yoshiwara nikki: teaching

When I decided to go to a Japanese high school to teach English, of course I went there with certain assumptions based in my own culture and educational experiences. Those assumptions were reinforced by my program's orientation, information packets, educational materials, and even the comments and stories I'd heard from friends that were past participants. The assumptions were so basic that it took me the better part of the year to even realize that I had them. Once it began to dawn on me that I did have these assumptions - and that they could be, and often were, drastically different from those held by my Japanese coworkers - most of my daily frustrations and their mysterious sources became significantly more clear and understandable to me.

What was I assuming? I assumed that my school wanted and welcomed a foreign assistant language teacher, that the school was prepared - and happy - to integrate such a teacher into the curriculum, and that the school wanted to improve the students' communicative, practical English. I assumed, too, that my students would be happy to have the opportunity to learn more English, and would at least find it useful or relevant to their lives. These all sound like qualities that one could easily take for granted, and I did just that. I was horribly confused and frustrated when the circumstances at my school seemed to directly contradict these imagined goals. In a much more fundamental way than just looking different or not speaking the same language, there was a cultural difference here that I was not even aware of. I was committing a grave error that I - someone who studied Japan for so long with an open mind - believed I would never be so dense as to make. I was looking at my situation through the lens of my own culture, never imagining that Japanese aims and goals could be so completely different from my own.

* * * * * * *

Let me begin by recalling how often I taught. In an entire calendar year, I taught perhaps 10 times total. On my official schedule, and according to what I'd been told at the beginning of the year, I was meant to be teaching the Oral Communication class, which met several times each week for every homeroom of students. At the beginning of the year, I'd sat at my desk in the teachers' room expectantly, waiting for the day I would begin to teach classes. My friends at other schools began to express surprise and concern when, weeks into the school year, I told them that I was still waiting. Maybe it was because of the all-day practice for Sports Day, I speculated. They said my class would start a little late in the semester because the students weren't ready for it yet.

Nearly a month went by and, finally, I was asked by the head of the English teachers to make a lesson plan. (This person, my supervisor, was the liason through which I had to go for anything from classes to problems with my apartment to my role in school events to bank accounts and visa issues.) "What about?" I asked him. "What is the curriculum?" He simply shrugged and told me, "Anything is fine. Just introduce yourself. The students are curious about you."

Anything?! I had a 50-minute class period with which to introduce myself, and no teaching experience, preparation, or training. Furthermore, I had no idea of the students' level of English or their curriculum. What were the goals? What was the plan for the year? After I pestered the head teacher for another day, he signed and gave me a copy of the students' reading textbook. "Here," he said, "you might find this useful."

I nearly tore my hair from the nervousness, intimidation, and frustration I felt. By pulling together all of my resources, contacts, and common sense, though, I put together a plan. At the brief teachers' meeting before we began the class, I received no meaningful feedback. "Let's try it and see," the teachers told me. I had hoped they might give me more helpful suggestions, given their knowledge of the students' personalities and level, and what they had been doing in class up to this point, along with their experience of what did and didn't work well in the classroom. However, they contributed nothing to the creation of the lesson plan and dodged my questions when I asked for any opinions on it. Was it relevant? Did they think the class would respond well and go smoothly? "Maybe," they answered.

We got through the first class, and I learned quickly from trial and error what would work with the students. Having them singled out to speak in front of the class - bad; competitive group work - very good. Armed with my slightly broadened knowledge of the students, and excited to finally be teaching, I asked, "So, what's my schedule? Which days will I teach?"

"Wellll," the head teacher began slowly, "we teachers will come to you individually and schedule a class, when we are not too busy."

"So no regular schedule?"

"Um, no, not really a regular schedule. You see, we are very busy."

Of course they were busy. I could understand that. Still, I persisted. "So when will I teach next?"

"Maybe next week. I will discuss it with the other teachers and tell you what they think."

Whether any discussion was ever had is beyond my knowledge. The fact remained that I seemed to have the status of an occasional guest speaker in my own classes. I didn't get squeezed into the busy schedule again until the following month. And once again, I was told, "Make a lesson plan. Whatever is fine."

When I begged for something to go on, the head teacher said, "Well, midterms are coming up. Here is what they have covered in the reading textbook. It might be good to have them review it." Dutifully, I created a series of activities to practice their rarely-used grammatical quirks that would appear on the midterm exam.

* * * * * * *

It was during that series of lessons that I had the distinct experience of being completely undermined in the classroom by the very person who was supposed to assist and mentor me - the person who was supposed to be my other half in the classroom. I was undermined by my own "team" teacher, and I put that term in quotes because team-teaching was hardly what was happening in that classroom.

To warm up, I had the students play the telephone game in teams with a simple English sentence. I took the last student in each row out into the hallway to show them the sentence, which they would then whisper to the next person in the row, and that person on to the one in front of them, until it reached the first person. That final student would write what they thought was the sentence on the blackboard, and of course the most accurate sentence would be the winner. Just after I had brought the students out in the hallway to memorize the sentence, I happened to look over my shoulder and notice the total insanity in the classroom. Apparently, my team teacher thought it would be a great time to have all the remaining students come to the back of the classroom, take a scrap of paper, and write down their name for use in another activity we would do later in the class. I couldn't believe it; when the students had memorized the sentence and went back into class to start playing the game, she told them all to come and take a piece of paper to write down their name. As you can imagine, this was hardly conducive to the students remembering the sentence and being able to begin the telephone warm-up game.

Worse than just the poor kids in the back of the row, the rest of the kids were so out of control that when I shouted at them to be quiet and look up front - something that would normally get their attention immediately - they couldn't even hear me over their own noise. Was the Japanese teacher helping me out with this? No, she was cracking jokes with some of the students in the back that were goofing off, and egging them on further.

At that point, I was becoming genuinely angry - at her, not the students - and finally managed to yell loud enough to get their attention. Somehow, we played through the game, but once again, my team teacher spent the time goofing off with the kids that weren't paying attention, ruining any chance of them seriously participating in the activity. Instead of helping me control the students and keep discipline problems under control - which, as the Japanese teacher, was her job - she was only making the situation worse. Feeling defeated, I quickly went on to the next activity.

Next was a listening activity that involved a worksheet for students to write their answers on. Usually, in that situation the Japanese teacher took half of the sheets and we would combine forces in passing them out. I looked up to find my team teacher and give her half of the worksheets, but she was nowhere to be found at the front of the room. Where was she? In the back of the room. Correcting papers for another course, and ignoring me and the class.

I was livid as I had to take twice as much time as usual to pass everything out by myself. And when I thought the situation simply could not get worse, during the listening activity, she actually walked around the room to hand back homework that she'd finished correcting. She was distracting all of the students from the activity and did not seem to care at all. Later, when I was trying to explain the directions for the last activity and had to repeatedly tell the students to be quiet, why was that? Because my team teacher was standing with the students that weren't paying attention, making small talk with them. The minutes before the bell rang felt like hours as she took every opportunity to destroy my class control and prevent the students from getting through any of the activities that had been planned.

Now, normally the team teachers were wonderful and took pains to make sure that we worked together well. We had good mutual understanding of how to help each other out in class and save time - passing out papers, making sure the students were on task, and anything else that we could split between two people. On top of it all, the class that my team teacher had destroyed was full of my favorite students - smart, motivated, outgoing, fun students who loved English. My favorite class just turned into the worst because of that teacher's immature and unprofessional behavior. I think I was especially annoyed with the fact that after the teacher had gone around disrupting the lesson and the class, she sat herself in the back of the room and corrected papers. She had completely abandoned me and didn't even try to participate in the class. It sent the message that she didn't feel our class was worth her time or her taking it seriously, and it was possibly the most insulting thing anyone did to me the entire time I lived in Japan.

* * * * * * *

Several weeks later, the very same teacher asked if we could team-teach for her demonstration lesson, a part of her evaluation as a student teacher. As usual, the lesson plan was left up to me alone. She asked to include some activities that had worked well in the past at keeping the students engaged, and she copied my lesson plan into Japanese, with her explanatory notes, to give to the observation committee.

The lesson went off without a hitch, though the students, intimidated by the observers, were naturally quieter than usual. Thankfully, none of her previous antics were included in the class. The student teacher and I glowed with pride at our success.

Later in the week, I attended a a meeting with the committee about the teacher's evaluation. I expected mostly praise, as the lesson had gone smoothly and was fairly difficult and communicative - a buzzword I could hardly go a day without hearing. It had covered all the areas of language skill development: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The students had been active and engaged in the material throughout.

The committee did begin by noting how involved the students were and how effective the "games" had been. "Games?" I thought. "That's an awfully dismissive way to put it."

"And that was the real problem," they continued. "This lesson was only games. It's good that the students had fun, but they only played games. There needed to be much more time spent on real learning and less fun time. The textbook needed to be used more. We didn't notice any time being spent on the textbook."

As the student teacher humbly murmured her apologies for this oversight, I could only register shock. Here these people were, who had been giving so much lip service to "communication" only moments earlier, and they were admonishing us for not having the students use their all-Japanese reading and grammar textbook in the ostensibly "oral communication" class. To me, it had seemed a phenomenal waste of time to have the students spend their hour of class bent over a textbook, listening to a lecture in Japanese with the native speaker standing uselessly off to the side. Wouldn't it be better to have them use the chance to practice the target language in one of the only opportunities they had to do so? Our class had been conducted entirely in English, and I'd even achieved my goal of having the students mostly talking and listening to each other - actively engaging the material - rather than passively listening to me.

I didn't consider what I had them to do as "games." For a start, the activities were much more challenging than their normal class. I forced them to actually use English creatively and in practical situations, and saw this as much more productive for language-learning than the typical English class; this consisted of the teacher reading out loud from the textbook and the students bent silently over it, either trying to follow along or simply dozing off. The only comments on the material were lectures in Japanese on arcane and artificially-patterned points of English grammar. Everything written on the blackboard was in Japanese - literal translations, grammatical terms, key points. The activities in the typical class - considered more on-task than my "games" - really consisted of one thing: word-for-word, sentence-by-sentence literal translation. The questions and activities for each chapter focused entirely on this aspect, and there was no creative or critical thinking involved in the simple memorization of key words and phrases.

Yet, this passive acceptance of the one "right" answer in understanding English was considered so much more legitimate than what I was trying to do. I was utterly lost; what logic was telling the committee that this was the right way to learn a language?

* * * * * * *

I couldn't even count throughout the year the number of students who complained to me that they hated English, because it was too difficult and too boring. Yet, these same students clamored for me to come to their classes. Was it just the novelty of having a foreign woman close to their age come to class and change the pace a little? Or did they remember that, despite their complaints that it was too hard and they could never understand it, they had had a good time in my class and accomplished something in their struggles to learn English? Yes, they were often frustrated for half of the class period because they didn't see what I was getting at; more often than not, however, I would get to see the impressed happiness that lit up their faces when they had a moment of understanding. The material would seem obvious to them then, and more importantly, was something they had realized and understood on their own rather than something they'd been told to write down in their notes and memorize. The light bulb didn't always appear for my students in every class, but quite often it did, even if it lit up dimly. Furthermore, the material that the students suddenly understood through their own experimentation and discovery of the changing results became material that they remembered for months afterward, even if they never encountered it in the textbook again.

Even after I saw the student teacher scolded for not focusing on the textbook - or perhaps especially after that - I stubbornly resolved to continue in my efforts to teach the students "real" English rather than force them to regurgitate key grammar points from the textbook. What worked in my favor was that I was most often asked to teach just after the students had completed a textbook unit and were about to be tested on it. When planning my lessons, I could at least be assured that the students would recall having seen the material and would be motivated to review it, even if they didn't remember it all perfectly. I had neither the time nor the resources to teach basic meaning and grammar in my rare classes, so my most effective option was to incorporate their recently-learned material into communicative activities. This usually went over well and I could feel good with the knowledge that I had accomplished something concrete for the students in helping them master material for an upcoming exam while honing their communication skills.

Once, this strategy worked so well that it shocked both me and my Japanese team-teachers. Thinking that some students would quickly complete the simple review of comparative words that I had them do in groups, while those who didn't understand it so well would be frustrated with harder examples, I compromised with a tricky bonus question. "If Sue is 12 years younger than Bob, and Bob is 3 years older than Jack, and Jack is twice Betty's age...." The problem involved a fair number of younger and older people's ages to figure out. At their age, I'd done the same type of problem in my native language and had been horribly frustrated, so I figured that it would at least keep them occupied for a while. Mostly, though, I anticipated their disdain; after all, who would do math problems for fun when the opportunity for simply talking and joking with friends is there?

What I did not ever expect was to see, to my shocked delight, that so many of them tackled the question with such alacrity. They shouted for me to come over and check their answers before cheering their victory of conquering a math problem in English. When other, slower groups heard their excited talking, they too wanted more time to figure it out. The other teachers and I were somewhat bemused but more than ready to oblige them. Soon, the students were all clamoring for a detailed solution on the blackboard, so I asked the groups who had successfully finished to explain it to their classmates. They were shy at first but beamed with pride as they got to become the teachers for five minutes and hear the impressed compliments of the other students.

The single thing that made that class the best for me, though - that made me feel like I had truly accomplished something - was an offhanded remark of a normally-sullen boy to the Japanese teacher. "You know," he said, "I really hate English. But I'm good at math. There was never any English work I felt like I could be good at until this." The boy had been the first person in the class to finish the problem, and was still gloating with his accomplishment. To the surprise of his friends, he had immediately figured out what type of word problem it was and had found the solution to it easily, despite the fact that it was in English rather than Japanese.

That is what I had been trying to accomplish, after all: giving students with different strengths a chance to become motivated and succeed, to use English to communicate an actual problem and solution rather than mindlessly regurgitating a classroom formula.

My success here, however, only made it even more clear to me that outside of my random guest appearances, the students' communicative English wasn't going anywhere. They still couldn't use English, and they still hated it. According to my students, English was still boring and difficult. And yet they still wanted me to come to their classes more often, despite all of their complaints. I was flattered, but frankly perplexed.

* * * * * * *

I asked myself often that year, "Why?" Why was English education like this? Why did I teach only a few times per year, when some of my friends at other schools taught three or more classes every day? Why was the student teacher criticized for not using the textbook more in our communication class? Why did the other teachers always tell me they wanted to have class with me more but never follow up on it? And finally, why, when I did teach, was the lesson plan left entirely to me - the one with no teaching background or experience, no knowledge of the curriculum or goals for the students despite my repeated attempts to get this information?

It came to a head with a final question that I never thought to ask myself until the end of the school year in March. I had been waiting and waiting, being told every week that I would be teaching "soon." I hadn't had a class since January and had become resigned to not teaching my current students again, though I was hardly happy with the situation. Then, the teachers unexpectedly came up with a solution, a way to work my class into their busy schedule. They decided to have my class the week after final exams, when the students still had class but had nothing left to do in their textbook. I was surprised at their logic - wouldn't it be pointless to do the class after final exams? Shouldn't we try to fit it in before the exams so it could serve as a useful review? But no, the teachers were too busy. I had to wait.

The students were antsy after their exams, ready for their break. They didn't want to be in class and knew that what they were doing had no bearing at all on their grades and did not count toward anything. Discipline problems were worse than usual, as both the teachers and students knew that what happened could not affect them, but we got through the class. Mostly, the students and I were happy to see each other, and I didn't see any point in trying to push them to work too hard.

Afterward, though, I began to wonder. Why was it that when I did get to teach, it was always for a review, or an extra class of games when nothing else was going on? The answer suddenly became clear to me when I looked at how I was seen and treated around school. It surprised me that it also explained many of the frustrations I had felt and the questions I had been asking.

* * * * * * *

To be blunt: My school did not necessarily want a foreign English teacher. Our prefecture was known for having one of the highest numbers of assistant language teachers in the country, and the prefectural government had taken it upon itself to mandate that every school had at least one assistant teacher. This would be the case even if the school neither wanted such a teacher nor was prepared to integrate the teacher into the curriculum and school life. Regardless of whether that was a valid complaint, it was obviously the situation at my school. I am not sure if the teachers' protestations of "we're too busy to team teach!" were sincere or simply an excuse, but this unwillingness to integrate an assistant language teacher was certainly what was going on. Moreover, the school couldn't refuse or "return" me. The bureaucracy and face-saving of Japan would never allow it. They had to pretend that they were friendly and welcoming to my face, while their actions showed that the opposite was more often true.

The second assumption that was proved wrong was that my school would take me seriously and value my time and skills. Additionally, I had obviously been wrong in assuming that the school would find me a relevant addition to their curriculum. This statement would certainly explain why my class was seen as a fun but worthless break for the students - playtime with games - that was only to be accommodated when there was absolutely nothing else to do. It also explained why all of the lesson planning was left to me and I rarely received any feedback on it. "Anything is fine," the other teachers would tell me. I'd interpreted that as the teachers trying to be nice, or failing that, were simply being lazy. In reality, I think it was more that anything was fine - it didn't matter what I did as long as it kept the students happy and occupied, because it was a break from "real" teaching for everyone involved.

Now, do I think that the teachers had this attitude consciously? Not really. I do not think they did anything maliciously or wanted to make me feel unwelcome, and I do believe that many of them genuinely wanted to team-teach more often. One of the teachers was not much older than me and she deeply understood the value of communicative language-learning exercises and their role in her own acquisition of English. This teacher, however, was young and was lowest in the hierarchy; she had no influence over the way in which classes were planned and run.

I think, rather, that their attitudes - like my own - were dictated by a set of basic underlying assumptions, and it took me most of the year to understand how different they were from my own. As I stated above, my assumptions were that I was wanted and welcomed as a teacher who would be relevant to the curriculum goals, and that those goals were for the students to learn practical English and to be able to better understand and use the language.

What do I think the teachers' assumptions were, then? First: The goal of the curriculum was singular, and its name was the Center Test. This is a multiple choice and short-answer test that dictates whether a student can get into a university of choice, and students spend their entire educational career gearing themselves to take this test. This is what the students went to cram school for, after all, not to learn more communicative English. Doing well on Center Test was the overarching goal of their twelve-year education, and anything else became a nice bonus.

Given the nature of the Center Test - all in Japanese, multiple choice, and focused on arcane and picky grammar points that many native English speakers would not know - it is easy to see why my classes were considered fun games to be used only as rewards, not "real" teaching. Real teaching would have been using approved textbooks to get the students that much farther along in their test preparation. My teaching was furthering my goals, not the school's. No wonder it was seen and treated as an irrelevant waste of time. I can say this without any bitterness. Yes, I had a bad experience in my school and I think it is useful to juxtapose it with the glowing stories I'd heard before going about the joys of teaching in the Japanese school system. I do not think that the Japanese system is inherently bad or inferior (or superior) to anything else. It is simply different.

Despite my self-assured declarations of what I knew about Japanese culture, of how I expected the differences and understood enough not to get confused or angry about attitudes different from my own, I'd fallen into the same kind of thinking that I'd disparaged in others. I assumed that English education goals in Japan would be the same as my own, even if the goal of every other class was to memorize a set of facts for a test. I was angry and confused about my role at school for the better part of a year, until I realized that before I answered any of my questions, I needed to ask ones that were significantly more basic. Once I did so, the actions and attitudes of my fellow teachers - and even my students, who knew full well that my classes didn't affect their success at school and acted accordingly - made perfect sense.

Does that excuse the rude and unprofessional way in which I was sometimes treated? Of course it does not. It does not excuse the teachers who brushed me off and told me it was too inconvenient to try to work my class into their schedule, and who told me I should just bring a book to school and sit in the teachers' room for months on end. Understanding the source of our differences does not excuse or justify the bad behavior to which I was occasionally subjected. At the same time, however, I can no longer feel angry or bitter at my situation, because I realize that the entire problem stemmed from miscommunication and misunderstanding on a more fundamental and systemic level than either my fellow teachers or I could even begin to change.

Given my "bad" experience, then, would I recommend others to avoid teaching in Japan? No, of course I would not. I would only caution others to carefully remember that they are in another culture and realize - as I could not - just what that may mean.