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Published: November 17th 2008
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So first I must apologise to anyone reading this on a regular basis for the angry rant followed by the long silence, I’ve been coming to terms with a few things! Firstly, the job. I’ll put it in to numbers:
Longest stretch without lessons: 8 days.
Longest stretch at my base school without lessons: 2 weeks.
Number of lessons taught at my visiting school since September: 4
Average number of classes per day: 2
Number of times I’ve taught the same lesson (Self Introduction) 36.
The problem is complex. On the one hand the schools don’t see working with an ALT as a priority especially during exam time when the students are drilled in grammar. Also, many teachers simply don’t know how to work with an ALT. They either give the student a script to read (the tape recorder effect) or they simply tell the ALT to play games with the students. The ALT isn’t given access to the school curriculum so these games lessons are rarely based in any meaningful contexts. Attempts to find contexts in the form of the school curriculum are usually fruitless. Furthermore, many teachers are bad at providing much information on the student’s needs
and abilities. For example, the other day I planned a writing lesson for a 3rd year class, the lesson was checked by the JTE in advance but then went really badly as the students failed to understand a word I was saying. After the class the JTE lightly announced ‘Oh no. They can’t write’.
The ALTs, on the other hand, are a mixed bunch. Attitudes to the job range from total frustration to complete indifference. I suppose it depends on your priorities. For people whose key priority was to come to Japan to travel and experience the culture and do the job as a means of funding the enterprise then it essentially doesn’t matter that the job isn’t what is was advertised to be. However, for Ian and I this is our careers and what we are passionate about and so we constantly feel as though we are coming up against brick walls. Of course we want to do the travel and the culture but we also want to be trusted to do the job we were trained to do and neither of us can foresee how that is likely to happen.
Then there’s the global financial crisis
to consider. It has to be said that we are both paid very well here and this will make the decision to leave extremely difficult given the recession back home. Quite how the prefectural board of education justifies paying ALTs as much as they do is bewildering. Yes, we are all well educated people who bring a broad range of knowledge and skills in to the country but, as I’ve already said, they don’t use us properly. Imagine the UK government paying for every classroom in every school to have an interactive white board installed and then no one ever switching them on. And then imagine them doing this every year for 25 years. You wouldn’t waste that kind of public money, would you?
So whilst everyone feels more or less the same way about their jobs we are all kept sane by a broad range of social activities. There is a definite sense of counting the days until the weekend. It goes. Monday to Friday - stare in to the abyss. Saturday, Sunday, maybe a public holiday on Monday - meet friends, do culture, do drinking. On the 31st of October there was the Halloween party which Ian won
by covering himself in red body paint and dressing up as ‘Hellboy’. It was a good night aided by the free bar which was included in the price of the ticket. A friend of ours came a very close second by coming as a very realistic version of ‘The Joker’ There were also guys dressed as futons which for me won the surreal vote. Others included a pirate and a toothbrush as well as more traditional witches and devils. It was described by one as ‘An Irish festival, commercialized by America, celebrated in a French restaurant, in a Japanese city attended by people from all over the world. Truly post-modern. (I would quote ‘the kiwi’ properly but I have a no-names policy on here just in case. Ian is an exception. It causes some awkward grammatical gymnastics and a lot of repetition of the word ‘friend’ however).
On Saturday a group of us girls went to Inuyama and got dressed up in Kimono and then went for a walk around town. It was a lot of fun despite the wonderfully incongruous presence of the JCB type vehicle and road works! Inuyama is a funny place. It has a beautiful
castle and a number of old houses which you can be invited in to but this being Japan no one thought to stop them building hideous concrete blocks in between and surrounding the old parts so the overall effect is an ugly clashing confusing maze. Also no one thought to make any part of the town traffic free so shuffling around in a kimono is a nerve-racking experience as you try to avoid getting run over. So there we are. Having been pulled and twisted in to a rainbow of stunning fabrics we are a picture of western tourism in a Japanese town gone a bit wrong. That said, I did like my kimono a great deal, it was a blue fabric with a yellow band (obi) around the middle. It also came complete with the flip-flop style shoes (zori), split-toe socks (tabi) and paper umbrella. (Which had to be changed for a practical plastic one when the rain came down!) Whenever I watched costume dramas in the past I always wondered what it would be like to be really pulled in to something! Well now I know, it’s very hard not to fall over since they make you stand feet together and then you start to wonder if a rib got broken as you try and breathe. Also, I had to keep being married a secret, the Furisode is really only supposed to be worn by young unmarried women and really I should have worn a Kurotomesode which is the correct formal wear of someone who is married. But that style is black and dull so I told a fib. So now you know! You can find out more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimono
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