The End of April

(Disclaimer [and note to the censors]: All details included in this post have already appeared in newspapers.)

April means so many things both here in the Land of the Rising Sun and at Ye Olde Academy. It is the start of the fiscal year. It is the start of the school year. It is a time of quick growth and even quicker change.

It is the time when children make their entry into this sprawling garden of dreams and futures. When they arrive they are nervous and doe-eyed, their uniforms often ill-fitting and awkward. They are filled with uncertainty but also with hope. Just getting in was a monumental hurdle to surmount. Now that they are here, they have to figure out the new reality, and it isn't always as easy as their cram school notes. They often grope about as if in the dark, trying not to get lost in the sometimes-spooky maze of corridors and stairways. Their homeroom teachers soon become their most trusted guides, like beacons in the fog, giving them direction, helping them to understand that there is a Way of Things here as everywhere else, providing a welcome familiar face at least twice a day.

As the days go on, and the sakura start to blow away, the real experiences begin. Classes at Ye Olde Academy are nothing like what they've had before. All that moving around exposes them both to the beauty of the campus and its intimidating size (especially for rookies). The pace and the level of the lessons is sometimes more than they expect, and they soon learn they have to jump onto the moving train or else wind up being dragged along behind it. They learn that they have to get accustomed to the face of not just one teacher, but of several. It can be unsettling, but the homeroom teacher is always there again to reassure at the end of the day.

The older students also do their best to welcome their new schoolmates, making new friends, inviting new recruits into the various clubs, and, perhaps most significantly of all, helping them prepare for the Sports Festival.

The Sports Festival is particularly important. Most schools hold theirs later in the year, but at Ye Olde Academy it is always at the end of April. Thus it serves as the last initiation ceremony for the new 7th graders, finalizing their induction into the school. By training, preparing, and competing together with their seniors, the new students show their worthiness to be part of the team. As the month progresses, each week heralded by a new barrage of blooms, the intensity increases. As the preparation nears its completion, the training becomes both more organized and more intense. The excitement builds exponentially, and as the final week arrives, it becomes harder and harder to rein in the kids enough to get them to sit through a serious lesson. They can hear the sports ground calling to them, and they can't wait to get outside and practice with their new classmates again. They are eager to expend the energy they've built up during the day. Surrounded by anticipation and youthful exuberance, they find it harder even to sit and wait their turn. It is time to play. It is time to run.

Thus it was when the junior high students finished their classes on a warm, sunny Thursday and immediately headed out to the sports ground. The senior high students had one more period left to go, so those on the field waited for them impatiently. There were several teachers on duty at the time, but with several hundred anxious, excited bodies running around, it was impossible to keep track of them all.

No doubt no one saw the three 7th grade boys separate from the bulk of the students and chase each other in the shadows behind the stands. No one saw one of the boys, no doubt laughing with excitement, climb up the stairs to the flag platform in a vain attempt to shake his pursuers. As he backed up, facing his friends, no doubt the ledge behind him was the last thing on his mind. The distance he fell was 155cm (5 feet).

When the others saw and ran to him, he was still conscious and had no visible sign of injury. However, he was not responding to questions, so he was put on a spine board and an ambulance was called. Three different emergency hospitals said their ICUs weren't available and refused to accept him before, fully half an hour later, a fourth hospital reluctantly agreed to take him in as a last resort. A specialist was apparently brought in by helicopter. The prognosis was that the boy had a fractured skull and a contusion, but it didn't appear particularly serious. Two days later he was in a deep coma, and the doctors say it doesn't look good.

It is virtually impossible to anticipate something like this. It is even harder to try to prevent it from happening. Sometimes probability works against us. Sometimes freak accidents simply occur. The problem is that, when they do, people tend to lose all sense of reality. The soul-searching and the irrational accusations go into overdrive. The family, understandably pained by the situation (made even more complicated by existing issues of their own), goes manic and does its best to make things even more difficult. The news media drools as it digs in and shouts the name of our school and principal to the masses and trumpets to the world how negligently evil we are. People say, "Where were the teachers?" as if we could possibly see every student in every place at all times. People say, "Why didn't they take precautions against this?" as if we could foresee every possible incident with at least a 0.001 percent chance of occurrence and somehow prevent it. People say, "Why didn't they keep the students under control?" as if we had the ability or reason to take 500+ junior high students by the hand and lead them everywhere, even during their free times. Unfortunately, we are generally required to do the impossible, and when the impossible bites us, we're painfully reminded of how inadequate we are. What's even sadder is the fact that the brunt of the blame has to be borne by the kid's homeroom teacher, who had absolutely nothing to do with the incident whatsoever.

What's even worse is that I'm his assistant homeroom teacher. The loyalty and concern of the other students has been both touching and heartbreaking. I helped them fold a thousand (actually more than that) paper cranes, a Japanese "get well" tradition. They've still only just entered the school, and this has turned out to be a very rude welcome.

The view in my classroom last Saturday. The first thousand paper cranes we completed were strung together in traditional fashion (seen hung on the blackboard). The remainder (on the floor at bottom left) were sorted and later placed into a bag.

There is no joy in Ye Olde Academy. The Sports Festival has been canceled. The flow has been disrupted. There is sorrow everywhere. April has been prematurely aborted.