Dual Realities

Working as an ALT so far has been a blast. It's been hectic, they've changed schedules around on me, I've had to wake up around 6 every day I've had to work, and at times I've come within an inch of complete and utter panic mode, but overall, once I'm actually in the classroom, we have fun, the kids enjoy my lessons, and the other teachers are apparently satisfied.

But it hasn't been like that for all involved, and that concerns me a little. My friend Xiao also started working with Interac at the same time as me, and her experience has been a little different. She worked at a Jr. High the other day, and had to prepare a worksheet for class wtih very little information to go on, and the Japanese teacher wasn't impressed. Less than impressed, actually, even more so by her lack of knowledge as to what a 'gerund' is, which I'm guessing 95% of the general English speaking population doesn't know either (a noun ending in -ing, e.g. skiing, or making lunch). But this bothered the teacher enough to complain about her to Interac, and so now she's involved in trying to cover her ass to our boss, Jason, who is calling into question her knowledge of grammar, which I think is crap.

What I see in this is clearly a case of a Japanese teacher with a bone to pick with the idea of native English speakers waltzing into Japanese schools and teaching their students with what they perceive as basically no formal training whatsoever, and was on a mission to prove just that. See, things like gerunds or type II conditionals are things that every speaker of English knows, but, much like psychology, don't know the name for. Non-native speakers of English however, learn the titles for all these things because 1) if you've got a name for it it's easy to refer to when learning/explaining and 2) they don't know it's the kind of thing that native speakers never, ever say and probably don't know. Not the actual grammatical concept, mind you, but the word for it.

So now she's got an angry school and an angry boss, a boss who, to me, has been supportive and easy to talk to for the most part, however mildly dismissive when it comes to my overblown concerns. Which is probably good cause it teaches me what they think is important and how better to work for the company. But all the same, it's just weird, to think that all this time I'm out there in schools worrying, but still enjoying myself, and now there's another person, who I at least think is just as qualified to be here as my, who is experiencing what will probably be a lot of negativity until things have either blown over or other people put her in a more positive light.

Now, things to take into consideration here are that she was teaching at a Jr. High School, which I haven't done, and consider to be really really hard, since teachers are going over hard grammar points, things which are considered to be the most important parts of English as far as Japanese schools are concerned. Which, I'll admit, are important, but the ALT's job is to provide an opportunity for native English communication in a safe supportive environment, the Japanese teacher's job is to go over hard grammar. But, I digress. It was also her first day at that school, we really only receive training for elementary school classes, and she hasn't been in Japan that long(something like 4 months).

I'm just as worried about going to Jr. High schools. I have no idea how to do that stuff. Thankfully, I don't have to until February, assuming my schedule stays the same. But even then I don't know that I'll be ready to go in there, especially because then the school and the company will consider me to be an experienced teacher, and they'll probably pull the same kind of crap when I get there that they did with her.

But this brings up my long standing gripe about the role of native English teachers in schools. We're sold to the schools, and the understanding is or should be, that we're not there to go over the hard grammar points of English, though a knowledge of such things greater than the average guy on the street is good and I think should be required to some extent. We're there, as far as I can see, to encourage a healthy relationship with students, such that they see English as something that is not intimidating or impossible, and, much, much, much more importantly, to dispel the long standing xenophobia inherent to Japanese culture. The more we're in there, and the better students get to know us filthy criminal gaijin, the more we can start to drop those adjectives and change that racial slur to something much more neutral, like gaikokujin. Gaijin are the entire rest of the universe, and Japan is innately biased against them. If all I do in all my time as a teacher is instill the idea that foreigners are real, living breathing, and as potentially worthwhile valid individuals and members of society as Japanese themselves, then I will have accomplished far more than anyone could have ever hoped towards improving Japanese society.

I could care less if they still don't get the idea of the definite and indefinite article. Learning another language makes you less racist. TADAAA the world's a better place.

So, I hope that when it comes time for me to step up into a Jr. High School I can do something meaningful when I'm there. But, more so, I hope that Xiao manages to find a way to improve her image and step up the quality of her teaching, because I want her to enjoy her time here. So far it's been nothing but misery, and that makes me so sad, so see someone in the same country, doing the same job as me, have such a completely opposite view of their time here. I went through all this too, and I survived, but she's been here for far less time than I, so, all she has are bad times, none of the good stuff I've been through to make it all worth it.

I hate seeing people give up on Japan. Sometimes I want to, but, I realize that it's no different from any other place. The names of the problems change, but they're all still there. Don't like how racist Japan is? Never would live there because of the open discrimination? Lol. Look at your own life. You're just bitching cause here, you're on the receiving end. Or, if you're already discriminated against at home, I don't see why you wouldn't feel better off here, since it's not just your demographic they don't like, it's everyone. At least here you're not singled out.

Anyway, the lesson here is that there are people in the world who are out on a mission to prove that who you are and what you do are worthless. Part of making it in life is learning not only that there are such people, but how to work around them. Not necessarily to change their minds, because without them, we would have no motivation to be good enough to get past them. Even if it means being such a good people person that they look past your not knowing what a superlative is, you're still better off knowing how to get around them. Adaptation is the name of the game. Even in Japan, the land of repetition for the sake of repetition and repetitive identical failures because change admits a bigger failure.