I promised I would explain why I would never like to teach Junior High, but I didn't come up with a satisfactory answer.  Elementary school kids are excited about school, and high school students are intelligent, educated and occasionally either interested in their studies, or have an interesting hobby or life outside of school.  Junior high students are none of this.  It's a very chaotic and cruel time of life, making me glad I got out of the country for that period and determined to do the same for my children.

Today I taught seventh grade English.  Well, taught would be hyperbole.  The schedule went something like this:  silent reading for twenty minutes, write about it in their reading logs, watch the movie <span class="movie title">Babe</span> for almost an hour, then write a 15 line summary of what they had seen so far.  What did the students read during silent reading?  One girl was reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0440414806" title="Amazon.com" class="book title">Holes</a>, several kids were reading books from the <span class="book title">Lord of the Rings</span> trilogy.

The book they are reading this week is about some Japanese puppeteers.  I must say, the Japanese-American community has been very succesful in promoting their culture to the American mainstream--most likely because of our close post-WW2 relationship.  Not only is the junior high reading books about Japanese puppeteers, they also have a Japanese class to get students ready for the high school Japanese curriculum.  The Chinese American community needs to do a little promoting of their own.  For goodness sakes, there are about seven or eight <acronym title="American Born Chinese">ABC</acronym>s for every one Japanese American student in the class, but the high school doesn't even have Chinese language courses.

I'll be subbing at the high school tomorrow, thank goodness.