I’m more selfish than most people I know. Too often, I find myself getting caught up in plans I’ve made, unwilling to compromise them for the sake of someone else. And I’ve hurt people I’ve cared about because of this habit.
There are very few foreign English teachers in my situation—teaching at a very academic high school. One of the top high schools in the Osaka area, and therefore one of the top schools in Japan. Designing lessons for these students isn’t easy. First of all, the teachers have their own agendas, and if I let them have their way, I’m just a tape recorder, reading lines for them to repeat and maybe talking about a trip I recently took or how in America, we don’t usually eat raw fish or fermented soybeans. Yeah, this kind of stuff helps, but often times it’s boring for me, and definitely boring for the students. Lately, I’ve been trying to push in some more fast-paced activities and worksheets and things to get students sharing with each other and with me. It’s kind of worked.
I’ve been having beers with two Canadian dudes at a school of similar academic level. They’re both really funny, easy-going guys, but they also share my passion for teaching. It’s really, really rare you find people like that these days, I don’t know why.
So last time, we went out to this place called the Lone Star. Oh, man, it’s been a while since I’ve had decent nachos and burgers and other George Bush food. And a pitcher of beer—the idea of a pitcher of beer hasn’t caught on in Japan. It’s a glass of beer or a bottle of beer, no pitchers. It’s little treats like that that are refreshing.
They brought along one of their teachers, who is in her first year of teacher, and on whom I definitely have a tragic crush. But that’s besides the point—I refuse to digress into a romantic soap opera rhetoric, so if you want that, then pick up one of those grocery store novels or read Dick Cheney’s diary.
One of the things they’re doing at their school is journaling. I checked one of these out, and their first year students can write better than most of our third year students. They always preached to me in education: students will rise to your expectations, and this is testimony to that. At my school, we yell grammar and complex reading passages at them in Japanese and wonder why they can’t write in their last year.
Next, they switched one of their classes to all English, which is a huge step, considering that most Japanese English courses do not involve speaking English, only reading or listening to it. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Language was first made from people speaking it, not writing it, so why can’t we learn it that way? Anyway, this class that was all English did the poorest on exams at the beginning of the year. Three months later, they’re the best. Coincidence? Well, if you teach at my school, then you say, “yes, defiantly a coincidence. No one can learn a language without having grammar yelled at them in Japanese.”
So I had a dramatic week wrestling for more free time after school last week, which was mildly successful. At least I made the point that I may choose not to do things after school, at the risk of being excommunicated by the senior teacher, which happened to the previous teacher in my position. Anyway, I can’t get fired for trying to do my job, as painful as it may get.
Next, I’m doing journals next year with the first year students(the Japanese school year starts in March). I don’t care if I have to respond to all 240 student journals myself, but it’ll be done. The plan is not to correct English. I just write back a page letter to them.
Then, I’m trying to convince teachers to do the whole class in English. This has proven to be a formidable challenge. Some teachers want to do it, and I’m almost there with three of them. Others, however, are scared, confused and therefore hostile about the idea. They have little confidence in the students and themselves. And I feel like a jackass trying to tell someone who’s been professionally educated to do this job and have been doing it for over 10 years, when I’m not educated in teaching English, and have been doing it less than three months.
I keep remembering bits of advice form teachers and my parents like in some over-dramatized kung-fu movie where the main character is like about to die, but then he remembers something his sensei told him—you know, like one of those cheesy lines, like, “move like water,” or “a man’s strength is behind his eyes,” or “get me a freaking beer already.”
Here’s what I remember:
1. You catch more flies with honey. My mom says this one. I actually hear my dad telling me that my mom says this, never her actually telling me. Anyway, it comes to me whenever I get worked up over something and want to argue with someone. So I back down and rethink. Pick battles.
2. Be persistent. My student teacher observer kept telling me this one. It’s sort of like the if you don’t succeed….saying, but I like this better. Every time I’m at my wit’s end, there’s always one more thing I can do, one more cheese ball you can eat. Just one more brownie, sir…(That was Monty Python).
I’ve seen to much potential in the students at this school to let another class slide into mediocrity. They have so much positive energy, talents and they’re all smarter than me. Time and time again I’ve been moved by their attitudes towards learning and speaking English. If only I could share that with the teachers… But in class, it’s sit down and shut-up time. I don’t understand this part of Japanese culture, and I don’t think most Japanese people understand it either, but it’s what they do. It’s this look in their eyes, if they’re even open—this kind of desire to open up in class, but they don’t think it’s okay. They don’t understand how learning can be interactive, and therefore, in order to show that they want to learn, they stare at their notebooks and don’t talk. The idea that they might ask questions and share with me and the rest of the class is associated with being a bad student. So every day I see incredibly talented students—students that can speak better in English than my president, students that have memorized ten or more American pop songs, students that have written essays with the words “refurbished” and “incentive” correctly used—and they just sit there, leaving their gifts, ideas and smiles inside their heads.