Marathon Day

At my old secondary school, if you'd asked all the students to run a 7-10 km marathon you would have gotten a lot of absenteeism, some sit-in protesters, several middle fingers and maybe 5 volunteers. In Japan, the same request prompted every student in 1st and 2nd year to run 7-10 km.

The marathon meant that I got to leave my desk for the morning, not that I could really afford to with marking stacking up but still. First off, the teachers watched the students as they lined up in their utterly straight lines on the dirt pitch, in order of HR number of course. Kocho Sensei did what Kocho Sensei does and made what I can only assume was a speech that was both charming and motivational. As usual, he held up several props, this time fans with Kanji written on both sides of them. During this, I milled around on the raised area behind him along with the other teachers, most of whom were wearing tracksuits rather than work clothes. Why did nobody tell me that we were supposed to wear tracksuits?

After the speeches, the students began their warm-up, lead by a particularly stern PE teacher barking instructions into a megaphone. A few teachers even joined in, God bless them. Only one teacher volunteered to run with the students, which goes to show that Japanese people don't enjoy marathons any more than Irish people, and that the school admin are totally hypocritical. Still, I was very glad teachers weren't compelled to run. Could you imagine? I could..

Last year my predecessor ran, fair play to her. Unfortunately, this led to a bunch of awkward conversations, when various people guessed that I might be running. No, I'm 100% unfit. Which sport do I like? Can I say none...ok surfing then. Do high school students in Ireland run marathons? See above.

I couldn't help fondly reminiscing about the last time I tried to run any significant distance. I was 12 years old and it was Sports Day in my primary school. 6th class had to run maybe 200m. My best friend and I refused on principle to participate, but we were forced to. We expressed our discontent by ambling slowly around the course behind our classmates who were actually attempting to run. Fools, we thought, in our rebellious, almost-adolescent state. The spectators had to wait for us to finish before the next race could take place, and we took pleasure in their impatience as we strolled along the home stretch, long after everyone else had finished.

Actually, with 10m to go I sprinted to the line so I didn't come in last. I was a bad friend.

The 1- and 2- nensei boys took off first. They had to run 10 km. I watched from the starting point outside the school as they pushed and shoved each other at the front. Then Kocho-Sensei, standing on an upturned crate, shot the starter gun. No kidding, he actually shot a gun into the air like at the Olympics or something..those nearby covered their ears. The boys accelerated wildly.

5 minutes later, the girls lined up, poised for their 7 km run. They were a lot calmer and took off at a leisurely pace when the gun was fired. After that, it was a case of waiting around. Of course, I could have gone inside and gotten some work done for the 40 mins plus they'd be running for, buy my supervisor had randomly suggested that I help the school nurse. I can never tell whether his suggestions are spur of the moment whims or well thought out, okayed with the Vice Principle kind of things, so I decided to go along with this one.

The nurse is a lovely woman who speaks very little English and greatly over-estimates my Japanese competency. She tried to speak to me a number of times, each in vain. I ended up chatting to a group of 3-nensei students. 3rd years don't have to run the marathon because they're focusing on exams. Despite this, these particular students hung around all morning helping out. It was a good chance to speak to them because I only ever taught 6 3-nenseis and our classes are finished for the year. Like most students at my school, they were totally cringing at having to speak English but surprisingly good at it.

Together we personed (see previous posts for my de-patriachising of English), the injury station. It was a good thing that our biggest challenges were a girl who was tired and a guy whose pre-injured knee was sore (should he even have been running the marathon? I think not...) because I certainly had no idea what I was doing. When the girl arrived, drenched in sweat and collapsed onto the soft floor tiles we'd laid on the concrete, I was pretty concerned about her. She was panting and the 3-nensei students covered her with a blanket. I suppose the problem was to complicated to explain in their second language because they told me she was tired. Then again, she sprang up and left after a few minutes.

When a problem I could have helped with finally came our way I was useless. A student with a bloody ankle in need of cleaning, showed up nonchalantly. I knew where the disinfectant and wipes were, but all I could do was wince grossed-outedly at his wound and murmur 'itai'. The san-nenseis saw to him as I sucked in air through my teeth...eww...

On reaching the finishing line, each student was given a numbered card showing their placing. Afterwards, there was a closing ceremony in the gym at which the first 30 boys and 20 girls received medals and certs. I can only assume that the ratio of boys to girls in the school is 3:2. Don't get me started on the implication that the school comparatively under values girls sporting achievements if this isn't the case...I'm not even going to check.

As usual, we bowed and clapped and were lectured at by various people. I think it went on for about half an hour, ridiculously. I saw that the students had all changed from their PE clothes back into their uniforms for the sake of appearances. It wasn't for classes anyway, because the rest of the day's classes were cancelled. Hurray for the students getting the break they deserved for once!

The whole day served to remind me of Japan's cultural unfamiliarity. Following orders and respect for physical fitness are givens. I have to admit though, that it makes for a healthy nation. In my school, I'd estimate that less than 1% of students are overweight. Compare that to Ireland where around 20% or children are overweight or obese as of 2010. There's a logic to the disparity.

It also makes for some entertaining reactions...

'What did you do in PE in high school?'

'Well...I didn't actually even do PE in high school...'

'Ehhhhhhhhh!'

Typically..

A JTE finally came back to me to comment on the maths I've been using to correct students essays. She informed me she got it, and that the students managed to work out what it meant. The math/science stream ones had the upper hand in this, while the humanities ones were left confused. Fortunately, the students helped each other to understand. Unfortunately for humankind, and Japan in particular, the teacher also pointed out that the girls in the class had particular difficulty in understanding, but that they boys helped them.

Because obviously, girls are so woeful at maths.

Gender Roles in Japan

Before coming to Japan, I was warned of a possibly stringent view of gender roles here. While preparing for the JET interview I came across strange questions online, apparently often asked of American applicants. For example, if you were in the staffroom and all the female teachers began preparing tea for all the male teachers, and they asked you to join them, how would you react? This question proportedly weeds out the feminist applicants, those who will be rejected because it's suspected they'll shove their culturally insensitive ideas of gender equality down the poor Japanese people's throats. According to the online advice about JET interviews, it's best to suppress your inner feminist for their duration, if you really want to go to Japan.

You can probably extrapolate from my position on JET, that I was never asked this question.

In my staffroom, thankfully everyone makes tea for themselves. The cultural conflict with regard to gender roles has only arisen on several occasions. Questions about my parents were along the lines of: What does your father do? Does your mother work outside the home? While discussing teachers' extra curricular responsibilities at school, I learnt that males generally shoulder more of the burden of club activities because females have more household chores to attend to. One teacher asked me what the balance of genders in my university math course was, and seemed suprised to learn that it was roughly 50/50.

Then there's grammar. The already tough essay marking scheme is made more complicated when I mark students' use of 'he' as the ungendered third person singular pronoun as wrong. I'm aware that they were probably taught this by the JTEs. I'm even aware that there is no genuine ungendered third person singular pronoun to use instead, so I cross out 'he' and write 'they'. I'm patiently awaiting the moment when a JTE notices this and questions me about it. But even this is only the tip of the iceberg of my aggressive cultural insensitivity!

I've immensely enjoy raising gender issues during lessons. I'm convinced that it's crucial to broadening the students' minds. To my utter dismay, I find that unless I assign their seats, the classroom is divided down the middle, boys on one side, girls on the other. I appreciate that secondary school is a difficult time for kids, and they're pretty awkward. This could reasonably result in their staying within their group of friends, not in boys and girls consistently avoiding one another. Maybe I'm biased, because in my old co-ed school we formed mostly mixed-gender groups of friends naturally.

Of course, the fact that I'm teaching debating facilitates it all. I assigned some students speeches on feminism and was pretty impressed with the results. Women should be paid the same as men. Parents shouldn't dissuade boys from crying because it's girly. On the other hand, (and I had to assist the student to think of single bad point) feminism runs the risk of ignoring the real differences between the sexes.

The agree or disagree game was even more productive. Boys and girls should wear the same school uniform. Do you agree or disagree? I can't help but paint the uniforms as a villian in the tale of the separation of male and female at my school. It's a marker of difference. The girls wear a navy skirt, blazer and bow tie, while the boys wear a black military style jacket and trousers. (The military jackets still kind of freak me out. It's like they're little educational soldiers.) Ok so many schools around the world have different uniforms for boys and girls, but for me the final nail in the coffin of the school's uniform policy is that they're even different colours. I mean it's just adding needless further difference. Why not have everyone wear the trouser suit and make them different colours? At least that way we could avoid the classic skirt/trousers, passive/active role implications.

What did the students have to say? They all disagreed. Boys and girls shouldn't have the same school uniform. The whys were difficult for them to articulate. It's always doubly difficult for the students when we engage in interesting analysis of an issue. First, they need to account for their opinions, justify themselves to themselves in Japanese. Second, they need to express their chain of reasoning in English. The popular why was, 'because boys and girls are differnt, so different clothes suit them'.

At this point I asked for a show of hands by the girls who usually wore skirts outside school. A single student raised her hand. So why do you wear trousers when they don't suit you? Our class schedule didn't permit further probing just then, but I was satisfied that they'd actually thought about the issue for the first time.

I'm pretty excited about our next class, in which we're holding half a BP debate on the motion, 'TTHB boys and girls should wear the same school uniform'!

The Genuine Global Language

When you're doing TEFL, you can't help but hear all about how English is the 'global language'. Apparently, the fact that Spanish and Chinese are more common is irrelevant. I love English just as much as the next person, but in my view it doesn't deserve its international status. In the worst case scenario, I'm also a raging colonialist.

Of course, the genuine global language is maths, Esperanto aside. It's automatically included in every basic education programme worldwide. I've even been used it to communicate with students on a few occasions. Today, I was grading a stack of 3rd year work. They had to translate a passage from Japanese and part of the sample answer was, 'When we name things we bring them into existence'. I thought it was a pretty difficult, not to mention philosophical passage for a translation exercise but how and ever..the vast majority of students wrote something like, 'When we name things we bring them out of nothing and give them life'.

I assume this is a direct translation from Japanese, since so many students said it exactly. I began crossing this out and writing the sample answers instead, but the issue of explaining the correction loomed. Obviously, there aren't two different verbs corresponding to 'live' and 'exist' in Japanese, so how do we explain the difference without using complicated English? I ended up drawing this picture on their worksheets:


I have to admit that I hesitated before including Harry Potter, but I was unsure whether they'd have encountered the fact that the roots of negative integers are imaginary on their high school maths course. I don't think I encountered it until college. Fortunately, I was confident that they would have seen Venn diagrams. Also, thank God for that other international reference point, the boy who lived.

This was actually the second solution I came up with. I was unsatisfied with the first, which involved drawing 'there exists' and 'there does not exist' signs. I thoroughly doubt the students have encountered these yet.
Unfortunately, I do still draw them when a student tries to pluralise a word which has the same singular and plural form, by adding an s. Common blunders are 'persons', 'informations' and 'knowledges'. It's so much faster to write 'there does not exist' 'informations' than explain my marking otherwise!
I expected the JTEs to ask questions about the diagrams and random figures I usually draw all over the students work, but none have. I can only conclude that either they a) give it straight back to students without glancing at it, b) glance at it, follow it and think it's a grand way to give feedback, or c) they glance at it, wonder what it's about and are too embarrassed/not bothered enough to ask me. I'm voting for a) or c).

After my bout of necessary Venn diagram drawing today, I began Venn diagram doodling. I call this 'levels of reality', because I've just recalled that you're supposed to label Venn diagrams.



Interestingly, the outside is intimately related to the inside because it's humans, with imagination who make up imaginary things. Like J.K. Rowling inventing Harry Potter, or whichever mathmagician started playing with imaginary roots. This seems to imply that the 2 dimensional diagram is not properly conveying the information. Maybe if we folded it into a doughnut...hmm...

I miss you maths!

Special Needs School

With translation's slow catching up between one language and the next, it's easy to explain how political correctness gets left behind. I have utterly no knowledge of Special Needs kids, their varying types of abilities and disabilities, and obviously still...no Japanese to make the conversations I had to have more direct. The result was a meeting in which I was told about my visit to the 'handicapped school', where some kids had 'mental retardation' or 'mental and physical disabilities' (so vague!). Can they move around the room? Yes, some need help but yes.
I later realised that the Japanese name for my school, Tokubetsu gakko, actually means Special School, which demonstrates that though politically correct advances are made in Japan as often as anywhere, translation is slow!

From past experience, and (luckily) from the JET midyear seminar, I had a little more info. As a child I visited St Michael's House in Dublin. My primary school class used to visit and play games with the children there. One little girl, who I had become friendly with used to pinch my forearms. It was very difficult to get her to let go.
At the JET midyear seminar, which happened before I had a single visit to my Special Needs School, there was a workshop on Special Needs Education in Japan. Many JETs described their schools and students. From this I learnt that some kids like to touch you, hang off you, drool on you etc. It was important to design activities that everyone could do.

Armed with my minutiae of information, I made 4 visits to my school in November and December. The teachers I met were the loveliest people ever. I quickly learnt that most were regular teachers, transferred to the school as the Board of Education saw fit. They had no special extra training for the entirely different job they were then expected to do! Each of them had or had to develop amazing patience and boundless energy and enthusiasm to keep up with the kids. I was mostly supervised by ones who had recently been high school English teachers.

Each day, I was met by a teacher by the stone statue of Doraemon outside the school. I was treated like royalty, and served matcha in a meeting room while we went over the day's plan. Walking through the corridors, every kid we passed starred at me and wanted to shake my hand. In the classes, I was only required to make a short self introduction, using pictures. The JTEs would translate. The kids asked far more questions than my regular high schoolers had, and interesting ones too! Do you like Halo 2? What kind of animals do you have in Ireland? Do you prefer Ireland or Japan? (always tricky!)

Apart from my introduction, the lessons were planned by the JTEs and would usually involve singing a song or playing a game together and the students presenting something they had prepared for me. Oddly enough, unlike at regular school I didn't hesitate to sing and dance around with the students, wildly flailing my arms and generally looking like a complete fool..no one cared. All the JTEs did it. All the students did it. We had fun.

The kids were some of the worthiest human beings I've met in my entire life. They made valiant efforts to communicate with me, though we spoke barely a word of one anther's languages. At break time they took my by the hand and brought me outside. We played football and looked at the pictures hung up all around their classrooms and corridors. They were so excited to meet me. Everyone wanted to shake my hand, sit beside me, link me, stand beside me in the circle, talk to me and be my volunteer. It was a bit of a culture shock after the reservation and awkwardness I'm used to from students, not to mention the lack of physical touching in Japan!

I realised that I was kind of hopeless as a teacher there, as I had been at regular school initially.
During my first self intro, I tried to explain the significance of the 3 leafed shamrock with regard to St Patrick's Catholic teaching. I'm sure this would still be fairly difficult with an adult audience, whose language you were speaking!
During my second visit, I decided to try Irish dancing with the students. We formed a circle and I played Riverdance. When everyone was excitedly jumping up and down (not exactly the neat 1-2-3 I'd hoped for but whatever), I tried to coax them into 2 straight lines to dance the Haymakers Jig. Not a hope. Of course, we had a lot of fun free styling it around the room, and they did get to listen to Irish music!

At the end of the day, I think I can see why JETs have been reluctant to broadcast their experience of working in Special Needs Schools. I get the impression that comparatively little is said about it by people who go there. One reason is not knowing enough. For example, what sort of disabilities do the kids at the school I visited have? I don't really know the answer. Some had Down Syndrome, some were in wheel chairs, but beyond that I'm not equipped to answer. The JTEs' English wasn't sophisticated enough to explain.

Another reason is the sensitivity of the subject, the politically incorrect terms and the pitying or special tone that other teachers tend to use when they refer to your Special Needs School. Are the schools something shameful to be avoided in conversation? A difficult subject, with a high likelihood of offending someone?

Finally, my own lack of clarity about where the Special Needs line is drawn makes the system difficult to access and thereby comment on. Where do dyslexic students go? Students with ADD? There are no support systems to help kids with these problems in my regular school, for instance. So I worry whether they get a fair chance, or whether in fact children with intellectual disabilities get the best chance by being lumped together and branded 'Special Needs'.

Despite my ignorance and the questions I can't answer, I think it's worthwhile to convey my experience of the Special Needs School I visited. It's possible that by sharing what we do know, we can learn more.

Technical Difficulties..what's new?

The blogger dashboard informs me that I haven't posted in a whole 2 months, well screw you blogger dashboard. You live happily on an Internet server somewhere enjoying a constant and blissful connection to the web. Some of us are not so lucky..

Actually the first month of radio silence can't be explained by technical difficulties, unless I say that I was technically to busy to blog. Or is that stretching it? December filled up with exciting events (more in future posts) and counting down the 21 days til Ireland.

Post December 21st, while I was in Ireland, it was technically difficult to blog because I was suddenly surrounded by hoards of stimulating stuff vying for my attention. For example, living with 4 other people instead of alone, turkey, roast potatoes, Cadburys...and so on (as my students say). By the time January 9th, the fateful day of my re-emigration, rolled around, I realised that I hadn't checked my facebook page in over 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the packing frenzy...I neglected to pack my laptop power cable. I packed the laptop alright, battery fully charged and everything...but by the time I reached Japan I'd already used up most of it. In fact, there was just enough time to copy my lesson plans for this term onto a USB before it shut down, lucky, lucky!

But of course, obtaining the power cable was a simple task, wasn't it? Indeed I called my family as soon as I reached home (note: controversial use of 'home' referring to my Japanese apartment), and encouraged them to post the cable asap. Should they use tracker post? No...no need. Sure why would I need to know where the parcel was exactly? As long it came to me in the end it was grand, so we went with regular post. MISTAKE.

As I later learnt, the beauty of tracker post is that it gives the post office some accountability should your parcel mysteriously disappear. Given this, I have some advice for whoever's running the post office these days...You could actually increase your profits a whole lot by not bothering to deliver anything sent by regular post. Sell it on EBay instead why doncha?...but I digress...The post office told my family that the parcel would take 3 to 7 days to deliver. 10 days, and no parcel later I was freaking out. Would yelling at the post office staff help? Apparently not.

A helpful JTE then got me a map showing the way to an electronics shop nearby, so I went there, powerless laptop in tow. After a lot of deliberation, several employees at the shop shook their heads while speaking to me in Japanese. I took this to mean that they didn't have a compatible cable. I tried to make enquires using my basic Japanese (in-ta-n-to oh-da?), to no avail. Dejected, I crawled back to my unwired hovel.

Last Friday (21st), I grew tired of my desperate situation. I went crying to my supervisor (that man is a saint), and he consulted the IT teachers who ascertained that it was indeed impossible to purchase a suitable cable in Shizuoka. They suggested I order online. Just how I was supposed to do this through Japanese remained unclear. Later that day, my supervisor attempted to help me order online, but his tech unsavyness thwarted our attempts. (I was loathe to wrench his laptop from him and take over the task)...
Eventually I ordered a cable from America over EBay. Delivery time: 2 weeks.

The following morning the Irish cable was delivered to my apartment. I had mixed emotions, and somehow managed not to hit the postman or embrace the package in his presence. Ten seconds later I was online.

You might think that the breadth of my technical difficulties don't merit this post's title...but wait...

The next day at school, I triumphantly presented my cable to my supervisor, ignoring his condolences over the cash I'd wasted on the American cable. Unsurprisingly, the school Internet started being a pain immediately. They're doing some sort of overhaul of the system at the moment, in addition to chaining laptops to each teacher's desk. I was lucky to be spared this fate. The high angle of my netbook's keyboard, when I'd placed it atop the new Fujitsu machine, would surely have caused me a repetitive strain injury of the wrists. In any case, the school server wasn't being a friend.

The next day when I managed to beggar technical assistance, it turned out that my proxy server settings had to be changed because "technical jargon/Japanese". Grand stuff, everything worked fine after that...until I got home. Whatever the techy had done to my Internet settings, my laptop was suddenly refusing to recognise my personal LAN! It took almost 5 mins to work out how to fix it, bother.

I had lost online time to make up for after all.

Knowing each other

This is a phrase that seems to be used by JTEs and in lesson plans. Initially it really grated on me, but I've since come to like it. It's the goal afterall.

I was advised early on that really getting to know Japanese people can prove difficult on JET, especially (obviously) if you don't speak Japanese. On my second day in Fujieda I was lucky enough to visit my night school teacher's house for dinner with my predecessor. It was a sort of goodbye to her, hello to me thing. My etiquette wasn't (and still isn't) up to much! I didn't realise that we'd be going to his house and not a restaurant so I didn't bring omiyage! Having just skimmed though the 'useful phrases' we were given at Tokyo Orientation, I couldn't even remember what you're supposed to say when you enter someone's house. It means something like 'sorry for the intrusion', but the Japanese still escapes me!



It was a great experience...seeing the inside of an actual Japanese house, sitting on the floor (because I don't in my apartment), being given lots of random foods to try, being asked random questions about Ireland and asking them about Japan. Afterwards my pred told me that visiting a Japanese house is a rare experience. She said that people here tend to be too reserved and private to invite you over. This explains the reverence JETS seem to have for the humble homestay. A while back, there was a festival in a small Shizuokian town with homestays available. You had to apply way in advance and there was a huge rush. Unfortunately I didn't hear about it until the places were all gone.

Of course I was lucky enough to do a homestay at the Hanagasa Dancing parade festival in Ito...though we didn't actually stay with the family there but in a separate apartment. It was very western, with beds, a table and chairs, and continental breakfast. Recently, I also got the chance to stay in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn in Nagoya. I slept on a futon there, which is still a novelty for me because I have a bed in my apartment. It was really comfortable! There was also an sento..which I didn't actually use, and slippers to wear around the house, so to speak.

But at last I have found the perfectest opportunity to interact with Japanese people! I got chatting to a really cool JTE who I don't actually teach with. While other teachers are year heads or responsible for a club activity, she's in charge of delivering the school's PET bottles to the recycling factory in Shimada. I offered to help her one time and on the drive she told me about the Time Circle. A group of JTEs from various schools, plus one American ALT meet on Saturdays to read Time magazine. They take turns reading the article (summarize it in Japanese...which I have tended to zone out during) and then discuss it. It sounded pure class to me. Free readsies of Time! Meeting English-speaking Japanese people! Intellectual discussion!

I attended for the first time two weeks ago. I didn't realise that we'd be going to someone's house and not some sort of community centre so I didn't bring omiyage!(..sensing a pattern?) Yet again I failed to recall 'sorry for intruding' in Japanese so I just bowed a lot and said 'DOZO yoroshiku onegaishimasu' (the politest nice to meet you phrase). And there I was, seated in the quaintest little living room, being quizzed about my country again. The man whose house it was introduced himself as Masahiro and then told me to call him 'Masa', because he knew that Japanese names are difficult...after which I knew with certainty that I would remember his whole name. There were cushions and doilies everywhere, kawaii! There was even a huge doily/lace thing covering the piano. Every seat had one of those thin tie-on cushions, including those on the already-comfortable couch.

The Time Circle participants drifted in one by one and we began reading an article about youth movements in Burma. Masahiro has a slow, measured way of speaking. I could listen to him for a long time. Unlike your stereotypical older Irish person, he seems to be fairly liberal and open, as well as having a lot of interesting stories. Our conversation about religion concluded with the realisation that we were all non-practicing Catholics and religious tolerance is cool. Anyway, we read sections of the article in turns and I could only feel admiration for these Japanese teachers who were taking on the daunting task of untangling and interpreting the complicated grammar and vocabulary of Time writer in order to discuss world events in Eigo. It's difficult to appreciate how varied and illogical our sentence structures can be until you're trying to explain one to an obviously intelligent and yet lost Sempai. Thankfully, the American ALT was there too!

The circle quickly descended into general conversation about Ireland, America and Japan. Let's just say I heard enough ninja vs mukade stories to make me very fearful of living in Japan during the summer! In the end I was invited to the group's 'Potluck party', maybe a standard term in the States but I was like huh?...when they explained, we go to someone's house and everybody brings food, I was like, aha!
That happened tonight. Funtimes!