In Front of More than 300 Students

The principal introduced me to more than 300 students at a school assembly this morning. While he underscored that I am studying in the U.S., I hope it will not have primed the students’ cognition when they answer my survey within a couple of months. I also went up to the stage—about 1-meter higher than the floor on which the students were sitting—and made a very short speech about myself and my research. I must confess that I was nervous... I'm afraid that my voice was shaking!

Afterward I wandered in the school building and looked around classrooms. Almost every student whom I met greeted me with either “good morning, sir” or “hello.” I chatted with a few of them, but I noticed that our conversations were fairly awkward because we didn’t quite know how to communicate with one another. As I start coming to the junior-high school regularly, I hope students will feel comfortable with me and become willing to talk with me about various topics. At this point, I am still an outsider; however, I will soon have to become an insider who is nonetheless a little strange.

I also need to make friends with teachers. Some of them may well perceive me as a potential distraction for their teaching and, at worst, as an American snob who looks down upon their work. But I need their help in gathering “local knowledge” about the school and students. So I will try to communicate to the teachers that I appreciate their feedback on my research. Since social interactions in Japan are often structured by a hierarchy of educational attainment, I should make an effort in making both teachers and students feel equal to me and thereby feel free to express their opinions while I am around. But the truth is that they are probably too busy to give a s%$t about my research!