The Mascot experience

I felt pumped, I could totally handle this and better yet he said the next class was only 5 students. I was grabbed my materials and had them all neatly in a row in front of me, as I was giving myself a mental pep talk about how I was going to be the best damn English teacher any of these kids had ever seen. I positioned myself at the doorway with a smile stamped on my face, as the door creeked open and I saw the first child come in. The other teacher standing behind whispering a reminder that he was only going to observe my lesson. I greeted the parent with my over practiced Japanese greeting phrase.

The little boy seemed nice, as he took off his shoes slowly and put on his name tag quietly. The mother shut the door on the way out and with the sound of the knob clicking shut, the little kid bolted for the classroom. I ran over to catch him when the door knocked and three other little kids started coming in. I rushed back bowed and greeted the parents sweetly, while hearing the stuff being thrown around in the other room. Shit, I glanced behind my shoulder and saw a sneering smile come across my observing teacher's face. He knew he had given me the worst class, and my fake smile faded-as I realized my fate for the next hour. The three other little boys were cute, on the outside, but again once mommy was out of sight, they ran to join in the chaos in the other room, and their cuteness quickly faded. I bravely walked to see what they had done, in the minute I had been away. The boys were running in circles trying to tag each other, while knocking down and throwing materials around the classroom. "Stop!" I tried to shout, but my tone must not have been strict enough, as they kept running-only briefly glancing to me to tell me, "I do know what that means in English, but I still choose to ignore it." "Ok!" I clapped my hands together, "Let's do the Hello song!" I rushed to press play on the CD player, as they stopped for a moment to watch me. I started dancing like the goof, which I was trained to do. A dancing caucasian mascot was what I felt like and soon enough would know the feeling, as so many beaten mascots have to endure. A little boy, maybe aged 5, with scruffy hair, came up to me mid song and kicked me hard in the leg. All the kids laughed now as grabbed my leg and squeeled "OOOOuuchh!"

My Mascot-like experience in the classroom.

I looked up and the observing teacher who just shrugged, sitting in the corner in the miniture chair gleefully watching my suffering. I glanced at the clock, only 2 minutes into my class and this was how it was going, not only was I going to be battered physically, I was also going to be failed on my assessment; and only 58 minutes to go...