose sight of his original purpose for coming here. They'll lull him with their soft words of "leveling up" and "Gambatte, neh?" all the while sucking him into a social clique that he'll find harder and harder to escape! This isn't the place to learn the basics the boy needs! Run!!!"

Of course, I didn't say these things to the woman with the worried look on her face peering at her son imploringly. I honestly wish I could have.

Ayumi tried all evening to convince the mother to sign her son up. Mercifully, Ayumi wasn't successful. I probably kicked another plank out of my already sinking career with GEOS by refusing to take him. Well, fuck 'em. I did what I thought was right. I was willing to take the kid in a private lesson there at the school.

I should have followed the mother and son out of the school and offered to teach the kid at his house for a few thousand yen once a week. But at that stage of the game, I foolishly thought I was a teacher at GEOS. Little did I know but at that time all the teachers at that location were teaching privately outside the school. All of their students were former or would be students of Odawara GEOS. Even a girl who appeared on a national poster ad was soliciting private students left right and centre.

Maybe little Hiroshi's story says more about me than him (DUH! Who's writing this?). Look, I'm not trying to portray myself as some kind of super hero. I've done a lot of shitty things in my life that I'm not proud of. If someone comes to me, however, needing something, I try to help. If someone puts their faith in me I try to live up to it. I signed a contract with GEOS and I did my best to honour it. Later I learned that GEOS didn't put that much faith in it themselves.

Remembering Hiroshi now, seven years after meeting him, I feel great about pushing him out of the path of the smiley faced bullet of GEOS. I saved one! GEOS can have another karaoke party without Hiroshi. They won't miss him--just his cash.