Small successes. Very small.

In a Japanese public school, the cleaning of the school is largely handled by the students. Every day a block of time is set aside for all the students to take out the trash, wipe down the desks, sweep the floors and clean the bathrooms. The duties are rotated between groups of students, so no one gets stuck doing only one job all year. And oddly enough, they seem to develop a sense of ownership in the school, and tend to keep the place pretty clean. The teachers are supposed to supervise and assist, so as an assistant teacher, I assist the assisting. Mostly with the stuff that's over five feet up.

But last week, while I was helping out with the science room clean up, I had to tell one of the kids to quit screwing around and get to work. Now, as a former slacker-student, I felt pretty bad about that. And given that this particular kid is one of my favorite wise-asses, well, that made it even tougher. And then, when we both tried to get back to work, he said something that just about made my day. He said, in English, "I hate you as a volunteer."

The second year students on recently learned how to pronounce "volunteer" as an English word, and the "as a" construction is not one that most of them ever master. So in one move he managed to use new grammar, correct pronunciation and he used the language in a pertinent, accurate fashion. And to top it off, he also managed to maintain disrespect for (assistant) authority. I was quite pleased with him, and told him so.

But we still finished cleaning the science room.