I guess I will only be updating this blog sporadically. With such a small readership, I am sure no
one will blame me. I have been
incredibly lazy however. I won’t even
try and claim that I have been busy. I
really haven’t. I am just lazy about it,
and would rather just play my PC games.
While yeah, I am in Japan, and yeah, it’s cool, I am also
pretty broke, and even when it looks like I am going to be saving some money…
boom! Something happens to eat all the cash up.
Case in point, our refridgerator is leaking. So we have to buy a new one. Granted the old one was a hand me down from
the early 90s… It was free. So that is a
bummer. At least we will get a lot of
points on our Yodobashi Camera card. I
would love to go out and do some touristy things, but now is not the time really. Thank god I like games, and 50$ can hold me
off for a month. Just going to Tokyo for
a day would cost twice that I think.
From my last post, I was playing Shogun 2 (Which I still am.. ) Mass
effect 2 and WItcher 2… All of them were great games. Now I am downloading Space Marine, LA noir
and Dragonage:Origins… let’s see how this goes.
As far as work goes, I am teaching at 4 different middles
schools, peppered by an occasional Elementary school. Middle school A, the biggest of the lot, is
my least favorite. That doesn’t mean I don’t
like it, but I go so infrequently, I have no relationship with the students or
other teachers. I feel bad about this
school too, because I really don’t do a lot there. They always schedule me with so much free
time, and I get the feeling that the principle isn’t too keen on me either, and
if it were his choice, I wouldn’t be there.
The English teachers are all really cool though, and I have only taught
the 3rd year students. I have
no idea about the other grades. They are
the only school that has invited me to 2 different functions; I have
unfortunately not been able to make them, so maybe they think the feeling is
mutual.
School B is one I have to take a bus for, and the kids at
that school are the roughest lot of all the schools. Most aren’t very motivated, and there is
quite a lot of acting out by the students.
The poor teachers are always trying to keep things under control more
than they teach. They are all really
nice people there, and it seems that I am at that school the most, so I have a
bit of a relation with the kids. Being a
foreigner and the fact that they know I used to work for the Department of
Juvenile Justice, makes most of them back off immediately, but I still get
tested… and they still lose when they do.
I am not enforcing any rules and I am not getting on their case, but
they hardly scare me… and most of them see that when they try to do that, they
actually encourage me. Like all schools,
that is a minority though.
School C is a smaller school which I could technically walk
to, but if I take the bus, its paid for and I get to ride with a bunch of cute
nurses who get off at the University hospital down the street… *sigh*…. This school is smaller, but has a good
concentration of really motivated kids and teachers. The teachers there are very accepting of me,
and are generally relieved I speak a smattering of Japanese.
School D is my favorite, and is the smallest. Small schools have always been my favorite,
since I can better develop relationships.
The teachers there have an amazing corp de esprit, and the students are
a riot. The only bad part is the girls
are openly, and uncomfortably flirtatious…
My job is to be as friendly as possible, develop a working relationship
with the students, and basically be an entertainer. This complicates things a little, but it’s a minor
and innocent thing, I’m sure. I have a
lot of fun with everyone there, but unfortunately I go there very rarely.
To finish this off, let me talk about teachers in
Japan. Teacher is not the correct word
for them, and is only vaguely similar to what we refer to as a teacher in
western society. I would rather call
them social custodians. They are never
off duty, and I mean that in the most literal of senses. When they are not actually teaching a course,
they are coaching or leading some other club… That includes the weekends too. If one of their students does something
stupid outside of school, then the ‘teachers’ are involved sometimes before
anyone else. They are a second set of
parents, working for peanuts. A western
teacher would find this untenable, and unions would certainly go berserk. But they all knew what they were getting into
before they joined, and the ones that survive are made of really tough
stuff. You see that while US teachers do
less (I am not saying they do little, I am just saying they are only in charge
of the lessons), they receive better preparation and much better support. Teachers here figuratively sink or swim, with
only a few weeks of on the job training.
So here’s to you! Japanese teachers that survive! And to
those ALTs who dare call themselves teacher… yeah… you’re really not.
