Category Archives: Teaching

A Library Unto Myself of Books Not My Own

I once had a book company give me a lot of books. I then had to figure out how to give them away and keep them safe.

Back when I was in Albania, I sent a letter to Norton Publishing in the UK asking if I could get a couple sample copies of one or two of their anthologies. This was a tactic often used by university students to acquire books back when university textbooks only cost an arm and a leg.

I was surprised, then, when Some Big Shot at Norton (not his real name) offered to send me dozens of books if I could pay part of the shipping. Despite my bad relations with our country director Bitchy Punt, I somehow managed to convince her to pay the portion of the shipping (only the equivalent of fifty dollars or so) and the books arrived at my apartment.

I then had to figure out how to distribute them. I gave a stack of them to the library at the Foreign Language faculty in Tirana, and also presented a set of anthologies to the library director as a, well, incentive/kickback to keep the rest of the books safe and in the library and, more importantly sometimes in Albania, to actually let them out of storage. I was then able to send my students to the library to borrow the anthologies for use in class. I also had my students write letters to the Big Shot at Norton thanking him and his staff for their generosity. (Occasionally, I do learn a few things about working with other people.)

Unfortunately, I was also living in Elbasan and, after giving away another huge chunk of books to the excellent library there, I still had five boxes of books in my apartment. Now if I’d been smart (shutup) I would have immediately taken them to the black market and set up shop. However, since I’d already told my students I’d do book checks and fail anyone without a book if I saw any of the books in the black market, I figured it was a bad idea to go sell them.

In the end, because I left the Peace Corps under angry terms, I donated more books to the libraries and told my students they could keep the ones they had. The rest ended up at the Peace Corps office and I don’t know what happened to them.

The Second Brings the Grind the Third Brings the Pain

One of the things that happens where I work is that, after we come back from summer, we’re a bit rusty but refreshed. The first couple days your legs are sore from standing all day and you begin to seriously reconsider your footwear choices but by the end of the week you are back in the groove. The second week is when it all begins to fall apart.

The second week is when you begin to remember how boring the groove actually is and, well, so do the students. When you come back from summer they’ve 1) forgotten your name 2) forgotten your tricks and 3) forgotten your rules. A lot of energy is spent getting them back into the groove and once they get there they 1) remember your name 2) remember your tricks and 3) remember your weak spots.

Last week I spent a lot of energy getting 8th graders to complete their speech contest speeches. This involved giving them the opportunity to come in at lunch and let me check the script and then me dragging them to detention to write them whilst I paced around glaring and rolling my eyes at everything they did (basically I became a teenager for an hour or so).

This week, even though Monday was a national holiday, it’s already been a long week. The higher level students have begun to push pressure points. My “new” student (he was “somewhere in North America, eh?”–not a real place–last year) doesn’t yet know that I make a sport out of giving returnees low scores. (Just ask the guy who requested a meeting to discuss his 9 (81-90%) and why he didn’t get a 10 (91-100%).

Next week, the real problems will start when the first big projects come due. We’ll hear some interesting excuses: I was absent the day this was assigned and am therefore exempt. I don’t like giving speeches. I hate English! I hate you! (And that’s just from other teachers.)

Luckily, we’re entering Awesome, which means the weather will be getting cool and dry. In fact, it’s already beginning to cool down, which is awesome.

 

 

In With The Bad Out Comes The Good

A short one today in honor of bad students. This is the first full week of class after summer vacation and that means that we are now reintroducing ourselves to our students and reminding them why they are supposed to fear us and/or why they think we are jerks.

Today for example, one of my worst students spent the first few moments after the bell rang zipping and unzipping his trousers in front of his friend’s face. I told him “I you need to do that, get out and do it some place else.” He stopped zipping his pants (with the zipper up, luckily) and sat down in a huff and added, in English “I don’t understand English”. My inner snark monster, encouraged by the devils over my shoulders said “I know. Maybe if you sat down and listened you might learn something.”

I then gave out the assignment, which involved telling a summer vacation story by captioning a series of cartoon images. The students were encouraged to use their imaginations and dictionaries and I wouldn’t give any hints except to remind them it had to be one story. (I also don’t help them unless they ask for help.) The bad student didn’t understand and panicked quite spectacularly. Even lashing out at foreign teachers for not having Japanese instructions on their worksheets. I told him, in English, as the inner snark monster reached 50% capacity, that a lot of Japanese blamed their teachers for their bad English not their own unwillingness to study. “Your bad English is not my fault.”

Finally, someone explained the lesson to him (probably in Japanese). He started writing and after a he had a few sentences I peeked at his paper and he was actually doing the assignment. This surprised me because I assigned a punishment letter to a student with similar behavioral issues and, although he appeared to working, he turned in an expletive laden screed full of death threats to me and the principal and wishes that we both would die. In his defense, it was the most English he’d ever written.

Eventually, zipper boy finished the assignment. Oddly, this was the quietest he’d ever been in class and he earned a very rare full class marks.  I may have to give him more caption assignments.

Next class, though, the students have to present their stories as a speech. They get bonus points if they can do it without using the paper.

The inner snark monster never got past 50% today. it is still mad at me. However, history has shown that at least five students will forget their papers next class, including zipper boy.

The inner snark monster will then go full snark and say “Lucky you! Now you get bonus points!”

The Casual Business of Waiting Your Turn

Classes start this Friday at the school where I work and that means I’ve had to drag myself in a few times to get ready. Today, especially, was important because I had to proctor a make-up test for a student who managed to fail seven different classes.

What’s odd about the week before school starts is how much it reminds me of a track meet.

My only experience with track and field occurred, if I remember correctly, in 8th grade. I was trying to get the Sports merit badge in Boy Scouts which required I play a full season in two approved sports. I’d already played basketball–and that was the only sport I played for more than one season–and that left track and field. Now, technically, track and field was not an approved sport but it was Hayden, Colorado so lacrosse, soccer and water polo were right out and the powers what are in the Boy Scouts were lenient.

This left the problem of deciding which events I should join. I was capable of short bursts of speed, but not 100 yards worth. I wasn’t coordinated enough to do high jump. I couldn’t even clear a bar set at waist level. (My Fosbury Flops were, well, you can finish the rest of that pun.) For the record, I admire high jumpers probably more than any other athletes as I do not understand how they do what they do.

I ended up running the mile and doing triple jump and, for at least one tournament, throwing discus. I was, at best, an average miler; a below average triple jumper; and an absolute disgrace as a discus thrower. I was also, clearly, not worth the coaches’ time. I don’t remember getting any specific help on getting better from any of the three coaches at any time during the season. I learned the basics of triple jump by watching other jumpers.

Having come from basketball, though, what surprised me about track practice was the way it seemed disorganized. People wandered about practicing various events and occasionally being told to run to some location out in the middle of nowhere and then return. It didn’t feel like a team practice.

The same was true of track meets. It was very strange to be told “be over there in an hour” and then be more or less left on my own. There was no sense of being on the same team and no particular cheering section. No one seemed to care if you made it to your event or not. I remember how odd and scattered it all felt.

The same is true of the week before school. Teachers wander in and prepare lessons (most of them dressed in shorts and  t-shirts as if it really were a track meet) and no one seems to care that anyone else is there. With make up tests we’re not even sure if the students will be there. (My student showed up, by the way, which means I lost a bet.)

Starting Friday, everything will be more regimented and some of us will start working as if we were on the same team.

 

Thou Art Hither Now Get Thee Hence

One of the fun parts about being a foreign teacher in Japan is that I can get away with a lot. One of the problems of being foreign teacher in Japan is that I can’t get away with a lot forever.

On rare occasions I’ve taken students to the principal’s office or to their homeroom teacher in the teacher’s office. With junior high this is rather risky, not only am I foisting my problems off on someone else and admitting I can’t control my class, but I’m also “forgetting” that education is both compulsory and a right until the end of 9th grade and removing a junior high student is a questionable legal act. It’s better to stick them in a the corner, or at a desk just outside the door. Also, in Japan, the Group is very important and being removed from the Group can be quite shocking. With high school students this isn’t as big a legal deal, but removing them from the group is.

That said, I’m also the only teacher I know who’s thrown students out of class during observations.

The first time happened in a first year high school class. One of my worse students, let’s call him Mr. Sato, was famously bad and the kind of student who immediately goes to sleep and counts on his friends to take notes. Since my class was a speaking class, that wasn’t possible. He had to be awake and he had to work with a partner.

However, on the day of open classrooms (during which other teachers in the school could observe our classes) Mr. Sato’s usual partner was absent and he believed that meant he didn’t have to do anything. After the warm up, he immediately went to sleep. I woke him up and he pointed to the empty chair next to him and went back to sleep. I woke him up again, he pointed to the chair again and I pointed the empty chair next to another student and said be his partner. This repeated a couple more times. Finally, the fifth time I woke him up, Mr. Sato snapped and said “WHAT!” which is Japanese for “leave me the fuck alone already”.

I told him to get out and, surprisingly, he left without any argument. This, in it’s own odd way, is telling. As I said before, In Japan, the Group, in all its forms, is important. Mr. Sato clearly wasn’t feeling a part of the group.

The teacher observing my class was visibly shocked, but he understood.

The second time it happened was fairly recent and occurred during open school when three mothers were observing my class. The open school happened to fall on a presentation day when my students had to get up in pairs and do an original conversation. The first couple pairs were okay, but the third refused to go up. I wasn’t too surprised, as one of the partners, let’s call him Mr. Kato, had been sleeping, trying to do other homework and generally being unhelpful during the writing phase (prompting his partner to declare “I don’t have a partner.”) I said they didn’t have a choice. They had to go up and do their conversation.

After some “negotiation” they finally went up and, well, first Mr. Kato tried to take his script (not okay) then he tried to cheat (also not okay) then he tried impress me with his attitude (fool). I pointed out I have a nine year old daughter with more attitude and better English and put him and his partner out in the hall to practice. I apologized to the mothers and, surprisingly, they stuck around apparently to watch the end of the match.

Eventually Mr. Kato and his partner went up and did a decent job, which earned me some points with the mothers. Although that’s exactly the kind of stuff I have to worry about and I reported what had happened to the homeroom teacher (I also told him the other students had done well). It’s also the kind of stuff I really ought not try a third time.

Money Beauty Queens and Boy George Boys

Soon after I got to Albania, for reasons having to do with politics and me being posted to the Faculty of Foreign Languages in Tirana and the fact you can fool most of the people most of the time early on in the relationship, I was asked to chair the entrance interview for what was described as the first free and fair entrance exam in the faculty’s history.

This amounted to first double checking the written test and then convening with four of my future colleagues (which they were, sort of, in a way) to interview and rate potential students. I vaguely remember that we agreed on which order we’d ask questions and what kinds of questions we would ask.

To this day I don’t remember what questions I asked or even if I asked questions. All I remember is that I welcomed the candidates and introduced myself and that things proceeded from there, for better and for worse and for interesting.

Most of the interviews were relatively bland and I remember faces more than what they said. The first interview that stands out was a stocky kid with a rustic look that screamed farmer. He spoke English slowly, but seemed to understand everything. One of us asked what his family did and he said they were vegetable farmers. One of my fellow interviewees then said. “You must be making a lot of money now.” I went “What the f–” but he gave the greatest knowing smirk and soft “yes” I’ve ever seen and we all knew he was getting in because money.

The second was an especially attractive young woman–you’ll see why that’s important in a second. Her English was excellent and she had the Balkan poise the vegetable farmer didn’t. One of my fellow interviewers, who had a bushy head of hair and aviator/Elvis style eyeglasses asked her if she’d ever heard of the Miss Albania pageant. She said yes. He asked her if she’d ever considered entering it. She said no. He said “but you’re very beautiful” and encouraged her to enter it right about the time I was thinking “Are you fucking kidding me!” but saying something like “ANYWAY, moving on to the next question.”

The last one I remember was a frail, rather effeminate kid with a style that would later be described as Emo. He was wearing dark aviator sunglasses that were twice as wide as his head in the interview, so I was torn between liking him and thinking “poser”. His English was good, though, so it was hard to complain about him. Later, the man who’d asked about Miss Albania, asked the kid if he’d ever heard of Boy George. The kid said no. The man said “But you have a lot in common with him you–” I never heard exactly what they had in common because I interrupted at that point. I don’t even remember what I said. I just remember interrupting.

All three of those candidates were chosen for the faculty, although I would only teach Miss Albania and the vegetable farmer (both were really nice, although it was a lecture class so I spoke at them more than to them). I saw Boy George boy a few months later. He was still sporting the aviator shades and actually looking more confident and cool.

All I could think was “poser”.

The Corner Marks the Time and the Punishment

A short one today for your mercy and mine and since I’ve been in an Albania state of mind I think I’ll stay there.

Even though the Albanians were surprisingly fast language learners, my students all had a casualness toward class and studying that I think stemmed partly from Balkan machismo and partly from doing everything as a group under communism.

The first issue I encountered was keeping my students quiet and keeping them doing their own work during exams. Earlier in our first year, our TEFL trainer and her colleague from the British Council concocted one of the most complicated honesty schemes I’ve ever seen. They had a short test but the first few questions in the first part would be chosen randomly from 30 possible questions. The questions from the second part would be chosen from 50 possible questions. They gave the questions out only a day or so before the test.

Despite their best efforts, every student had the exact same answers.

I can’t even do the math on how the students arranged for different students to write the different answers and then share them with all the other students so that they could memorize them. I can only imagine they just had a giant group collaboration session somewhere and wrote them all together.

In my case, as soon as I handed out my British Lit exam–yes, I was in the United States Peace Corps teaching British Literature and no, I don’t understand it either–the men in the back row started consulting on answers. I stopped them and all was well.

However, the thing that bothered me the most was all the random student holidays the students used to take. The Faculty of Foreign Languages was a long walk from my apartment and at least twice a month I’d show up for work only to discover it was the 3rd anniversary of the fifth student summer uprising. Finally I told my students that I liked holidays, too, and I wanted a list of all their holidays. I told them that if I made it past the corner of the US Embassy (which was on the way to the Faculty) and discovered it was a holiday, I’d find a way to fail the entire class.

The students did all that. One time I knew there was a holiday but I had to go to the Peace Corps office (which at the time was just past the Faculty) and four different students told me it was a holiday.

I don’t know if that was the best thing to teach them, but at least I know they learned something.

The Beating Will Continue Until Morale Improves

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that I spent a good portion of my Peace Corps experience preventing myself from being kicked out of the Peace Corps.

Granted, my charming personality didn’t help things much and neither did my tendency to blather on and on about things (more on all that in another post). Mix all that with shocking levels of bad people skills and obliviousness and, well, I didn’t win many friends or influence many people, except to have them avoid me at all costs.

The first time I knew something was afoot was when I applied for the equivalent of a grant to help partially fund a trip out of Albania. I’d been helping out the local branch of the Open Society Fund for Albania (a George Soros joint) and they’d invited us to some shindig or other in Hungary. This request led to a long, well conversation is too weak but argument is too strong, so perhaps bitchfest would be more accurate. Our country director, let’s call her Bitchy (I normally use another word that rhymes with punt, but I’ll refrain from mentioning it, sort of–see, told you I had a charming personality) recited a litany of Peace Corps crimes I’d committed–and there were many–and I argued, er, bitched back.

Eventually I paid for the trip myself (and never went to the conference) and all that went away, until the the end of my first school year. At that point, Bitchy Punt (her full name) approached me–and in all fairness, she was quite nice and genuine–and asked me to leave Tirana. She said she’d mistakenly allowed a huge chunk of Albania 001 to be clumped together in the center of the country rather than spread out around it. She gestured to a large map of Albania with all our faces pinned to it. (Still one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen.) She asked me to move down South to Gjirokaster on the Albania/Greece border.

She paid for me to travel down there and look around and I will say it was a beautiful town. It’s old quarter may be one of the most beautiful places in Albania. Also, because it was within an hour of a national border, I could leave Albania at my leisure without needing any kind of special permission or official leave. Also, there was another volunteer there who could show me the ropes. I did consider it, but I realized 1) all my friends were in the North 2) you can only look at pretty buildings for so long before going insane 3) I didn’t have the money to zip back and forth across the border enough to actually enjoy being able to do it.

I told Bitchy Punt I was happy where I was and didn’t want to move. She more or less crossed her arms and went “Hmmm” which is Peace Corps speak for “We’ll see about that.”

A week later, Peace Corps staffers, US and Albanian, were in my school passing out surveys about me to my students and conducting short interviews with them. This freaked out my students who said it was just like the old ways under the old communist government.

A few days later I was “invited” back to Bitchy Punt’s office. At that point she basically said “I’m not asking; I’m telling” and told me if I refused orders I would be kicked out of the Peace Corps. (And you thought the name Bitchy Punt was just me being an obnoxious punt.) She also praised me for getting such positive evaluations from my students. At that point I went “Hmmm” which is Dwayne speak for, well, use your imagination and as many bad words as you can think of.

I consulted with some friends, both in Albania and in the USA, and they encouraged me to find a compromise. The compromise was that I would move an hour or so away to Elbasan, which had lost its volunteers for various complicated reasons, but I could still teach two days a week in Tirana. The Peace Corps would pay for the travel and the hotel and Bitchy Punt could move the pin with my face on it a little bit away from the capital.

Elbasan was nice enough, and the university was nice too, but I didn’t really know anybody there and it never felt like home. I had a much better time teaching in Tirana. That said, I lost out on being the gathering place for my friends who were left to wander the cold nights in search of warmth and cheap food in Tirana.

The move to Elbasan would eventually give Bitchy Punt the chance to get rid of me, but that’s another post.

Audience Without Joy Teacher Bringing Anger

Yesterday I mentioned a failed business and how I ended up teaching the classes I’d hoped to teach, sort of. I also mentioned there were some issues. Today I thought I’d talk about those issues.

Basically, you have to keep in mind that although Japan managed to reduce its workers unions to empty, somewhat  noisy shells, the teachers’ union still maintains a certain amount of influence and prestige. The mandatory four skills classes were, essentially, a shot across the bow from the government to the teachers’ union that they’d be facing new rules and, possibly, regular evaluations. They also took place during summer vacation.

I taught the classes in two phases. First I was called in as a substitute on weekend for a shortened proto version of the course I still don’t understand. The Japanese English teachers were polite enough but there was a lot of sighing and eye-rolling every time I said it was time to do an activity. (It was a lot like telling a teenaged daughter to clean up her stuff and/or a lot like me when I’m forced to attend such workshops.)

Not a lot happened, to me but one of my friends came back from a break to find “Fuck You” written on the blackboard–remember what I said about teenaged daughters. He went through their handwritten assignments and using handwriting analysis figured out who wrote it and then strangled the guy and threw his corpse out the window. (So I heard; my friend may have simply discussed the issue with the guy but that doesn’t seem as plausible to me.)

Eventually the courses went “live”. They were Monday through Friday six hours a day. At first the students were actually pleasant because the ones who went early were keeners/ass kissers apparently intent on impressing someone. I came away from the first classes with several friends among the students until the voice came down from on high “Thou shalt make no friends among thy charges! Neither shalt thou have any friends amongst these masses which are around thee!” (Something like that.)

Towards the end of the four years, as the deadline for teachers to complete the course came closer, we got the diehards. We got the teachers who’d fought the course as long as possible and when I arrived to teach my class you could feel the anger and hatred.

Oddly, they were not the ones I managed to piss off.

I started class by saying I appreciated them being there because I was sure there was nothing they’d rather be doing on a beautiful summer’s day than sitting in a room in a school having some foreign guy tell them how to do their jobs. I then told them that I sympathized because there were a lot of things I’d rather be doing too–I just left out the part about me being there voluntarily, which is not, technically, lying–and that I hoped I could give them something to take away and that I didn’t waste their time.

Everything went well after that. They relaxed and participated, even when the curriculum was clunky. While I and the other teachers taught, we had a woman from the Tokyo Board of Education office roaming around listening in on us. At some point I told them my students were lucky. Because they teach at public school and when the students asked “Whey do we have to study English?” they could just say “Ask the Ministry of Education”.  (I said it with it’s Japanese name “Monbukasho” This brought some laughs. I said because I was at a private school I couldn’t say “Ask Monbukasho.” This brought more laughs.

Then, at the start of lunch time, I was told by a Japanese staff member from my company that there were some issues about my class making fun of the Ministry of Education. I said that’s not what happened and I’d talk about it after lunch. By the time I got back from lunch things had hit the fan. The staff member panicked and high level people from my company were already there. Apparently the woman from the BoE, who’s English wasn’t that good, heard:

Me: blah blah blah blah Ministry of Education. (snort)
Students: LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL They suck.
Me: blah blah blah blah Ministry of Education. (snort)
Students: ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO They are evil.

I explained everything and apologized and during their brief interviews/interrogations–yes, this is how things are done where I work–my students vouched for me as well.

Luckily for me, other teachers were doing worse. The course was supposed to be conducted only in English and one guy was holding a major graded discussion in Japanese, which actually did make his students angry. In the end my students rocked their final presentations much to the delight of the woman from the BoE. I praised the students but she said they had a good teacher. I thanked her and said “Do you have any BoE positions available?”

Apparently she didn’t, but I was invited back the next year, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

 

The Long Way Home From Farthest Away

When I first got to my schools in Niigata the first thing I noticed was that a lot of my Japanese English Teachers (with a couple exceptions) were young. In fact, a good percentage of the staff were young. At the end of the year, I also noticed that a lot of the young staff went away and were replaced with more young staff. (With exceptions.)

This is partly the result of the way a lot of prefectures in Japan treat their teachers. They tend to do military style assignments of three years before moving on. In the case of Niigata, the prefecture tried to send young teachers as far away from home as possible for their first job. Since Nou-Machi was hell and gone from Niigata City, it got a lot of young teachers.

After three years, the teachers moved to a new school a little closer to home for another three year assignment. After that the explanations got confusing and I started to get a headache trying to understand it but the gist was that by their third assignment teachers began to have some choice in where they wanted to go. There is also some politics involved because the school boards also get some say in who they want.

This system had a lot of odd effects. First, it guaranteed that every district, no matter how small and/or undesirable could get teachers. (This would solve a lot of problems for district in Western-Kansas.) On a personal level it also forced the teachers to be less dependent on their families for support which was great for their personal development.

On the other hand, it also meant that Nou-machi was full of new teachers suddenly discovering that a couple weeks of practicum (not a joke) with little time in front of the class didn’t really prepare them for teaching.

The other effect was that, because Nou-machi was rural and out of the way (I could get to Tokyo just as fast as I could get to Niigata City), not a lot of teachers volunteered to work there once they had enough experience to make a choice. The school boards then played some politics and a lot of older teachers ended up having their choice taken away and were sent to Nou. That also had some interesting effects.

When I was working with younger JTE’s I could pretty much raise them up in the way I wanted them to go. They were also really good at speaking English. My last year though, Nou Junior High School was issued two older teachers who very much wanted to be some place else. Because they were older, it was difficult for me to raise them up in the way I wanted them to go and that led to a bit of tension. I, of course, was very flexible and did my best to support them. Well, not really, I didn’t get along with them at all. I don’t remember a single class I taught with them even though I can remember at least one class from every teacher I worked with. I don’t even remember their real names.

The first I remember only as The Airhead. I all fairness, she  was much more concerned about her pregnancy than dealing with a loud foreigner and/or doing much teaching. She did her best to fit in but she was distracted.

The second I remember mainly as the Bitter Bitch. She resented being in Nou-machi and was convinced that everyone and everything in Nou was backwards and illiterate. (Especially the loud foreigner, who I’m pretty sure she remembers as “that self-righteous asshole”.) I would try to show her that the students already knew the alphabet and the days of the week, etc. but she just went ahead and taught as if they didn’t. The tension eventually led to swearing (the f-word was involved at one point) but we learned to get along and just do our own things.

Eventually, I was the one who went away. My successor, who was a heck of lot nicer than I am, said that the Airhead improved a great deal and that he pretty much kept his head down around the Bitter Bitch and they got along to get along.