Thursday, July 2--Singing the praises of JMSDF

I know I talk a lot about JMSDF, but it’s really hard not to. Working there has been such an incredible experience, probably one of the things that will always stick out in my mind once we eventually leave Japan.

Today, the three students I had from the SAPO class amazed me yet again. The topic for today’s conversation lesson was music. After we talked about their favorite artists, favorite songs, and musical experiences, I wanted them to hear one of my favorite songs. It’s by the country artist Bucky Covington, and I explained that the reason I liked it and wanted to share it with them was because it could have been written about my own childhood. Titled “A Different World,” the song brings back lots of good memories and creates a vivid image of the life of an American child about thirty years ago.

To make it more of an educational activity, I printed off the lyrics after replacing several of the song’s nouns with blanks. I wanted the students to listen and try to fill in the blanks, a challenging task anyway, but made even more difficult by Bucky’s strong country accent. After listening once, the guys had managed to fill in about half of the blanks, so we talked about the rest of the missing words and what the song meant. Then I played it again so they could read along with the completed lyrics, and darned if all three of them didn’t sing the entire song out loud.

Getting my third graders, who were supposed to be young and uninhibited, to sing a song they knew was like pulling teeth, yet here were three twenty-something Japanese sailors, whom I would expect to be reserved and self-conscious, singing a song they’d never heard before, in a language that is not their own. Their participation far exceeded my expectations—I was so thrilled I could have hugged them.

Have I mentioned it will be difficult to go back to teaching elementary school in the U.S.?