Sensei, eigo o hanashimasen!

Tonight at my English Conversation Club, we spoke much of my time thus far in Japan and my experiences teaching. The members of the club asked me if I was frustrated at all with Japanese high school students. I think they were already anticipating my answer given their sly smiles as they asked this question. I expressed to them that yes, while I have been frustrated at some points with teaching here that it was multi-faceted and spending my time being upset was a waste.

Of course this did not appease them (there was no getting off easy playing the nice diplomat), so I had to delve into my different issues. First I spoke of how many of the teachers I have met are extremely nice people and mostly speak wonderful English when they are speaking to me. However it is extremely frustrating in a classroom situation because English class is taught in Japanese! This is something for the life of me I cannot understand! When I was learning Japanese in high school, my class was taught in Japanese. We used the target language as often as possible, the expectations were very high and as a student there were only two options: (1) meet the expectations, or (2) fail. We learned through listening, then speaking, then reading, and finally writing. The Japanese however have a very different technique: reading, then writing, a minute amount of listening, and just forget about the speaking part.

Expectations in the Japanese English classroom are extremely low. When I come up with a game to play during class, I am often told, "Oh, I think it may be too difficult for students. Can you make it easier?" or "Students don't like to talk, so we shouldn't do that activity." When I am met with this response I kind of want to scream, "SINCE WHEN DO THE KIDS GET TO DECIDE???" I would argue that students here are babied to their detriment. I have never experienced so much thought going into what the students want to do in class, or sacrificing learning just so the students don't feel a little uncomfortable.

I can write and vent about these things here, but honestly I don't really let it get to me. As I told the Pela Pela group, I am not going to single handedly change the Japanese method of teaching English, so wasting a bunch of energy on being upset is just silly. I would rather use that energy trying to be more creative with my games or encouraging students to speak to me in their free time.

Of course in my own Utopian society I would expect much of my students and I can bet the farm that in the end they would actually have had fun and learned a ton. Trying to convince a deeply entrenched culture to let me experiment with new teaching techniques is very difficult. If the teachers do not see immediate results, they expect I have failed and don't really let me try for a second time.

But my Pela Pela group and the Heartful club are definitely worth it and make me excited for our meetings every week.