Nostalgia Biased

When I first arrived in Japan I remember there were boys in third grade that looked pretty cool and there were some badass judo guys that looked tough and scared me. And there were girls that looked mature and ready to go on to senior high school and be members of AKB48. Nowadays the third grade boys are as hopeless as they were in first grade and the girls wouldn't even make it into SKE48. It could be that a group of fifteen year olds look younger to me because I am three years older. Do the math. Although I wonder if the way I see my current students compared to the old ones is just nostalgia.

My original third graders from almost three years ago where my first students and they set the standard for what classes should be and they just happened to be really cool. That first summer everything in Japan was totally awesome to me, from Shinto shrines to automatic taxi doors. This extended to the feelings I had for my first students, who saw me at my most amateur and vulnerable and who I saw as the fulfilment of the dream of being in Japan. I felt the same way about the second and first graders at that time because I was riding a wave of culture shock enthusiasm.

Then next spring the third graders graduated to high school and got older and maybe I got older with them. My rose tinted glasses started to slip and maybe since then things have never been quite the same, because of a nostalgia I felt for those early days. I loved the second graders just as much but because of schedule changes I barely taught their classes when they moved up to third grade. I spent more time with the new first graders who were fresh out of primary school and they didn't feel like my own students.

Shouldn't I feel the opposite way? I should have a better connection with students that have known me since their first day, but they aren't wrapped in the warmth of nostalgia. Memories of my original students are coloured by the fresh faced perspective I had at the time but now I see most children as the next products of the Japanese education system that we JETs often like to criticise.