The untold story

It’s a really slow day in school today, so I thought I’d put my time to better use by writing this up. Like I mentioned earlier here*, I don’t find my job that great at all. It’s nothing to do with the schools I’m in – the teachers are fantastic and the students I have are in general pretty cool. The main problem with my situation is that i don’t get much (any?) fulfilment from my job.

For starters, I don’t feel like I’m gaining much through my work. the tasks I do are simple – I basically just do what my JTE tells me to. My role is very much that of an assistant indeed. Some JETs plan lessons, draw up activities and essentially come up with the English language programme at their schools, but not in my case. My teachers will come to me with a lesson already planned – and they’re always pretty well drawn up lessons – so all I have to do is whatever’s already laid out in the plan.

And what’s in the lesson plan isn’t much either. It usually doesn’t go beyond me explaining things in simple English – which the JTE then will translate – or the JTE and I having an example conversation and having the students try to figure out what is going on. As I said, I’m very much an assistant, while the JTE takes the lead in most classes. It’s partly because the teacher’s whom I’ve worked with have really good English and don’t need much help in that aspect, and also because they have their own ideas as to what the want to do in a lesson or how they wish to carry it out. Sometimes I’ll be asked for ideas on games and activities, but it’s not that hard nor does it take up that much time.

One reason why some other JETs are able to be the main teacher in the class is also because they work at only 1 school and more or less teach English to all levels. Except for the first 2 terms, I’ve been working in more than 1 school per term, and my senior high classes aren’t just the general English classes – I’m in writing classes, English communication classes and so on. So the focus of the classes is different and the Japanese teachers themselves only teach 1 particular class. In that sense, it’s impossible for me to be the main teacher even if I were at my senior high school full time.

My work then is pretty much a no-brainer; things are easy and not much input nor effort is required of me. Some other ALTs get satisfaction from chatting with their students and so on, but I don’t see my kids that often – my school is big compared to other schools, or I’m in that school only 1 day a week and have classes back to back, so no chance to hang around to chat. Even if I saw them more often, I think I’m not enough of a novelty to inspire students to come and talk to me – being city kids, they’ve pretty much had ALTs throughout much of their school life and are used to us. I don’t even think they’re that eager to talk in English to begin with – even the Brit whom they’re always excited to see (tall, male, white and so on) doesn’t get anyone wanting to talk to him.

Club activities after school are a personal no-no; it’s already such a chore to be sitting in school with nothing work-related to occupy my time that i’m quite eager to head out every day. So I’m definitely not one of those ‘super JETs’.

Hence, I can’t find any scope to develop professionally in my job, as my capabilities aren’t stretched because so little is required of me, and the challenge I face is mainly to try to keep myself entertained and engaged during and outside of class. I am quite underworked in terms of the number of classes I teach too, mainly because lots of classes that I have scheduled never happen because the teacher needs to focus on teaching the syllabus and cant always accommodate ALT presence in the classes. Other permanent classes sometimes also don’t occur for some reason or another – 2 of my classes (4 periods in total as there’re 2 batches of students per class) only occur about 14 times in 2 terms, which is something like every other week? And I’m not even the least worked ALT among us; some of the others at my school – I think it’s my school in particular that’s slack – have less classes than I do, and another JET I know of elsewhere has even less classes than anyone else. But I am, indeed, very free timetable-wise.

It is possible to derive job fulfilment through others, for example, to feel a sense of achievement when you see your students mature and grow and improve at English. Unfortunately, that avenue isn’t available to me either! As mentioned above, I either see them too infrequently that don’t even quite have the chance to have a good gauge of their English abilities, or that they don’t have English classes often enough and hence cant improve. As we all know, languages need to be constantly reinforced for absorption; one 50 minute oral communication class once a week would achieve little, much less at the (in)frequency mine have their lessons.

I don’t feel like there’s enough time dedicated to English here. I don’t teach at an English-intensive high school where the students ‘major’ in English and have loads of English classes everyday and are super motivated to learn English. In some of those schools, the students spend about 1 to 2 periods each morning having everyday conversations with their ALT, and naturally are more comfortable using English and actually build up the ability to communicate in English too – just compare that to what my students get!

It doesn’t help either that English language education at high school level in Japan isn’t great. There’s lots written about teaching English in Japan around on the web and elsewhere, and the main criticisms are the emphasis on rote learning and reading rather than writing and speaking, having teachers with poor English teach students English, a focus towards university entrance examinations rather than acquiring the actual skill to use the language and so on.

All those are true, but I feel that English at junior high school level is a lot more effective than English at senior high school level. At least at junior high school, there’re set textbooks teaching a set level of English for a specific purpose – and students that graduate from junior high school generally attain a certain level of basic English understanding.

I feel however that things go downhill from there. I haven’t been involved much in the general English classes, as those I teach are the elective, additional classes taken by the students who are supposed to have a greater focus on language than others who focus on art or design and so on (goodness knows that’s not quite true, but never mind). I have seen, though, the books that are used for general English class, and the difficulty of the English used in them is astounding. It’s at a level way higher than the students’ actual level, as the aim is to make them pass their university entrance examinations, which are at a very high level of English too. So understanding those texts is basically achieved through having the teacher translate everything for them, and they copying the English text and Japanese translation into their notebooks.

What really gets to me though, is that there isn’t really a proper syllabus or path progression laid out for senior high school English. Lessons aren’t designed such that they build upon and reinforce knowledge already gained, but instead there seems to either be a huge gap between senior and junior high, or that they simply continue learning the same things over and over again. For example, I’ve done classes on giving directions to students in all 3 grades of high school. So they’re not really learning anything new.

Although you might argue that since my 3rd year students don’t seem much better at giving directions than my first year students, then perhaps the class is worth doing again. But you see, that shouldn’t be the case! Topics and classes that have been covered before should NOT have to be covered again, as the students are meant to have already acquired the vocabulary and expressions relevant to that lesson. For some reason, however, quite a lot of them are never quite able to distinguish between the question words – how what why where when – or things like “how long does it take” and so on in conversation, and I attribute that to not having enough practice. It’s fine if you’re teaching more advanced expressions and vocab in classes on the same topic, but we’re always starting from scratch almost.

Moving back however to there not being a proper syllabus or path progression for senior high, is that teachers teaching the same general English lesson to students in the same year can have completely different lesson plans. Back in the beginning when I first arrived, I taught in general English classes with 2 different teachers to 2nd year students, and they did completely different things. One more or less had a proper plan whereas the other did not, and basically went from one week to the next trying to think of some not-very-meaningful/useful game or activity to occupy class time. And I have no idea why the difference exists, or why they didn’t just pool resources.

Japan’s school system is also interesting in that students don’t really have to put in much effort in their senior high school life so long as they do enough to graduate – which is very little – and pass their university entrance examinations. So moving from 2nd year to 3rd year saw a stark difference in my students. Their English teachers changed from a really good one whom they liked to others whom they didn’t like as much (and perhaps weren’t so effective), and while their interest waned their English level dropped, as there was a lot less reinforcement occurring in class. They also started paying more attention to passing their university exams, and since the actual classes they attend are essentially unnecessary for graduation and university, not long after the beginning of their 3rd year already saw them sitting listlessly in class, sleeping, chatting with their friends, reading manga, playing with their phones or listening to music. And such are Japanese schools that such behaviour is allowed and not sternly reprimanded – I’ve been told that one of the reasons is because senior high school isn’t compulsory, so students have the right to be in class regardless of what they do and you cant chase them out or send them for disciplining.

the long and short of it is that my students arent getting any better in their english either, which is frustrating. they make the same grammatical and spelling mistakes over and over again in their writing, miss their articles all the time and even in their final year of senior high might still fail to begin a sentence with a capital letter or capitalise the beginning of names and places. gargh. junior high textbooks teach students that it’s ok to begin a sentence with “because”, and teach them uniquely Japanese expressions, like “My friends are my treasures” and “I enjoy TV” without the verb attached. In a way, my english too has been dumbed down somewhat, and i use the word “enjoy” a lot more, mainly because all of us here as ALTs hear it being bandied about all the time.

so… this has become more of a rant than anything else, but the good news is that i’m done now, i think. hurray.

 

*: thanks very much for all the comments and encouragement! I really appreciate those comments; it makes me feel like there’s some worth in me having my blog. Haha.