past the halfway point

The middle of the school year has just passed; I finished second trimester midterms at one school and have begun the second of two semesters at the other two schools. The year is progressing reasonably well as both I and the students settle into our routines and become more familiar with one another. The easier this job gets, the less logical it seems for me to move home next year. It’s also sad to realize that as I get closer to my students the time I have left with them gets shorter and shorter. Still, I can’t deny that part of me will be incredibly relieved when my immediate future no longer involves performing in front of a classroom full of kids. This job has been a huge challenge for me, and while I’m satisfied to know that I am capable of doing it, I still feel that ultimately I am better suited for more solitary work.

All three of my schools have good and bad points, and even within individual schools every class is different. What follows is a long break down of my work week for the curious.

On Tuesdays I teach conversation lessons to classes of about forty students, with a Japanese English teacher in the room with me to assist. The school is about an hour from my home station (making for an hour and a half commute one way when you include walking), but I don’t have to be at school until just before second period and I can leave once I’ve finished preparations for the following week (around 4:30; sometimes earlier and sometimes later). I teach four sixty-five minute lessons.


This last Tuesday was really great. The material I teach is designed to supplement the students’ regular English textbook. For awhile the regular English classes were behind the planned curriculum, which left me with a lot of blank stares and slowed the lessons down significantly. Apparently they’ve caught up, however; recently I’ve been able to elicit answers from my students with efficiency and enthusiasm. As the year progresses and we all get a feel for the general flow of lessons, the pace has quickened and I think we all feel a little more relaxed. Since the lessons at my Tuesday school are longer than other schools (65 minutes rather than 50), we often use the last fifteen minutes of class for a game. Last week’s game was the best yet: I put them in groups of six or seven students and had one student in each group stand up. I then asked a question, and the first group to raise a hand and answer the question with correct grammar got a point. If they made a mistake, another group would get to try. When the question was answered, the students sat down and another student from each group stood up. Not only was it great to see how excited they were – competition gets them going – but it was pretty incredible to hear the kind of sentences they could form on-the-spot after only a few months of English class. Of course there are some students who are bored or don’t care or just don’t get it, but the average student at my Tuesday school is positive about English and reasonably good at it. These girls first formally learned the English alphabet six months ago and now they are saying things like, “I have a pen and two erasers in my pencil case,” and memorizing speeches. That may not sound impressive, but coming from the public school system, and knowing how hesitant Japanese students are to make mistakes, let me tell you: it is – and I’m excited to be a part of it.

Fridays are similar to Tuesdays in that I teach the same material (designed by my company to supplement their regular English textbook) and the school is far from home. The commute is nearly two and a half hours one way, and I teach five fifty-minute lessons. Again, I don’t have to be at school until just before second period and I can leave once I’ve finished preparations for the following week (usually around 5:00). Still, with the commute, five classes, and giving private lessons at lunch and after school, it makes for a long day. I often leave feeling like a shell of myself; dehydrated, hair and clothes coated in chalk, and everything that went wrong throughout the day echoing in my head. One of my lessons is a full class of about forty students and the other four lessons are divided classes; around twenty students. I teach alone, and as the year progresses many of the students seem less interested and more willing to test my limits. Again, every class is different – some participate in the tasks diligently, and some talk over my lessons. I’m learning how to be a disciplinarian, but it feels like they are simultaneously becoming less attentive to authority – these two trends balance each other out for an ultimate result of no real change. I know that what I need to do is engage them more, but this is hard to do when the material overwhelms them. I am behind on my planned curriculum, but their regular teacher is even farther behind, so the material I present to them is all brand new, and as such often goes over their heads. They get bored and tune out, and I find myself using Japanese all too often to check that they know the meanings of words. This week we are going to take a break from the regular worksheets and play some Halloween games. Hopefully after that they’ll be caught up in their regular English classes and the lessons will flow more smoothly. There have been days when I left that school feeling exhilarated, when I felt like I’d done my job effectively and we had fun in the process. All the energy and effort compounds and feel like I’m flying. Recently, though, the exhaustion seems to outweigh the sense of accomplishment. There’s nothing to do but keep trying, right?

My other three working days – Monday, Thursday, and Friday – are at a third school, twelve minutes from my home station by train (about a forty-five minute one way commute). I am required to be at school from 8:20 until 5:05, regardless of whether or not there are classes that day. I teach half of three regular conversation classes (about twenty students – another teacher takes the other half) on my own. The text we use is very straightforward – a series of dialogues with substitutions – and every lesson is basically the same. The classes flow well and the students are mostly well-behaved and attentive. The material, however, often leaves something to be desired; I don’t feel like I’m challenging them enough, though I do try.

In addition to these lessons, which meet once a week, I teach a class of eighteen “returnee” students four periods a week. The students in this class have hugely varying levels of experience in foreign schools overseas; it’s difficult to design lessons that can equally involve a girl who lived in Texas for eleven of her thirteen years and a girl who was in Thailand for two years. The variation in levels compounded with the general awkwardness of being twelve and thirteen years old can make group activities a little difficult. Another problem I’m dealing with is my own inexperience. This is my first (and only?) year teaching on my own, writing tests, designing a curriculum, and generally being in control of the class and responsible for discipline. However – perhaps precisely because it is such a challenge, and also partly because I get to see them so much more often than my other students – the returnee class is my favorite. I read their journals every week – I hear stories about their families, pets, vacations, club activities, and even boyfriends. And I see the results of my lessons in their test scores and homework assignments. Again, I’m seeing these girls grow and it feels really great to be a part of that.

All of the students I’ve mentioned thus far are in their first year of junior high school (seventh grade in the American system), and all girls. On Saturdays I also teach two elective classes, both two hours long. The first is for returnee elementary school students (aged 9 to 11) who are considering joining the returnee junior high school program in the future. Again, the variance in their English abilities poses some difficulty, but it’s a good group of girls and we have a lot of fun. I try to mix speaking and writing activities with a lot of games, and I think we’ve developed a nice pace and a good group dynamic. To be honest, I’m not much of a “kid person,” (teaching full days of elementary school classes once a week last year killed me) but these girls are a nice change of pace from the seventh graders – just remembering the difference between my own experiences in seventh and fifth grade is enough to illustrate why. They’re not as afraid to make mistakes as the older girls, and they tend to be more open and energetic. They’re also pretty damn cute.

My other Saturday elective class is a conversation class with third year junior high students (ninth graders) in the afternoon. Since it’s an elective course they’re not required to come, which means I have a different number of students every week – I’d say the average is around twelve. We do a lot of different speaking activities, play some games, and watch movies about once a term. Again, having a different age group is a nice change of pace, and I feel like I can relate to these girls more than my other students. Two girls in particular come to chat with me between classes sometimes, and I always look forward to seeing them.

Fall term is always the longest, and it’s half over. Then it will be winter break, and then spring term will fly by. Soon after, I’ll be traveling again – this time through Southeast and East Asia. I might come back to Japan for a short while after that, but I expect to be back in Portland by late next summer. I don’t know what comes next – I just know that I need to be home for awhile, closer to my family and the place I came from.

The world has never felt more like my oyster. Life is really good.