Okay, fine. I'll rate.

Since I highly doubt any of them will magically stumble upon this blog, I've decided to give the skinny on the teaching situation I'm in... the good, bad, and ugly (you love cliches, and you know it). This, of course, comes after a particularly weird day...

So amidst the flurry of ramblings so far, you've probably gathered that things aren't always entirely peachy amongst my JTEs (refreshin' yer memory... 'japanese teachers of english,' or else my 'cooperating teachers'). Well, wait, lemme back up... amongst them, it's fine, since they rarely work together... I guess it's amongst me and them... and the support teachers. And not so much them... more me... because of them. See the "It's not my circus" post to get a sense of things...

Have I circle-talked enough? K. Well, basically, the scoop is that I work with three teachers: One for the ichinensei, one for the ninensei, and one for the sannensei. There's also a support teacher that "floats around" (more detail on the quotes later). I can safely say that 1 and a half of my 3 main teachers completely rock. 1 being the ninensei teacher. I love working with her. She's always got her head on, knows what's going on in the class, effectively teaches the english to the students, and does her very best to let me know what I need to do (AND SHE ACTUALLY USES ME AS MORE THAN A HUMAN TAPE RECORDER!!). She's amazingly hard working, and can usually be seen running in and out of the staff room with an arm load of folder bins, still managing to smile and say, "Hello!" as she dumps them off on her desk, only to turn around and toss some posters and a CD player at a line of students that have followed her in to help carry things back upstairs. Then off she goes again. I completely respect her as a teacher because she really seems to be in it for the students. And she's totally confident in her own ability, too... we actually have conversations outside of the required, "Ok, so for class 2-4 today, I would like you to..." The only complaint is that sometimes I feel like I let HER down, either by asking too many questions or taking up too much of her time.

Let's talk about the half, shall we? The sannensei teacher has good control of her classroom, it seems. She's always got a good plan in mind and usually implements it fairly well... even if I'm not necessarily included in this planning. The impression I get, though, is that she isn't confident in her english ability. Therefore, we rarely talk except for the usual dialogue above (I'm not retyping it... seriously, it's, like, 9 lines up there). Even if I don't always know what's going ON in the classroom (since she speaks mostly in Japanese to the students, other than a few routine phrases that shoot out every class period), I relax because I know she's got it under control. There have been a few times where she'll suddenly pass me the ball and I'll have no choice but to stand there blinking until I get sacked. One story comes to mind... I asked what we were doing for the next period, and she told me lesson 5-1. We get up to the room, go through the routine opening ("Hello everyone," "Hello, ___-sensei and Andy-s... uuhh... Mr. Sandall" "You're getting closer... Good morning, class."), and while the class is settling down, she looks at me, "I made mistake... we are doing 5-2 today." Oh... great. Ok, I can fake it... she won't throw random stuff at me, right? Wrong.

In retrospect, I should have realized that she'd want me to exercise the grammar point. I should have known that just by glancing at the book, I would have seen that the point was "His name is James, but his friends call him Jim." But since I'm still the new guy and still learning the way these teachers work and the way the books are set up... I was left with no choice but to have the following conversation in front of the class. "Mr. Sandall, what do you call MacDonalds in America?" "Umm... MacDonalds...?" And she just kinda stared at me, visibly thinking "Umm... crap... what do I say now?" She kinda smiled and tried again, "What do you call MacDonalds in America?" I reply more confidently this time, "It's just MacDonalds." Score, Colin. You TOTALLY got that one right! Again, the blank stare. She turned to a student and asked, "What do you call MacDonalds in Japan?" The student glanced at the book and said, "Oh! Eto... we call MacDonalds 'Mac.'"

I smashed my head against the door frame, trying hard not to laugh at my own idiocy. But the moment had passed. I knew the answer to every single question from that point on, but she never passed to me again for that period. :D Between classes, I could only laugh, shake my head, and apologize. She laughed, too, and said it was okay, since we didn't have time to talk about it. I said, "Yes, but in case you were wondering, in America, we CALL it MacDonalds. And we also CALL Kentucky Fried Chicken KFC. I understand now." And we laughed. But I nailed it that next period. (Congratulations, Colin, you just passed middle school esl.)

Anyway, we have a lot of miscommunications, but nothing terribly serious, and nothing that doesn't get sorted out within a few moments. ...which brings me to exhibit C.

This is the teacher I heard about before I set foot in the building. I had recieved a warning by way of Tim from the old ALT about this guy. Only I didn't realize how frightened I should be. I think at one point, I said, "I haven't seen enough evidence to really call him a bad teacher, per se..." well I take that back. I have. This guy is terrible. Sure, he's shown improvement over the time I've watched him, but not much, and he's still leaps and bounds behind the other staff. Speaking of other staff, remember the quotes from earlier? Told you they'd be back. The support teacher, the nicest lady in the world, "floats around," or at least she did last year. This year, she's been asked to go to every single ichinensei class to help teach. This teacher has had parents come to the school complaining about him, he's had the principal and the vice principal down his throat for as long as he's been there, and his inability to teach is what the support teacher told me one day was a "public secret." (And I really was completely serious when I said she was the nicest lady in the world.) All the other teachers know he's not good, but there's nothing anyone can really do about it.

So why all the hub bub? The guy speaks amazing english. Really, he does... he's probably tied for best english speaking teacher, if not actually having first place. Does that mean he's able to explain anything that much better? Oh, don't be silly! Of course not! Then that would be TOO easy! It's okay, though. To be fair to all languages, he can't explain much better in Japanese, either (The support teacher told me). He teaches out of order (how can they understand the dialogue if they haven't learned the grammar point yet?), he constantly misplaces things (leaving me to tap dance while he goes back to fetch his flash cards), he lacks control of his class, and even fears his students. I've seen students openly stand up to him in class and he does nothing... one student refused to work, and while he tried to get the student on task, the student simply gave him an insulting expression... this caused the teacher to do what any good teacher would do... er, wait, no... the... the opposite... my bad (I think someone flipped my note cards around). He just looked shocked, and turned around and went back to the front of the classroom angrily... He didn't say a word about it. In another class, I noticed a student was off task. Since I wasn't sure exactly what they were supposed to be doing (Nihongo ga wakarimasen, remember?), I pointed the student out. The teacher said to me, and I quote, "Oh... haha... yes. He should be working. You should tell him. I don't want to go back there. He... he sometimes makes fun of me."

I'll give you a few spaces to really let that one sink in.



Pick up the jaw and let's continue on. Anyway, routinely in class, the support teacher finds herself having to step in and reteach the lesson of the class. I can literally hear students going, "...ooooohhhhhhh....." when she finishes. Of course, this is after they've spent 10 minutes fumbling through a worksheet.

I suppose this post comes after a weird day... I had two ichinensei classes today, and both went terribly, and by that I mean "as usual." The teacher and the support teacher were all but fighting in front of the class while I stood off to the side being genki and happy, and continuing on in my little tap dance ("Not my circus... not my circus... not my circus..."). Later that afternoon during a free perioid, as I was trying to prep for my adult ekaiwa class tomorrow night (details later), they were in some sort of heated discussion in the staff room. I heard my name get dropped a few times, but didn't try to pick out any other words and just kept my head down. I went to the copy room to make some worksheets, and when I came back, the conversation had moved to my desk... they were standing at my desk, continuing the argument, and using my text book to point things out (it was the closest text book, which is why I assume they were at my desk... I hope... *gulp*). I found other projects to work on away from my desk and killed some time. I looked back about 5 minutes later and the vice principal had joined the fray... all still standing around my desk. Tell me that's not unnerving.

So about the time the period was over, they finally wrapped up the conversation and I was able to get back to the safety of my little metal fortress. But still... I wasn't able to talk to either of them the rest of the day, so I don't know what went down... nor do I think I want to know what went down. Just smile, nod, be happy, do your job, and all will be well. :)

Ok, so, aside from all this rambling, I don't want you to get me wrong. I completely love it here. Sure, there are some downsides, but that's the hazards of the job, I suppose. Every ALT has a "that guy" at their school, so I'm in good company. We all just manage and enjoy the fact that we're in freaking Japan.

...and marathon Scrubs on days off...