A student ended up in tears today during one of my classes, but I couldn't do anything about it.

Our lesson plan involved the game "Telephone," in which I would whisper an English sentence to the first student sitting in each row, and they would pass back the sentence until it reached the last student, who would then come up and write it on the board. It's usually a pretty fun game. Anyway, as we were explaining the rules, I saw a boy lean forward and mutter something to the girl sitting at the front of his row, and when I looked in their direction a few minutes later, she was silently crying, with tears rolling down her face. The teacher noticed and immediately went over to her, but I didn't feel that I should go over as well, because the girl was probably embarassed and it would have made things worse if the special guest teacher had made a big fuss. The sight of her crying almost made me cry, though. I am one of those empathetic types, so if someone is crying in front of me, I can't help but to join them. And she reminded me so much of my junior high school days, where I would end up in tears over any little thing. I managed to refrain from crying, but I really felt bad for her.

The cause of her tears, as I found out later, was that when we were explaining the rules of the Telephone game, the boy who muttered something to her had actually told her that she was no good at English, and since she was sitting at the front of the row, and was responsible for passing on the sentence correctly, their team would surely lose the game. What a crummy thing to say to someone... to blatantly point out their shortcomings and blame them in advance for letting down a team. I imagine that comment wasn't the only thing that set her off- maybe this guy was always bugging her and insulting her, or maybe she was just having a bad day. Maybe she's not a very academic type, and people are always putting her down for it, and that comment was the last straw. Who knows? Whatever the reason, my heart really went out to her. I had noticed her earlier in the class. She was an outgoing, fashionable, seemingly-confident type with loose socks, a mini-skirt, and hair done up in pigtails and colourful hair clips. From just looking at her, I wouldn't have guessed that her self-assurance could be shaken so easily, but that's what junior high school life is like, after all. It's pretty much the most vulnerable time in anyone's life.

Fortunately, some of her friends immediately came over to comfort her and give her hugs. I felt better watching that. I really wanted to pat her shoulder and tell her it's okay, but as I am just a guest teacher, I think that would have just made her feel more uncomfortable- so I felt really helpless just standing there and watching her be so sad. For the rest of the class, she sat with her head down the desk, shoulders shaking. Poor thing. But even if I couldn't tell her that I understood how she felt, I was really glad to see she had friends to support her.

Japanese school can be so hard on kids, I think- they are all pressured to be the same, and perservere under pressure, not stand out or be weak. I would imagine that crying in class would be pretty much losing face- but instead of ridiculing her, her classmates comforted her. It made me happy to see them helping her. She definitely needed a hug.

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