Ian’s Blog – Act 2 Scene 2 April 7, 2009
Posted by mgerow in Ian's Blog.Tags: Ian's Blog
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Ian - Co-op Student Working in Japan
Act II: Being Here
Scene ii: The Job
And so it was, our man, our… “dubious hero”… was now fully living in Japan and equipped with the training with which to instruct the next generation of Japanese youth in the Yamagata Prefecture area on the trivialities and quibbles of the English language. How strange it is that the lad who detested school – and English class in particular! – should become a schoolteacher in the very subject he was so annoyed with and currently majoring in. Fate is not without a sense of irony, it seems.
Well, I suppose a few good questions to ask is “What’s it like to be an English teacher in Japan? What’s involved? What do you do? Why do you do it? Why am I asking you so many questions? Am I really asking you these questions, or am I just a representation of a curious reader by the writer?” I guess I should start at outlining some of the finer details of the job before tackling the big parts. Rather backwards sounding, I know, but those little details make the bigger ones fit better if you let me explain.
The types of schools where I teach (yes, more than one!) are juku style schools. Juku is the Japanese word for extracurricular, after-hours type schooling for children and young adults. To put it lightly, the Japanese education system is VERY intense and high pressure once you hit middle school. In order to try and give the greatest edge at passing exams (read: not actually learning how to think or learning useful material, but rather how to pass exams, a popular criticism of the Japanese education system), jukus are provided for filling in those pesky holes in the child’s day where they may play or generally not be studying or concerning themselves with their education. Because of the largely homogenous social class structure in Japan, education is a big starting point for where people tend to sit in society, regardless of actual smarts the person may have. The more prestigious and regarded the school, the more extra-curricular activities, and so on, the higher you’re bound to sit, or at least be regarded, in Japanese society.
I also mentioned previously that I work in more than one school. Correct! I work in three schools for one week each a month, with one week spent either working in an office to prepare my next lessons. The rest of the time at these schools, an English-speaking Japanese teacher handles the rest of the curriculum. Mostly, working at this many schools means I spend a lot of time traveling from one place to another on the train. I work in Yamagata Higashi (“East Yamagata”), Sagae (“Server error: could not translate”), and Higashine (“East Root”).
For my office days, I travel to the office in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture (no, it’s not related to the wicked-awesome Mr. Miyagi from “The Karate Kid”. He was from Okinawa anyways). If I’m caught early enough in the day, I can be asked on one of my office days to cover for another teacher who may be ill or otherwise unable to make it to work on time. If I’m asked to cover for someone else, I can be sent to almost anywhere in the company’s Sendai school district, which is basically Yamagata and Miyagi Prefectures. The farest-out place I was asked to cover was in Kesennuma, Miyagi, and let me tell ya, a four hour train ride for four days of school is more tiring than it sounds like.
For me, a surprisingly large part of my job is doing paperwork and lesson planning rather than actual teaching. In fact, I’d say the ratio of teaching/preparation is about 65/35 or so, which surprised the heck out of me. It’s actually not so bad since most of the paperwork is really easy and straightforward, but it’s kind of tedious since so many details are very important. If you can’t get all the details right with so many company documents, you’ll be asked to re-do it.
In terms of preparation, it’s mostly the usual stuff. Lesson reports so people know what you did and didn’t teach. Making notes on what students do well and what students don’t do well. Sometimes doing administrative paperwork for the office. Mostly, however, it’s getting picture cards and self-made teaching materials together for games and activities that (god, HOPEFULLY!) the kids’ll find fun and educational. For some teachers, they can walk right into a class and just ROCK it with great, fun games. I, however, am a bottom-feeder for when it comes to fun. I enjoy watching curling, for example. So this generally translated into me fumbling and agonizing over what games I can try to play with the kids. I make it through alright, though.
The classes themselves can range from “holy CRAP that was awesome!” to “holy CRAP that was terrible!” This largely depends on how you can charismatically lead a class, present the lesson, handle dissidents, and adequately supervise a class full of young, hyperactive (or “genki”, as the Japanese term goes) students that want you to make with the fun, not the English. All of this happening between two very different languages to boot, occasionally leading to some interesting chemistry.
Sometimes the students can help make a class a great deal more fun by being compliant and bright enough to understand what you’re trying to do, or they can make it absolutely worse two ways: completely ignoring you and doing whatever they want and disrupting others, or being absolutely silent and shy to the point that you have no idea if they understand anything you just tried to do. Of the two, I dislike the quiet ones worse because with quiet kids, you can’t help but feel that’s it’s YOUR fault for not engaging them. If the kid is naughty, however, you know that it’s just out of your hands and you can only do your best. This can especially drive you nuts when some classes are only intermittently quiet. It’s all apart of the challenge though, isn’t it?
This is a company is an after-school program type setup, so I am regularly teaching in the evenings on weekdays, and often all day on Saturday. It’s just my luck that almost all of my Saturdays are spent teaching from morning to evening instead of sitting at home and doing nothing. Oh well. I’ll have plenty of time to do absolutely nothing on Saturdays once I get back to University (just kidding Mom and Dad and all of my excellent and inadequately waged and respected, dashingly intelligent, and ruggedly handsome/strikingly beautiful university professors who may read this).
I guess that about handles all of it. I must say, I quite enjoy this job, although I’m sure I wouldn’t want to do it as a lifelong career. I daresay it’s a perfect choice job for anyone interested in heading on over to Japan during university (through Thompson Rivers University’s Co-op Abroad program, *wink*). It’s also pretty good for anyone who wants to learn more Japanese than the average Canadian knows, like “ラメン”, or “こにちわ”. No one knows those words, do they?
(*Hint: Use a hiragana and katakana charts to figure those out. The joke’s pretty simple…)
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