A Former Student Becomes an Idol

I taught at several schools during my time in Aichi as a full-time teacher, and among the approximately eight schools, one of my favorite was Oku Junior High School in Ichinomiya. I know, I know. Teachers shouldn’t favor any one over the other because blah blah blah. Let’s face it, everyone has a favorite. Back in university, when one of our classmates asked the Semantics & Pragmatics lecturer about how scoring will be done, we ended up having 5% of the grades missing from the formula. The breakdown was something that went like 40% final exam, 20% term test, 20% term paper, 10% class participation, and 5% attendance. The class was like, “What about the last 5%?” The lecturer hesitated and said, “The last 5%… depends on whether I like you or not lah!” And the class burst into laughter. The lecturer then calmly said, “Did you think your other lecturers don’t grade you that way?” And I realized that can very easily be true.

Before going to teach at Oku JHS, the company staff and school teachers told me things like, “If the student are mischievous, you can bang the table and shout at them because that’s what the previous ALT did” and “If you see students beating other teachers, restrain them from behind instead of the front so that they can’t hurt you and you won’t hurt them by accident,” etc. That worried me a lot making me wonder what kind of students there are at the school. I stepped into the school half shivering but when it started I was surprised how different the students were. They were perfect angels. I absolutely loved them. It was then I learned how the previous ALT was so bad, the students deliberately made things difficult for him by sleeping and not paying attention in class. But I never had trouble with them and love the students so much.

Six, seven years have passed and they’re all in their twenties. Some of my former students who managed to find me are on my Facebook. I don’t deliberately seek them out because I don’t want to be the creepy teacher who tries to befriend his students. Recently, I learned that one of the girls, a former softball captain, has debuted as an idol in Tokyo, which surprised me since she didn’t seem to be the type who would be interested in becoming an idol. I haven’t been to her live performances as yet, but am looking forward to catching one of her performances some time soon.

The group’s name is Li-V-RAVE and their official site is here. It’s not complete yet but there’s a link to their previous Ameba site that lists their live performance schedules. Do support them if you can. And if you have to choose a member to support, I suggest Kaisaka Sarina. Don’t ask me why.

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