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10/02
I never know what to do when teachers are sleeping at their desks. On Friday I spun around in my chair to ask Batman a question, only to be met with him slumped over in his chair, head nodding. Awkwardly, I crept back to my desk. What to do, what to do? Am I supposed to wake him? It is the middle of the day. I don’t know, people in the U.S. catch a lot of flack from the Japanese workforce for only working 9-5 and for getting breaks and long lunches, but in the States you’d have your ass handed to you for texting, sleeping at your desk, or spending 2 hours every day in the break room watching television. I think it’s just a matter of where we like to spend our time. People in the U.S. would rather bust their asses in order to be free to spend their time at home as they like, where apparently Japanese people would rather chill all day, even if it means no free time. Also they apparently don’t mind being watched by their co-workers for 12 hours a day, me on the other hand, I go crazy never getting any privacy at work. I always spill my food because I’m too worried about people watching me eat with chopsticks and carry my soup across the room.
In the vein of judgment, halfway through the week of my teaching classes, hypocrisy began to run rampant. Ichi-sensei went on a superiority rant about how he only uses English in the classroom. Not only is this not the case, but I’ve walked past his class before and he usually teaches entirely in Japanese. In fact, sometimes I can only tell what class it is based on the sound of his voice because not a word of English is spoken. I don’t begrudge him that so much, I just wish he hadn’t been so condescending when calling me out when I mentioned how much Japanese is spoken in English class.
And I have to say, there was more than one instance this week where a teacher gave me criticism on my lesson plan, I pondered it for a while, and came to the unspoken response of, “Hm. Maybe it’s you.” Seriously, much of this system is contradictory. I’m in a place where people demand things of me but at the same time prevent me from doing them. I comprised my lesson entirely of communicative conversation exercises and if the students had been barred from using Japanese they would have been talking to a partner or a group for the entire period. When (for some UNKNOWN REASON) the students didn’t use English, a teacher told me they weren’t getting enough speaking practice, so he wanted me to have them repeat THE INSTRUCTIONS to the exercises out loud after I read them. In what fantasy land is that oral skills? The irony is that this practice took time away from their dialog practice.
Of course, my lessons are far from perfect. I’m still learning the Japanese classroom, and that’s hard for me. I look at the students’ faces and they are the same whether they understand or not. I haven’t yet figured out how to gauge the silence. I don’t know which words they know and which they don’t. It’s a wonder ALTs without teaching background or language awareness can teach at all. Again, I’m wanting to be perfect and I’m in a situation where I just can’t be. I think I’m going to view life quite differently when I get back to the States.
After our last class together for the week, I had another conversation with Ichi-sensei. This time he breathed a sigh of relief and told me he was glad the week was over. When we were talking about how students don’t always respond as we’d like, he admitted that most of the language used in the Japanese English classroom is Japanese. He also pointed out that as much as he tries to teach in English, it’s very hard to do when you’re the only one. It’s true. The kids don’t know how to respond and how to listen in English when they’re allowed to use Japanese. I reassured him that I don’t hate the players, I hate the game, so to speak. Japan is coming around, but I think it will be a good decade at least before its classrooms catch up to other foreign language classrooms.
Then Ichi-sensei went on to tell me about how his wife and him live separately and she was just in a car accident but is okay. For a few minutes I was like, “whoa, whoa, whoa, this is over-share in the States, let alone in Japan where you can go out to eat every other night with your friends and they’ve still never even met your wife.” He continued though and I learned that she lives in Sapporo because she is undergoing fertility treatments because they’ve been trying to have children for six years to no avail. I told him I’ve known a lot of people in the same situation and I’m rooting for him. I think we grew closer from that. Though he did end the conversation with, “She’s finishing one of her rounds of treatment this week, so I may have to go to Sapporo on a moment’s notice!” Which brought us straight back to I-don’t-need-to-know-when-you-have-sex-with-your-wife territory.
I never know what to do when teachers are sleeping at their desks. On Friday I spun around in my chair to ask Batman a question, only to be met with him slumped over in his chair, head nodding. Awkwardly, I crept back to my desk. What to do, what to do? Am I supposed to wake him? It is the middle of the day. I don’t know, people in the U.S. catch a lot of flack from the Japanese workforce for only working 9-5 and for getting breaks and long lunches, but in the States you’d have your ass handed to you for texting, sleeping at your desk, or spending 2 hours every day in the break room watching television. I think it’s just a matter of where we like to spend our time. People in the U.S. would rather bust their asses in order to be free to spend their time at home as they like, where apparently Japanese people would rather chill all day, even if it means no free time. Also they apparently don’t mind being watched by their co-workers for 12 hours a day, me on the other hand, I go crazy never getting any privacy at work. I always spill my food because I’m too worried about people watching me eat with chopsticks and carry my soup across the room.
In the vein of judgment, halfway through the week of my teaching classes, hypocrisy began to run rampant. Ichi-sensei went on a superiority rant about how he only uses English in the classroom. Not only is this not the case, but I’ve walked past his class before and he usually teaches entirely in Japanese. In fact, sometimes I can only tell what class it is based on the sound of his voice because not a word of English is spoken. I don’t begrudge him that so much, I just wish he hadn’t been so condescending when calling me out when I mentioned how much Japanese is spoken in English class.
And I have to say, there was more than one instance this week where a teacher gave me criticism on my lesson plan, I pondered it for a while, and came to the unspoken response of, “Hm. Maybe it’s you.” Seriously, much of this system is contradictory. I’m in a place where people demand things of me but at the same time prevent me from doing them. I comprised my lesson entirely of communicative conversation exercises and if the students had been barred from using Japanese they would have been talking to a partner or a group for the entire period. When (for some UNKNOWN REASON) the students didn’t use English, a teacher told me they weren’t getting enough speaking practice, so he wanted me to have them repeat THE INSTRUCTIONS to the exercises out loud after I read them. In what fantasy land is that oral skills? The irony is that this practice took time away from their dialog practice.
Of course, my lessons are far from perfect. I’m still learning the Japanese classroom, and that’s hard for me. I look at the students’ faces and they are the same whether they understand or not. I haven’t yet figured out how to gauge the silence. I don’t know which words they know and which they don’t. It’s a wonder ALTs without teaching background or language awareness can teach at all. Again, I’m wanting to be perfect and I’m in a situation where I just can’t be. I think I’m going to view life quite differently when I get back to the States.
After our last class together for the week, I had another conversation with Ichi-sensei. This time he breathed a sigh of relief and told me he was glad the week was over. When we were talking about how students don’t always respond as we’d like, he admitted that most of the language used in the Japanese English classroom is Japanese. He also pointed out that as much as he tries to teach in English, it’s very hard to do when you’re the only one. It’s true. The kids don’t know how to respond and how to listen in English when they’re allowed to use Japanese. I reassured him that I don’t hate the players, I hate the game, so to speak. Japan is coming around, but I think it will be a good decade at least before its classrooms catch up to other foreign language classrooms.
Then Ichi-sensei went on to tell me about how his wife and him live separately and she was just in a car accident but is okay. For a few minutes I was like, “whoa, whoa, whoa, this is over-share in the States, let alone in Japan where you can go out to eat every other night with your friends and they’ve still never even met your wife.” He continued though and I learned that she lives in Sapporo because she is undergoing fertility treatments because they’ve been trying to have children for six years to no avail. I told him I’ve known a lot of people in the same situation and I’m rooting for him. I think we grew closer from that. Though he did end the conversation with, “She’s finishing one of her rounds of treatment this week, so I may have to go to Sapporo on a moment’s notice!” Which brought us straight back to I-don’t-need-to-know-when-you-have-sex-with-your-wife territory.
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