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2016 J-LEAP REPORTMARCH, 2017: BREEZE ISSUE #113
A FREE MONTHLY E-NEWSLETTER FOR FRIENDS OF JAPAN & TEACHERS OF
JAPANESE

2016 J-LEAP REPORTBY RIKIYA KAWANOPresidio Middle School
San Francisco, CA
Hi there, my name is Rikiya Kawano. I havebeen working as a Japanese Assistant Teacher
for half a year at Presidio Middle School, which
is located in San Francisco, CA. I was born andraised in Kakogawa city, Hyogo and I studied
abroad in the States for two years duringcollege. I was in Los Angeles, California and St. Louis, Missouri when I last studied here. This is
the first time I have ever worked in the U.S. and I am very grateful to work at this school andteach Japanese to American students. I am so blessed to work in this city and to experience a
lot of new things every day through the J-LEAP program.
San Francisco is a financially and culturally centered city in northern California. California issuch a big state, which is about the same size as Japan. However, San Francisco itself is quite
small and very dense. This is a city of immigrants and it has a great diversity of races andcultures. It also has a lot of people who can’t afford to live in the city, because it is expensive
to live here. Especially in a last few decades, the Bay Area including San Francisco hasboomed in the area of technology. Many tech companies have settled here and many techworkers started to move into San Francisco. The cost of living has been rising dramaticallysince then. it affected many local residents that were unable to pay rent in the city, and they
had no choice but to move out of the city. It directly affected the education system in the city.
There are students from wealthy and non- wealthy families attending our school.

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Presidio Middle School is the only public middle school offering a Japanese program in SanFrancisco. Our school district has approximately 55,300 students. Presidio Middle School islocated in a Chinese neighborhood. There areabout 1,100 students studying at this school.
The student demographics are 50% of Asianstudents, 22% of white students, and 10% ofLatino students. It offers Spanish and Japanese
as elective classes besides dance, art, andcomputer classes. Most of the students whotake Japanese, have been studying since they
were in elementary school. When they entered
Presidio Middle School, they chose Japanese
for their elective class as a pathway program.
Therefore, they take Japanese as an electiveclass for three more years in the middle school. What is more, they study Japanese for 50
minutes daily from Monday to Friday.
We teach students about all the beautiful
traditional Japanese culture and its aesthetics.
For example, we introduced Mochitsuki(pounding rice cake), Onigiri (making rice balls)
project for the world food day, Tsukimi (moonviewing with dango rice dumplings),
Hatsumoude (first visit to pray at the shrines),
Setsubun (rid of demons via bean throwing),
and Kakizome (the first calligraphy of theyear). We also had students wear yukata andkimono and they learned about sumo
wrestling. Furthermore, we incorporated
modern culture, which is very popular with people all over the world today such as anime,
manga, and j-pop.
In the first three months of working here, I had
a hard time managing middle school students,
since I never worked with kids before. Also, attimes, they didn’t listen to me and they said
some rude things to me. I spoke Japanese tostudents during and after school as much as I
can. I didn’t really feel they respected meeither. First of all, it is not a special thing for a
Japanese person to teach Japanese in San
Francisco. There are always many foreigners
coming and going here and many of ourstudents have Japanese parents or know

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someone who has a Japanese background. That is why my background doesn’t make theminteresting since they already have been exposed to Japanese language, culture and way oflife. Therefore, I wanted to make myself interesting to them by being who I am. However, since
they don’t speak Japanese to me, it was a challenge to make a connection with them. Everytime I speak to them in Japanese, they get confused or feel shy to talk. They always reply tome in English even though I told them that I don’t speak any English. However, I gradually got
used to the students by learning how to deal with them. By understanding that they aredeveloping at their own speed, we built good relationships together. When I started to teachhere, what I was mainly doing was walking around and observing the classes to figure out ways
I can contribute to Tanaka Sensei’s class. I gradually started to be able to assist students who
have a hard time understanding class instructions and working on some tasks. In addition tothis, I help assist various student activities initially, and then Tanaka Sensei takes over. In someclasses, I teach some higher level students who are heritage students or already know someJapanese. In doing so, they began to recognize me, as an assistant teacher, more than a justbeing a teaching assistant.
My lead teacher, Tanaka Sensei, is a well experienced, kind and open-minded. She always
smiles and is open to new ideas and tries new things, which has a positive influence on ourteaching. She always asks me about what I think about her ideas and her teaching plans. I feel
comfortable expressing my opinions and my teaching ideas to her. We always share anddiscuss her lesson plans, talk about our students, and think about activities together. I think thisis a significantly fundamental process for team teaching. Also, it is our main focus to encourage
young learners to speak Japanese and to create a comfortable environment where they feelsafe to make a lot of mistakes since “mistakes are treasures”. I believe that this growth mindset
also applies to improving our teaching. We always have to come up with good ideas, which canenhance and maximize their Japanese skills. Since we see the same students everyday, wealways have to keep entertaining them and encourage them to act responsibly at the sametime.
My mother has been working at middle schools and she told me that it takes at least half a year
to get used to working at a middle school. I strongly agree with her and after six months, I sortof figured out what I can do in class. I will keep learning how to teach them with the help ofTanaka sensei.
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Japanese Langauge Education Update 40

2016 J-LEAP Report: Rikiya Kawano

2016 J-LEAP Report: Chizuru Imase

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