Something really boring! Who wants to read a 10 page essay I wrote about the JET Program!!! Tamara, I guess it'll be an indicator of how just how dull geology grad-school is if you jumped at that. But, yeah, I wrote this for an essay contest that I'm hoping nobody else submits to because the grand prize is a cool 10,000 yen and I don't have much confidence in a victory that involves competition. I tried to send this to Marnie but for some reason her computer won't download my email attachments, so she suggested I post it to my blog (www.mylinktothewesternworld.blogspot.com) but I figured that this blog has seen nothing but Luke and Indy's Texan jackassery for too long. So here it is, all 2,999 words of it (leave it to me to push a word limit to... well, to the limit). Also, happy birthday to me.
It’s approaching 3:00 and I can’t do it anymore, so I gently but decisively snap the cover of my textbook shut and try to reclaim my wits from the cracks and crevices between verb conjugations and vocabulary words into which they’ve fallen over the past few hours. Today is a test day, which, as any JET participant past or present would tell you, means that I have absolutely nothing to do, so since roughly 10:30 I’ve been doing my best to stay stuck to the slippery shapes of kanji and the real-world stuff they signify, but it’s been five hours and I can feel the slashes and swoops getting slick, so there’s no use trying to hold on anymore. Studying isn’t going to do me any more good today.
Looking up from my closed book, the ambient sights and sounds I’ve been trying to muffle for the past four or five hours resolve into the still mostly incoherent hustle and bustle of the teachers’ room I inhabit a corner of. Closing my textbook for the day is a simultaneously exultant and rueful act; there is nothing more satisfying than marking out another chapter of vocabulary words and grammar points like previously undiscovered intellectual topography on an adventurer’s chart; but, at the same time, refocusing my attention upon the scattered eddies of conversation in the teachers’ room immediately takes up all notions of progress and sweeps them out to sea. Sometimes it seems like I don’t understand anything. Nine years of this and the map still seems mostly blank. This language is a vast territory of signs and symbols and sentiment that can’t be traversed in a day. Or even a decade.
But then again, what language can be? Certainly not English. It’s 3:20, the tests are finished, and students have started to trickle into the teachers’ room to collect the various keys, rosters, and file folders necessary for the extra-curricular activities that are in turn a pretty necessary part of the lives of Japanese middle school students. My Japanese middle school students. My students. As a twenty-two year old kid fresh out of college I still wonder what right I have to be pretending to teach anybody anything, let alone something as trackless and monolithic as a foreign language, but nevertheless, four times a week I stand alone in front of a room full of these very same kids now running off to put on kendo skirts or basketball shoes and do my best.
Hamamatsu city in Shizuoka Prefecture offers something of a unique experience to its resident JETs in that in addition to the standard Team-Teaching classes most JETs participate in, we are also asked to teach a number of so-called “English Conversation” classes on our own. To put it simply, Team Teaching pairs a main Japanese Teacher of English (JTE, not to be confused with JET) together with a native English speaking ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) who occupies what is very much a supporting role in the classroom. Some teachers are better at using their ALTs than others, but it seems that I, at least, often end up standing silently in a corner like a neglected doll, waiting lifelessly and listlessly to be animated by my Japanese teacher’s signal to read some lines from a textbook. In a Team Teaching class I’m not much more than an expensive piece of talking furniture standing plugged into the wall; sometimes I certainly feel like I have as much impact on the kids as an American-themed mood lamp. However, “English Conversation,” or, “Eikaiwa,” as it is commonly referred to, doesn’t allow me the excuse to fall into such a passive position, because an “Eikaiwa” class is entirely mine, and standing silent in the corner would most likely end with me perishing at the hands of an angry mob of restless 14 year-olds, wielding erasers instead of stones but expressing their discontent just as effectively. Or fired. Teachers are generally paid to teach, not to just stand there.
I’ve mentioned a few times that I am “teaching English,” but that’s a bit of a disingenuous and misleading statement that I wish to clarify. I teach “English Conversation,” which is an entirely different matter. I can’t teach grammar, I don’t give tests, I’m not responsible for or even really capable of imparting new knowledge to my students about the complex, contradictory organizational system that is the English language. However, that’s not really a JET’s job. It is a JET’s job to stand outside the lifeless organizational system as living, breathing, human proof that there is more to English than lines in a textbook or chalk on a board. I study Japanese like a demon not simply because I like the shapes kanji and verb conjugations make, but because the language is my link to the thriving, energetic world I find myself immersed in every day; Japanese students studying English in Japan don’t have that same incentive, so, in reality, it is a JET’s only job to be him or herself and make studying English relevant. There is no better place for me to fulfill this role than in my own “Eikaiwa” classroom.
It has taken me a very long time to come to that conclusion, however. Turning Eikaiwa into what I think it is supposed to be has been a long process in many phases, characterized by misconceptions, constant struggles, rare triumphs, and countless failures, but, even though naivety had more to do with it than anything else, my first impression was the right one. I was excited. We were told about Eikaiwa classes shortly after getting off the train from our orientation in Tokyo, over a month before we would actually teach our first one, and to my boggled brain, preoccupied with the sights and sounds of a new life in a new country and entirely innocent of the actualities of a class of my own, it sounded perfect. What better way to promote foreign language learning and internationalization than at the head of a class? I imagined rows of enrapt children listening to my lectures about the regional diversity in America, rows of inquisitive children puzzling over the strange, cultural objects I had packed into my suitcases like relics from the American temple, and rows of energetic children conversing with me about… well, I didn’t know exactly, something in English. The details didn’t matter then; it was August, my first lesson was a month away, and I basked in the anticipation of being a real teacher with a real class.
To say nothing of what I was going to do with that real class. It’s 3:30, and leaning back in my chair, my hands behind my head, feet pretty much up on my desk, I recall those distant weeks in August. They started out in a similar sense of repose, but as the clock ticked and the first day of school began approaching, the tension started mounting. In trying to plan my first lesson, I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. What do my kids already know? What should I teach? How should I teach it? Do I play games? Flashcards? Music? Are these kids visual, tactile, or olfactory learners? Wait, what? Olfactory? I’m not qualified for this. With every day my excitement for Eikaiwa lessons began to teeter, and then, as my mental waste-basket began to fill with discarded lesson plans, tipped into a deep dark chasm of panic and fear. On the fourth of September I walked into my school with a lesson plan clutched in my sweaty palms, but little hope of executing it effectively.
My first lesson was an unmitigated disaster. It was excruciating. It was one of the sorriest excuses for a “teaching performance” the world has ever seen. I… don’t remember what it was about. Some sort of self-introduction. In truth, all I really remember are shattered expectations and the sense of a long road ahead. My opinions were met with blank stares, my pictures with disregard, and my attempts at English Conversation with mute incomprehension. When I was daydreaming about discoursing on the differences in mentality between people from the Pacific Northwest and people from Texas I was overlooking something crucial; my students are 14 years old and couldn’t care less. When I was envisioning opening said students’ eyes to the mysteries of American culture, I was forgetting something obvious; McDonald’s, IPods, and baseball are already doing pretty well for themselves over here. However, when I was anticipating classes brimming over with fluid English conversation, I guess I just wasn’t thinking at all. As of my first lesson, my students had only been studying English for about 18 months, and I, of all people, should know that language is a vast territory of signs and symbols and sentiment that could never be traversed in such a short amount of time. As my JTE put it, my students were really “just babies” in their English ability, and I was going to have to radically redefine my methods in order to accommodate that fact.
That adjustment was hard to make, and after that first day my illusions for Eikaiwa gave way to a surprisingly harsh reality. Actually teaching these kids turned out to be a lot more difficult than dreaming about it. My lessons weren’t coherent, or they weren’t useful, or they weren’t fun, and I started to hate them because of it. My visions of walking in and teaching Faulkner were (understandably) gone, but there were other hang-ups, too. As I’m sure is the case with most JETs, giggling followed me through the hallways, silence accompanied me in the teacher’s room, and it seemed like Otherness and a sense of irrelevancy hung around me everywhere. In class, in the halls, in the teachers’ room, I was a free radical floating through the veins of an otherwise integrated body, fully out of place and unable to attach myself to anything. For the first time in my life I felt marginalized by my Americanness, by my English-speakingness, and as I passed lonely day after lonely day, my students ignoring me in class because they couldn’t understand me, my teachers ignoring me in the teacher’s room because they had no reason to talk to me, and everybody giving me a wide berth because they didn’t know how to interact with a 22 year-old quasi-teacher from Seattle who speaks only enough Japanese to make conversations awkward instead of non-existent, I began to worry that I was never going to be able to fulfill my only role as a JET. How can you be a living, breathing, human representative of a foreign country if nobody treats you like a living, breathing human-being? It’s nobody’s fault, but as a JET your most apparent characteristic is your foreignness; as such, your biggest asset also becomes your greatest obstacle. I wanted more out of my relationships with my students than the giddy waves, cautious “hallo’s,” nervous squeaks, and hasty pounding of foot-falls down the hallways that I was getting over my first few months, but in order for that to happen, my kids would first have to stop thinking of me as that strange gaijin roaming the halls of their school, and start thinking of me as their teacher, Chad.
Even though Eikaiwa was my best way to achieve that paradigm shift, change was slow in coming. In my students’ attitudes, yes, but more importantly in my own teaching methods. 3:50 and I find myself rooting around in my desk for no particular reason except maybe in hopes that the shuffle of papers will drown out the tick of the clock, and a single sheet covered in my scribbling catches my eye. Curious, I pull it out and scan the first few words at the top. “I hate lesson planning.” Uh oh. Reading further down, I feel the frustrated ramblings of a teacher with no more ideas like the inexorable pull of a black hole tugging me into the past, and all of a sudden it’s no longer almost closing time and I’m standing in front of a class of rowdy second-years, a sheet of simple questions clasped in my fists, a meaningless roar of Japanese in my ears, and a headache blooming in my brain. Shaking my head to clear out the ringing, I raise my voice to be heard over the din, and yell, “ Ok! Now, the next question! What… food….do…. you like?” The kids’ desks are arranged into rows and I’m trying to get them to play a relay game as a warm up; answer my question correctly, and you can pass your flag to the person behind you. First team to make it to the end of their row wins. Sounds simple enough. Looking out over the sea of inattentive faces, however, it’s clear that I didn’t communicate myself as well as I’d thought. They don’t really seem to get it, and I can’t help but mistake incomprehension for resistance; this class is supposed to be about working together, but, as I suppose teachers across all disciplines sometimes do, I feel like I have to battle for every answer I get. After a few awkward seconds of waiting for something to happen, one of my kids mercifully, if tentatively, raises her flag, and I immediately call on her. “Sushi.” She passes her flag, and as I scan my sheet for the next question (“what sport do you play?”) something in my brain pops and I can feel myself giving in to the existential crisis I’ve been holding off since early September. Is this all there is? Is this really what it all amounts to? Being pointed and laughed at in the hallways? Endlessly asking stupid, vapid questions that nobody listens to anyway? When’s your birthday? What color do you like? What fruit do you like? What subject do you like? Is this what they meant by internationalization, by foreign language education? Is this all I’m here to be doing? May 5th, blue, strawberries, recess, where’s the transcendent moment of cultural contact, where’s the communicating across borders, where’s the feeling that I’m anything more to these kids than a fleshy tape-recorder emitting a bunch of crazy things that somebody else is forcing them to listen to? Screw cultural contact, where’s the flesh and blood, where’s the human contact in this mechanical exchange of proscribed phrases?
Where was any of that? It may have been my fault for not approaching them correctly, but in the depths of winter, in the middle of classes like that, I guess I didn’t feel like the Eikaiwa or JET Programs were worth much at all.
But they are. I wish I had a moment to call out of my memory like a thunderbolt from the sky that would punctuate that point with a hail of sparks and a sonic boom, but the shift from Eikaiwa as a waste of time to Eikaiwa as the best use of it has been accompanied by nothing so dramatic. All I have are faces and names: Shiori, Shunya, Shuhei; Ryo, Ryouji, Ruri; Hirokazu, Hirofumi, Hiroyuki, Hina. These names and dozens more summon up smiles and something that seems like communicating. Something that feels like that authentic moment of human connection I was so craving while officiating robotic row relays in the wintertime. Ultimately, I’m left with the realization that acclimation is slow to come in the most comfortable of situations, and being cast in front of a group of teenagers who can’t speak your language isn’t comfortable at all. But acclimation comes, and as I’ve gotten accustomed to the mob of children I find in front of me on an almost daily basis, their numbers have seemed to dwindle, their shadows have shrunk in the lights of the florescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling, and they look a lot less like enemy hostiles and a lot more like regular old kids. Kids with personalities, kids with quirks, kids with hearts; weird kids, cool kids, hopelessly shy kids, brilliant kids, struggling kids, but all kids just the same. I don’t know what’s changed except for the date on the calendar, but somehow it is kids I now see staring back at me in class instead of unresponsive, kid-shaped automatons. I see life in them now where there’s never been any, light in eyes that are usually glazed-over, and I can’t overstate the significance of that change. My teaching methods are still by no means perfect, but I can work with kids; I can’t with robots.
I wonder if this warming trend isn’t indicative of something else. Maybe they are starting to see me as Chad, instead of that American guy who tries to teach them English. Maybe after eight months together my nationality has been subsumed by my humanity, and they just see me as that guy who tries to teach them English. It’s 4:10 and as I gather my things to leave, I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t the heart of internationalization; not necessarily effacing cultural identities, but seeing through the local trappings that make us citizens of a nation and seeing into the universal traits that make us co-residents of a globe. Are we there yet? Have I shattered misconceptions and ethnocentrisms and all sorts of other paradigms on the way to turning Maruzuka Junior High into cultural enlightenment on Earth? Ha, eight months and I’ve hardly had a moment to breathe, let alone blow down that house of bricks. I know I’ll never have a conversation with my kids that isn’t a little bit jerky, awkward, or grammatically suspect, but even if English is a vast territory that I’ll never see them cross, the road to not looking at each other as gaijin is short, and as long we can travel it hand in hand, as it were, one Eikaiwa lesson at a time, it’s one we can see the end of together.
If you're still reading this, god bless you.
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