The Rock Star Cicada's Victory

I’ve said this before but; I’m at an agricultural school. Not many of my students are going to college. From the start, my students are meant to believe that they won’t achieve anything but being a farmer, a gas station attendant, a convenience store worker or making ramen for some stranger (meaning a ramen restaurant not in the family). They aren’t told explicitly; it’s the simple fact that they’re in a school called an Agricultural school, as opposed to a commercial, academic or marine school. The contest was the whole Miyazaki prefecture, so students in which their academic schools have a 95% college attendance rate also attended. Bi-racial students also attended. So my Rock Star Cicada already had about 2 major strikes against him. Despite all that, he came in 5th. I am so proud of him.



I’m heavily biased but I think he should have placed a number or two higher lol. Okay, that’s all I’m going to say about that. I told him about bi-racial kids and that because of how they’re raised they might or might not have excellent, natural sounding English. I told him not to worry about it though, and that all he had to do was focus on his speech. In our case though, the biracial kids didn’t compete in our recitation, rather they were doing the long 5 minute speeches.



Despite his nervousness, the fact that he put all of his trust in me made me even more determined to push him. All of his practicing and hard work paid off. He was up against 35 other students and completely destroyed 30 of them. The ones he didn’t beat had luck on their side -.-. I had to say that I’ve never been so nervous/agitated/anxious for someone not in my family before until that day. They weren’t necessarily bad emotions but they were strong. His voice was a little low because he was a tad too far from the mic but he did very well. We had a couple of hours to wait until the results were finalized though.



I saw Chisaka-san’s speech because we were all in the same room and she did well, she said she did better than she thought she would. She wasn’t able to place though, but I’m just glad that she didn’t freak out and forget her speech or something lol.
So everyone was sitting there, waiting for the results to be called. The second name to be called was my Rock Star Cicada. I couldn’t stop the smile. He did it. He went up to receive his victory certificate then he comes back, smiles shyly and goes, “….I got it.” I taught him natural English of course, so he can use “I get it” and “I got it” in the proper situations. He’s such a good listener!



The contest was on a Friday so I didn’t get all the “Thank you’s” n stuff until Tuesday. One of the teachers said that our school never got into the top 6 until Friday. I’m having a hard time believing that, but I can’t necessarily check it. Regardless, let’s just let the Rock Star Cicada have his day. He’s graduating next March. He is part of the small percentage of students who will head off to college, to the international school at that…..yeeeessss! When I see him in class, he doesn’t slack off on the proper pronunciation of English words even though teachers won’t correct him because they speak the same Katakana English. I think the best thing about him is that if you saw him, you would think he was just like every other normal Japanese high school boy. Little does anyone know, he can act, he has progressive thoughts about visiting other countries, he refuses to use the term “half” for biracial people and can pronounce the hell out of v’s, l’s, r’s and th’s. By the time you realize his hidden talents, you’re already charmed.