Ambition Has to Teach

Today’s UN Training --- Become a teacher to the masses

Just what defines the essence of a teacher? And what does a supposed teacher actually do? Some would say a teacher is someone who explains mandated curriculum to students in every level of education, others would say they are paramount to the social development of people well into their adult lives.

Akihiro Tani would agree with the former.

The ability to teach is a rung of the ladder to the top of the world. If one wants to be a leader, they must also be a teacher, and a practical one at that. It’s perhaps the main reason why he decided to form the Languages club in the first place, it is meant to be an opportunity to develop his skill and prepare him for guiding the many people who will be working under him later in life.

But he has unexpectedly been mandated to become a teacher to a specific student right away.

To do this, he has studied up on his topic of education, and created lessons and assignments for her to complete that will give her the knowledge needed to pass her senior year at Kokusai High School.

She’ll still have her normal school work, which he’ll help with, but he’ll also be adding different works of his own that will eventually allow her to pass her normal classes without his assistance. It isn’t much different than summer school or remedial classes.

If this all sounds like a colossal pain in the ass for both parties involved, that’s because it was intended to be.

Even though Tani’s practice of becoming a diplomat involves him manipulating everything around him to make things as easy as possible, he still operates in a headspace where tedious things are inconvenient to the point that he obsesses over getting them done as soon as he can.

On his first night after meeting Anita Pederson, he immediately dove into online essays about translation techniques involving Norwegian. In the sleepless hours deep into the night, he practiced the unique tongue movements all Scandinavian countries use to speak their various languages.

Of course, by no means was he able to come close to grasping it, but what his studying did is allow him to create those tedious lessons and assignments that the two of them can work through together, with the predicted result being Tani’s smooth ride into TIU’s Model UN club.

In this sense, Tani has taken on the role of what he believes to be a teacher.

But does this make him a good teacher? Having a vast knowledge of whatever topic is important, but wouldn’t the means to how one obtained that knowledge be just as important to their ability to educate someone on it?

No two people learn the same way after all, and sometimes teachers need to be taught how to teach.

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With Anita’s first day of school completed, she and Tani are in the Languages clubroom. He’s watching her intently as she fills out the language assignments he had spent all night making for her.

It’s been over an hour since Anita started working, and not a word has been spoken between the two since. The reason why is that Tani forbade the use of the translator voice app on their phones to talk with each other, he feels that the quickest way the two could learn each other’s languages is to immerse themselves in it, and so long as they're in this club room, that’s exactly what they’ll do.

Anita fiddles with the black ribbons in her hair and nibbles at her lip as she reads through the papers, it’s obvious that she’s not finding this work to be very fun. More so than that, it looks like it’s torturing her.

She starts to dizzily shake her head as steam comes plumbing from her ears as though her brain is smoldering.

Looking up to Tani like an injured animal pleading for help, he answers her struggle with the expression of a staff sergeant in the military.

The bags under his eyes from his lack of sleep have gotten darker throughout the day, and he looks borderline ghoulish when he says,

“You should be excited, this is your ticket to learning a new language.”

Even though he’s attempting to intimidate her into finishing her assignment, Anita ignores his hardened facade and puffs her cheeks, combatively sliding the paperwork away from her.

She can’t understand him without the translator app, but she could take an accurate guess of what he had just told her by looking at him.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

Anita stands to her feet and waggles her index finger. Walking to the blackboard, she grabs a piece of chalk, holds it out to him and points at it.

A purse of her lips and a twitch of her eyebrow is her attempt to get what she wants out of him.

“Chalk?” He replies.

To which she smiles and says, “Chalk!”

Repeating what he said a couple more times, she uses the chalk to write down ‘brogen’, and draws a little doodle of a piece of chalk right under it.

Next to the doodle, she writes the Japanese pronunciation in Romaji.

“That isn’t the most efficient way to learn a new language. You need specific tests and training pertinent to a common conversation in the beginning, it’ll be a long time before the word chalk comes up when you’re talking to someone.”

Tapping at the side of her head with the hand holding the chalk, she expresses her displeasure.

Pulling a book out of the bookshelf, a gentle twist of her body coincides with a smooth presentation of it to him.

“That’s a book.”

“..?”

“Book.”

“Book!!” She repeats with a smile while writing her newly learned words on the blackboard.

Tani sighs while watching her gleefully make her way around the clubroom with the diligence of a treasure hunter.

The process of presenting Tani with miscellaneous items in the room for him to identify is repeated over and over. It only takes a few minutes and Anita has written down how to pronounce just about everything she can see and touch in the clubroom.

Upon completing this, she looks to Tani and begins making gestures with her body.

“Now we’re playing charades??”

Tani would rather not go along with this, but Anita has looked like she has enjoyed every moment of learning these new words. He couldn’t possibly force her to stop and return to the paperwork he made for her now.

She points at herself, and emphasizes it.

“You?” he asks.

“Yes!”

Yes is perhaps the easiest word to say in Japanese, so Anita is the only one impressed with herself for knowing that.

She then points at him.

“Me?”

“Yes, Tani.”

It’s the first time she’s ever said his name, and her voice entered his ears in an electric wave that slid through his body and down into his feet.

Placing her head on the back of her palms pressed together, she pretends to doze off.

“Sleep?”

“Yes!”

“Tani… you sleep.”

She said that without a hitch.

Through the course of identifying all these items and playing a charade game, she learned enough to at least formulate a specific request.

He isn't so much impressed as he is curious of her choice to tell him that.

They say the portal into someone’s soul is their eyes, but the eyes are also the language of words left unspoken; he’s used his brown eyes to get her to understand him, she’s used her golden eyes to have him understand her. Those eyes of hers have told him of her desire to go to the roof for lunch, conveyed the feeling guilt for hitting him with an omelet, and expressed the little joys of learning new words.

Now she has put into words what she’s seen his eyes communicating to her throughout the day, and it wasn't something easily hidden by good posture or a stern attitude.

Anita slides her school cardigan off her shoulders and folds it neatly into a square, she puts it on the desk in front of Tani and taps on it twice.

She's made a little pillow for him to rest on.

"I can't just pass out right now, we have work to do."

Anita taps on the pillow again, this time more assertively.

Even though Tani is displaying his reluctance by scrunching his lips towards his nose, the idea of giving in and taking a quick nap is so appealing that he's finding it hard not to oblige.

"You're okay." Anita says in Japanese, her voice as tender and caring as a lullaby.

Tani doesn't know where she learned that from, but her soothing reaffirmation against his better judgment is just what is needed for him to take off his glasses and throw his head onto the cardigan pillow.

"I expect that assignment to be done by the time I wake up..."

He knows that she can't understand him, but the warmth and comfort of this makeshift pillow sweeps away any rational thought.

What's sweet and good doesn't always caress one's entire body with the sense of touch or feel, it soon enters his nose and transports him to a garden in a fairy tale. The scent of her cardigan seems to have magic in it.

As soon as he shuts his eyes, he falls asleep.

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Waking up in a haze, Tani is surprised to find that the orange hued clubroom has darkened into cooler colors. Like the sleeping beauty he is, when he lifts his head a trail of drool follows him up from Anita’s cardigan.

“!!”

“Yuck!” Anita says, standing by the blackboard and feigning horror.

“I’m sorry! I’ll take it home and clean it for you!”

Tani is actually quite embarrassed, an emotion that he’s not accustomed to and doesn’t know how to deal with, so he reacts by wadding her cardigan into a ball and hiding it behind his back.

She giggles when she says, "Det er ikke noe problem.”

She grabs her school bag off the desk and proceeds to the door to leave, but not before sending an appreciative smile his way. He figures that she has likely hung around this entire time just to make sure he didn’t wake up alone. She seems to be a rich girl, so her chauffeur must be waiting for her to come out of school to take her back home.

“See you tomorrow.” he says, still a little flustered after being seen in such a vulnerable state.

“Tomorrow!” she replies with a parting wave of her hand.

When she leaves the room, she takes all the warmth with her. Tani can’t explain why, but as soon as he is left alone he feels cold. The only thing keeping him from freezing over seems to be the cardigan he has wadded up in his arms, he looks down on it and is overcome with confusion as to why he's feeling these sensations.

"It's amazing how delirious I get after a nap. To think I allowed myself to look so dumb in front of a student of mine. Ha! That'll be the first and last time I ever make that mistake."

Shaking off the chill, Tani begins packing up his things and cleaning the clubroom. The paper assignments he left for Anita were left unfinished, and he clicks his tongue at her laziness. Even though he hoped she’d have completed her day’s assignments while he napped, without him there to press her, he’s not surprised she didn’t do it.

“We’re going to have to look into your work ethic, Anita-san. If you don’t go all out, Principal Togashi is going to make sure I don’t get what I need out of this club.”

He sighs, and then grabs the eraser to clear out what was written on the blackboard.

It’s then that he notices that there is a lot more than just the words identifying items around the clubroom written with his help. There’s full sentences there, things like greetings, pleasantries, figures of speech, all of which are evidence that Anita was actually training in her own way the entire time he slept.

She may have been using her phone to help her translate what she wrote down, but it is still proof that she does actually have a work ethic. The only difference is the method in which she’s learning, and it’s proof that Tani’s way of learning, and in turn his way of teaching, is not suited for this particular girl.

He finds it hard to make himself erase her effort, and sighs as he contemplates what it all means for him going forward. The student knows their own limitations better than any teacher would, and Tani can see that now; he knows that he'll have to adjust his teaching method if he wants her to learn.

Setting the eraser down, he leaves her hard work untouched. Anita can decide what to do with it when she feels she no longer needs the words written on the blackboard.

He smiles, gazing upon her handwriting with a new appreciation.

It’s then that his eyes notice a sentence written down at the bottom of the board.

“Huh?”

‘A girl came by while you were asleep, she wants to join our club.’

“What!?”

Any remnant of after-nap grogginess is scattered in an internal blast of energy, and he rushes out into the hallway. But Anita is long gone.

“Hey! I need more info than that! Did you even get her name!?”

The silence of the hallway is the only thing left to answer his question, and he clicks his tongue as he makes his way back into the room.

Gathering his things, his phone in his pocket vibrates. Taking it out and looking at the screen, Tani is surprised to find that he has received a text on LIME* from none other than Anita.

“Did she scan for my contact info while I was sleeping?” he asks himself while opening up the message.

[It’s okay to be patient, Tani! Go home and relax, you’re not allowed to wear yourself out any more! :p]

Tani answers her text with a sigh. Those golden eyes of hers are a lot more perceptive than he had imagined they’d be.

Without speaking in a mutual language, the two were still able to communicate. It didn’t come from a paper assignment, it wasn’t taught with a technique, but it was learned from a very distinct human connection.

“I get what you’re trying to tell me.” Tani says, putting his phone back in his pocket and snatching his school bag. “But now that I know there’s a potential member coming to the club tomorrow, it will be even harder for me to sleep tonight!”

We must remember, our ambitious high schooler only cares about one thing, and that one thing affords him the ability to ease through well thought out tactics to achieve it, yet it simultaneously clouds his mind with innocent excitement.

Another day from now, he’ll be one step closer to his dream.

Today’s UN Lesson --- Teach one person at a time!