Ms. Scherer (Sensei) - Japanese Teacher


“Konnichiwa, Sensei,” good afternoon Ms. Scherer! “Konnichiwa” good afternoon! Everyday, my tenth hour Japanese class starts the same. Greet the teacher, sit down, “kiritsu” stand up, “lei” bow, “chakuseki” sit down. It’s just like a real Japanese classroom.
I have known Ms. Scherer going on four years now. Because it’s a Japanese class, I’ve never known her as “Ms. Scherer.” In fact, just typing it is weird for me. She’s always been Sensei, which is Japanese for teacher.

I remember walking into my Japanese classroom for the first time my freshman year. I wasn’t surprised to see my friends in the classroom. When I saw Sensei, I just got so excited. Ms. Scherer is such an adorable person. She’s really pretty, she’s tiny, and she’s Japanese. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever met a cuter person. Once I got home, I went off to my mom about how adorable Sensei is. I was also happy and relieved to learn she is actually Japanese. I know many teachers for foreign languages aren’t actually the ethnicity or nationality of the language they teach. Without the teacher actually being that ethnicity, you can’t properly learn about the culture. You can hear about what they do at certain times of the year, you can be told what they believe in, but without them being of that ethnicity, you can’t hear the personal stories and feel a connection. Sensei has provided us with many personal stories.

Sensei has always worked hard to help us learn Japanese. It’s a very hard language to learn. Much harder than Spanish, as it’s Latin based. But she has made it feel like I’m a natural at Japanese. She takes the time to show the class how to write the characters and the stroke orders.
My freshman and sophomore year, Japanese classes were normal classes. But junior and senior year was a bit different. During my junior year, three levels of Japanese took place in one classroom at the same time. Sensei had it hard, but she still managed to work well and teach us everything we needed to know. The school was telling us that for my senior year, we would no longer have a Japanese class; however, nobody wanted that to happen. Especially not Sensei. She brought it up to our class so we would know about it and she wanted us to work hard to try and find a way to keep the class for one last year. She told us she was even willing to work for ten dollars, or even for free. Fortunately, we were able to have Japanese class for one last year. Currently, my senior year, we only have eight people, including myself in the class.

Every year we get to go on a field trip to Chicago. In Chicago, there’s a supermarket called Mitsuwa Marketplace. It’s a Japanese supermarket where we spend our whole day. It’s about an hour and a half drive and we get to buy whatever we want. They have cooking ingredients, fish, noodles, a pastry shop, and even a food court. In addition to that, they have china, a bookstore, and a video game store. Sensei does her annual grocery shopping when we go and completely fills up a shopping cart. It’s one of the things I look forward to every year. We can’t go this year because we have so few people, but the memories of the trip are my favorite high school memories.

Because we don’t have too many people, Sensei gets to help us individually. We present scripts we write or from our textbooks and she tells us what each person has to do to improve and what we’re doing well. She’ll tell us our strong points and our weak points. I really respect her for that. It helps me figure out what I need to focus more on and it motivates me. Because she tells me my strong points, I feel as though I’m good at what I’m doing. Thanks to these small encouragements, I’ve decided to major in the Japanese language at UW Milwaukee. Sensei is working really hard to get us ready for college Japanese classes. She’s helping us to remember characters we should know at the college level and she’s making sure we’re really comfortable with grammar and speaking. Everyday I look forward to having Japanese class and furthering my knowledge.
If I had any other teacher, I don’t think I would enjoy Japanese as much. I wouldn’t have much drive to continue on to majoring in Japanese in college! Thanks to Sensei, I’m going down a completely different path than I ever could have imagined. Before I started taking Japanese, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I was completely clueless. My sister is 21 and she still has no idea what to do with her life. To be honest, I was afraid I was going to go down that same path, but Sensei guided me into the world of the Japanese language. I couldn’t imagine my life without Sensei. She has changed my life forever and she is by far the most influential person I have ever met.
“Sayounara Sensei” bye Ms. Scherer, “Ja, made ashita” then, until tomorrow! Everyday my Japanese class ends the same. I say goodbye to Sensei and walk out with my friends, still speaking in Japanese. I get to go home happy and satisfied with my day.