School Notes

Not really Japan related so much, but for anyone that is wondering, I had an OK birthday. Like most things, the expectation was better than the real thing and, as it turned out, the days after were better than the actual day. Everyone forgot, actually. But the next day, Akemi made me cupcakes and a cute card, and Yuki gifted me with a giant stuffed Rilakkuma, my favorite character. On Saturday, Kingsley took me out for dinner and drinks, along with giving me a killer pair of shoes. lol. So, it worked out in the end.

(Akemi and her adorable/delicious gift)

(lighting up my life with Rilakkuma love)

(Kingsley: helping me rediscover my roots a child of the 80s)

But anyway, let's get back to business! Today I want to write about the characters of my everyday life, the little observations that have been building up in the notebook in my head as I go through work everyday.

School Lunch

I'm not sure where to begin, so I will begin with where my thoughts are currently lo

cated: my stomach. I have written about school lunch before, but I think the subject deserves further discussion. In fact, Kingsley and I actually had quite a long discussion about the school lunch, over dinner. The thing that neither of us can quite fathom is how incredibly healthy Japanese people consider school lunch to be. Without a doubt I ha

ve been told at least half a dozen times how nutritious school lunch is. Nutritious. There is that word again. Should ever you find yourself in a conversation with a Japanese person in which the subject of school lunch arises and they suddenly get that vacant look in their eyes, I can tell you what word they are searching their internal Japanese-English dictionary for: nutritious. Go ahead and help them out by saying it first; they will be delighted you agree and then you may go on to forge a bond forever balanced on overcooked fish.

Nutritious. Everyday I stare down at my lunch and wonder how it qualifies. Some days are more questionable than others. Curry Day is an infamous one: curry, rice, naan, limp broccoli, and our daily dose of 3.6% fat milk. Let's see, that's fat, carbs, carbs, OH some vitamins, and more fat. Okay, how about different day? hmm... a donut,

some salad completely soaked in dressing, some chicken sitting in a pool of oil, and an oil based egg and sausage filled soup, plus more milk... so, fat and carbs, some vitamins cancelled out by fat, some protein soaked in fat, some watered down cholesterol, plus a little more fat. Well, I can say one thing for sure: I can definitely put a bit check next to the "Fats"

and "Carbs" sections of my Nutritional pyramid. No wonder the students love it.

Graduation

Well, I've had my carrot for dinner, so now I can stop thinking about food and move on to something else. There is certainly one thing that is on everyone's mind, including my own: graduation and the end of the school year. That is sort of interesting in itself, the flurry and excitement of graduation. I distinctly remember the mildly traumatizing experience of my own mother telling me at the end of JHS, "you aren't really graduating, so there is nothing to celebrate." Well, that isn't the thinking here, which is funny, since I think the percentage here of students that go to (and stay in) high school is much higher than in the US. Then again, a big graduation

celebration makes sense when here, high school is not only non-compulsory, acceptance to a good school is considered with the same consideration and importance as college.

For me, it is only important because it means that I had to say goodbye to my favorite class for the last time. It was a good goodbye though. They wrote me a very nice letter and bade me farewell with a chorus of "Bye SEXY!" Their favorite word.

For the actual ceremony, the gym was covered with plastic to protect the floor, and all the chairs were brought in from the classrooms to provide

seating for the students. The decorations around the gym were quite elaborate, nicely disguising the true nature of the room. The ceremony was predictably long and boring, particularly because I didn't understand a word. However, I did enjoy the "long walk goodbye" that came afterwards. When all the students had received their diplomas and walked out of the gym, all the parents and non-graduates went out to the athletic grounds. Everyone lined up in two parallel lines leading to the school gate. Staring at the far end of the school, carrying all their bags and items, all the graduates, along with teachers who would be retiring or transfering to another school, walked down the middle of the two lines while everyone cheered and applauded. They continued until every last student had exited the school gate for the last time. It was very dramatic, very sweet, and clearly something of a rather old tradition. I liked it immensely.

Students and Teachers

I still have the 1st and 2nd years to keep me busy though. The 1st years provide a unique challenge that has nothing to do with scholastic aptitude. and I mean, absolutely nothing. I am not sure what happens between the last year of elementary school and the first year of JHS, but based on my currents student in both grades, I can say that the older students are unanimously worse behaved. Maybe during that brief summer they all spontaneously go into puberty and their good sense seeps out through their shiny new oily skin. Disgusting, you say? Not as disgusting as their behavior.

The same day I was reading an article on CNN about young students in New York being arrested for writing a friend's name on a public school desk, I saw a student shove one of our 90 pound female teachers across the hall; another teacher showed me a perfect imprint of the bottom of a shoe on her pants from where a student had kicked her square in the thigh. "I think maybe I should not forgive him right away," she told me; at the desk where I sit in the teacher's room, there is a growing graveyard of school supplies that have been intentionally destroyed by students; in one of my classes, there is a student who, I noticed, now brings a pillow with him to school, so he may sleep through classes in greater comfort.

I suppose it wouldn't be so remarkable except for the way in which such behavior is handled. Although I can't say the system is better, in the US such students would face detention, isolation, expulsion, or, as recently, even a pair of handcuffs. At the very least, parents would be called in and asked to take their children in hand. In Japan, I've discovered, it is the teachers that bear the full brunt. Although parents are indeed contacted about the behavior of their children, it is not taken quite the same way as it would be in the States. I asked my main English teacher about the parents of these horrible children, how they react to reports of bad behavior. "Mostly, they just blame us," she said, "Or refuse to believe it is happening at all. Teachers just don't have enough protection." No kidding.

Although it is a pretty raw deal for teachers, all around, I have to say, I think the school system in Japan is pretty impressive, student-centric. From what I can tell, the Japanese system is like one giant support system. For one thing, the student go to school almost 365 days a year, even on the weekends and during summer break, because they have clubs every day of the week. I think they spend more time with each other and their teachers than they do their own families. Actually, at the elementary school, there was this one little boy who was so doted on by the Vice Principle that, for a long time, I thought it was his own son.

The teachers do everything, everything to attend to the needs of students, even the bad ones. In addition, teachers, principles, and vice-principles are constantly being rotated from one school to the next, so no one has time to grow too bored or complacent... or arrogant about their position. Of course, it also means having to drive maybe 1 hour to work and back everyday and work long stressful hours for not exactly a king's ransom. Like I said, it's a pretty raw deal for Japanese teachers, but they remain pretty dedicated. Really, I think they are kind of like superheroes.

Everyone's Favorite ALT

After talking to my friend, I realized I should probably clarify one thing about this entry: I still love my job. There are a few things that really kind of piss me off (example: the inability of taking a sick day), but who doesn't have a few things they don't like about their job?

For one thing, the job has definitely gotten easier with time. My own understanding of the students' actual abilities (what they DO know, as opposed to what they SHOULD know) has helped me tremendously in making effective lesson plans and acting as an assistant in the classes I don't teach. I still struggle with elementary lesson plans - I find I simply can't lower my intelligence level to match theirs - but I have Akemi, my wonderful supporter, to help me out and keep me sane.

For another thing, there is simply the fact that I am not a "real" teacher. When people ask me what I do, I say "eigo no sensei" (English teacher) because it is the least complicated way to explain it, but in truth I am just an assistant: ALT- Assistant Language Teacher. So while I do have to teach classes, I don't have the hours or the responsibilities of the the "real" teachers. Of all the stuff I wrote above about the raw deal Japanese teachers get, little of it applies to me. As I have said before, my job is pretty easy.

This is not to say that I don't get frustrated just as the other teachers do. It is apparent that the vast majority of the students have no real interest in learning English. Certainly before their 3rd year (their last year, when they have to buckle down and get serious in order to pass high school entrance exams) it is very difficult to motivate students. It varies, of course, but the thing is... "group mentality" is the rule, not the exception, in Japan. This means that if there are a few students who really hate English (as there are in every class) then most of the students sitting around them will also decline in their English studies and become problem children as well. So, often enough, all the effort that we put into making fun activities for class get ruined by infectious apathy. It is disheartening, and sometimes when the ALTs in the area get together for seminars, we can't help asking each other "Why are we even here?"

Of course, there is the flip side of that as well. Lessons can be really frustrating because the students find textbook learning tedious, repetition boring, and memorization difficult; yet the minute the bell rings and class is over, even some of the worst students get excited at to chance to talk with me, the ALT. For my 1st and 2nd years (JHS), I always give time for the students to come and talk to me after class using whatever limited vocab/grammar they have. The longer I have been there, the more I have seen even the shy students coming forward to talk, because while lessons are boring, actual conversation with a foreigner is pretty exciting stuff. My teachers tell me that when I am not in class, the students often ask for me, and look forward to the next time I am in class. When I do walk into class, always I hear little excited whispers of my name ricochet around the classroom. That enthusiasm... that is why we are here. It's what makes this job worth doing.

Not to mention it's a pretty good job for stroking one's ego, ha ha. Nothing like having thirty people get excited because you just walked into the room. Even though I find it a little creepy, it's also nice to hear, I don't know how many times a day, students say "Lindsay, you're cute" "hey Lindsay, nice body", even randomly timed statements of "oh, so sexy". Then there are those moments when I can simply smile at a student who is clearly drifting off during a grammar lesson and they suddenly light up with happiness; when I leave work everyday, there is always a happy chorus of goodbyes from every student that sees me. Yeah, the perks are pretty good here.

Cheers,

ALT Baer