Idealism disguised as realism

Every year each prefecture is required to do a seminar with all the JETs in that prefecture along with a JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) with whom they work. Ibaraki always decides to do their seminar very early (mid-October). I honestly think it is a little silly to do the seminar so early because the new JETs, still don’t know a lot about what is going on, and in many cases, such as mine, are still doing their self-introduction. We don’t know anything about teaching lessons or how best to use the textbook. But alas, this kind of thing is required, so we must suffer through and come out on the other side having “learned something” and having engaged in “meaningful discussion.”

If you can’t already tell, I think the seminar is a load and should be wildly revamped. The whole thing is a big idealistic, let’s all feel happy and appreciated conference and frankly, that just isn’t the reality of our jobs. For example – each base school is supposed to send one JTE to this conference. It should be understood that the teacher you send should be someone who team teaches with the JET, yes? No. My base school decided to send a man whose name I still don’t really know, who I had no clue was an English teacher, and with whom I have never done a team teaching lesson.

The beginning of the conference was fine. They had a visiting lecturer from a University in Tokyo. He is an American who has been living here for about 8 years and has been doing research on the “best practices” for teaching English in Japan while utilizing the native speakers who are hired to teach here. His presentation was informative and gave good ideas and suggestions as to how best to conduct an English class in Japan. As I have said before, they speak Japanese in English class. I think English classes are arranged poorly and there is too much emphasis put on the textbook. Japanese teachers rely solely upon the textbook to guide their lessons. Often I find that the vocabulary seems irrelevant and random, and the grammar is often not correct. But as I have also said before, I am not going to change the system here, so I just roll with it. But in the conference, they split us into groups and want us to spend two days discussing better ways to use the JETs and more effective ways of teaching English to our students. They mix people who have high level schools with people who have low level schools. Using the same techniques just isn’t realistic, but that is kind of how the whole two day conference was, a tad unrealistic.

I got some good ideas for games, and I spoke out and asked questions of more experienced JETs. I gave my opinion sometimes too (big surprise, huh?). But all in all, the conference was completely ineffective and was only successful in pulling me out of the classroom for two days. But, I did meet another JTE in my group who knows some of the English teachers who work at Sanwa (my base school). He liked the way I spoke out and thought that I had nice ideas, but that I also relayed them in clear easy English so the Japanese teachers could understand. He appreciated my speaking so much that he wants me to come and participate in a conference he is doing just at his school. He wants me to observe the presentations and then comment on them afterward. It is kind of cool that someone thinks my opinions matter, even though I am new to this whole teaching thing.