A New School Year

April 25, 2008

First and foremost, the beginning of the new school year has hit me hard. In Japan, school ends in March and begins again in April, with two weeks of break in between. The beginning of a new year means that my classes get jumbled around. New first year students enter, and I’m forced to do my self-introduction all over again.

But it’s not just the students that are new. The teachers are different too. Apparently, in Japan, teachers are forced to switch schools every few years, seemingly at random. And it’s not just going from Kogyo high school to Nogyo; this shuffle is widespread and can be anywhere in the prefecture. From Kanoya to Kagoshima City, from Kagoshima city to one of the islands.

I’ll give you an example. One of my new English teachers in Nogyo, Dai Uetani, worked in Shibushi high school, maybe an hour from Kanoya. Shibushi High School is an academic high school. Now he has to get used to Nogyo, my agricultural school, and most definitely not an academic high school. He’s still adjusting.

I think that this shuffle can be good for the schools, as it injects new blood and insures that students get teachers with a wide variety of experiences; at the same time, this April shuffle is very hard on the actual teachers. Another teacher from Nogyo, Nakamura-sensei, stayed at the same school, but her husband (who’s a teacher) was transferred to Kagoshima City, some three hours away. They set up separate households: he lives with their oldest son in the city, while she lives with her daughter and younger son in Kanoya. And this splitting up of households is a common occurrence. I really don’t understand why schools intentionally put strain on families like this. I don’t think we’d stand for it in America.

I was fortunate in that my schools stayed the same. I still go to Kogyo, Nogyo, and Kushira Shogyo. (The person who can tell me which school is which gets a cookie.) However, I’m not entirely unaffected by the April shuffle. I have three new English teachers: 1 in Nogyo (Uentani-sensei) and 2 in Kogyo. Kushira Shogyo had no change in JTEs and remains my most stable school. Incidentally, it’s also my least busy school. I’ve had four classes in all of April and I’ve only done my self-introduction once.

In contrast, Kogyo underwent a dramatic change. Last (school) year, it was my least busy school. Two of the 4 English teachers never took me to class and 1 only rarely. That left pretty much 1 teacher who took me to class at all. Now, however, I have two new teachers who are willing to use me, and the teacher who took me to class last year is still here. I’ve had 12 classes and done my self-introduction 8 times. In fact, it’s because my old JTEs never took me to class that I’m doing so many self-introductions now. I’ve been primarily introducing myself to second and third year students.

Well, that’s my school life. Compared to March, I find myself rather busy.

A Strange Little Story

March 7, 2008

I saw a strange thing on Wednesday.

It was just after 4:00 and I was coming home from Kushira Shogyou. As I was waiting, I saw a man wearing a crisp black suit. He said hello to me. I said hello to him. And then I saw what he was doing.

This man, wearing a crisp black suit without a single wrinkle, was lifting a dead cat off the street and putting it in a pink plastic bag. I could see the back of the cat as the man lifted it up. I could see its stiff stripped tail and its brown intestines.

The man put the pink plastic bag in a white pick up truck, with the kanji for “Kanoya-shi” (Kanoya City) written on it. This truck was on my side of the street, close to the bus stop where I was waiting, and I saw many plastic bags inside it. Suddenly I thought I could smell the faint sickly-sweet smell of a hospital, but maybe it was only my imagination.

Perhaps it’s because a writer that this scene interested me. But still, as the man drove away, I couldn’t help but wonder where they put all the city’s dead cats and what they’d do with them afterwards….

The First Week of School

Early September 2007

In case I haven’t told you this, I would like to state for the record that I have three different high schools I help teach at: Kanoya Kogyou (the technical high school), Kanoya Nogyou (the agricultural high school), and Kushira Shogyou (the commercial high school). As you can guess from my use of parentheses, none of these schools are academic; they try preparing their students for a vocation rather than from college. In addition, Kogyou and Nogyou are mostly filled with boys. There are just 24 girls in the population of 600 at Kogyou. Plus, I don’t have a car, so for Kogyou and Shogyou at least, I had to take the bus.

That Sunday night I had restless nightmares about missing the bus, and I awoke at 6:00 AM, filled with nervous energy. I got on the right bus, thanks in part to a kindly old man whose job seems to be to direct people at the Kanoya Bus Center to the right bus. I got to school all right, and almost immediately after that, I had to give an introductory speech in front of the whole 600 students and staff. I got through that short speech and had nothing to do for the rest of the day. But doing nothing was almost worst than giving the speech. I was awash with anxiety.

After lunch, both students and teachers must clean, so one of the English teachers took me to her classroom. On the way, we passed through the hall and the students peered at me through the window and called my name. Now imagine walking through the hall and having thirty or forty teenage boys who you don’t know all calling your name in a half-friendly, half-leering sort of way. It was intimidating. I mean, I’m used to being sort of invisible, tucked-into-a-corner-with-a-book. The sort of “instant celebrity” status I had, just from being a foreigner and a new teacher, was unnerving.

In fact, I was so unnerved that, when I got home from school at just after 5:00, I immediately called Rachelle, another Assistant Language Teacher from my office, and asked her how her day was. We decided to have dinner at Joyfull, a cheap, chain restaurant. (I wanted to go there because it has a cheap drink bar with unlimited refills—a rare thing in Japan—and I was parched.) I vented my anxiety out to her for at least a couple of hours. It was 8:00 when I got home, and I sank into bed shortly after.

The next day I woke up at 6:00 again and went to Nogyou. I didn’t have to give a speech in front of an assembly, thank goodness, but I did have to give introductory speeches to about 3 classes. I felt nervous and awkward, but I tried channeling that energy into something productive, a technique I learned in drama. I don’t really remember much of that first speech, to tell the truth, but at least the ice had been broken. I had taught in front of a class.



I went to Shogyou on Wednesday, taking a long bus ride (half an hour) to get to the school. Here I had to make a speech in front of the school, again. I didn’t have to do anything else because the school had a Sports Day coming up and had to practice. I watched the school march across the field in slow columns. I asked the teacher about Sports Day and she said that the students would perform racing, cheering, six-legged races, etc. Sports Day is, apparently, an important school wide event all over Japan.

The week went quicker after that. I had to make my introductory speech to classes at Kogyou on Thursday and make my speech to more classes at Nogyou on Friday. The result of this was that I’m now getting very good at introducing myself. I know, for example, how loud I must speak and when to write on the board. I’ve also gotten to see the teaching style of the English teachers. Some, after I speak, ask questions to me and the students, so that the conversation is continued. Some translate every word I’ve said into Japanese, so that I wonder what the point of me speaking was. Some make the students take a quiz. Some dismiss me after I’ve given my speech, others make me stay and read the textbook loud. Some English teachers have avoided me altogether.

As I’ve gotten more used to being in front of a class, two major frustrations have already emerged. First, in all the orientations I’ve been to, in all the speeches that have been made towards me, people say, English is bad in Japan, please try to help improve it. Whether they make this request in earnest or not, I’m taking this seriously. I remember taking five years of Spanish in High School and Junior High. I remember getting a 1 on my Spanish AP test, and worst of all, knowing in my heart I couldn’t speak or understand it. I don’t want the students to feel that way. But I feel restricted. How can I improve English when I’m so inexperienced? And again, how can I even get to know the students (let alone have an impact on them) when I see them so little? (I think some classes I’ll see as little as 2-3 times a semester.) Plus, I’m not in charge of the classroom: the English teacher decides what we will or will not do. Sometimes I feel like I’m no more than a tool to them, like a flexible tape recording or a talking textbook.

Which brings me to my second problem: What is my role supposed to be? That’s tough to figure out. If I’m no more than a teaching tool, does that mean when I’m not in use, I can do whatever I want? Or should I be walking around, making myself seen? I feel like I’m part-teacher, part-ambassador, part-English-speaking-native-brought-to-Japan-to-improve-pronounciation, part-novelty, part-tool, part-in, part-out. My official role is as a teacher’s aid, but I haven’t figured out what that means. I’m above the students, below the teachers, and in a limbo that’s all my own.