What Dimples and Teaching Have In Common

One of my students has dimples. Deep ones that sink into his cheeks when he smiles. I didn’t even know that he knew how to smile until today. He gave me a sweet smile that lit up his cute face. Made me really happy 

Dimpled-cheek Reo sits at the end of the first row, sulking and never willing to participate in any activity no matter how hard I or the JTE tried.

But today, at lunchtime I sat with his lunch group and we got talking. I hadn’t yet learned the names of the students in this group so I asked. I heard Reo clearly but the name of the boy next to him got lost in the lunchtime music blaring through the speaker. The poor kid repeated his name but I still didn’t get it, because Japanese names... so Reo helped out by saying “Captain Tsubaya” in a louder voice. I got the joke, widened my eyes in surprise, said “oh wow a Captain” and saluted the Captain. That made Reo smile. The rest of the lunch time conversation went really well with Reo participating actively.

Thinking about this episode, I’m still not clear about why Reo is so uncooperative in English class, I’m usually as silly, cracking “dry jokes” that make the students go “aaah Nigerian joke “  I have a hunch that he doesn’t like being at the back, sitting at the end of the row. For lunchtime, their tables were arranged vertically so that if I looked from my right he was first, still at the edge of the row but definitely not the last. But I’m not making conclusions yet, next week I’ll see if this “new relationship” transcends into the English lesson otherwise, I’ll have to dig deeper.

I’ve seen those dimples today and I intend to keep seeing them! If you have any tips on how to make this magic happen again and again please share. Also, this post will be filed under the “Heart-warming stories from the classroom” label and I’d like to start collecting sweet memories from classrooms all over the world under this tag. If you’d like to contribute please send an email to 1teacher2anoda@gmail.com. Your story will be published and you’ll be duly credited.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope that your day is made cheerful by sweet, dimpled smiles. See you next post!

Picture credit: found on google photos, traced to @mr.alani on Instagram.