The Day Daniel Does Some Math
I will get around to writing about my vacation soon. Just I know it's going to be long, so it's a little daunting.
It being the new year, I was hoping against steep odds that my J.H.S. would start the year fresh and pleasantly surprise me a team teaching schedule. Alas, the head of the English department didn't make any new year's resolutions to be more organized or efficient.
I've given up the battle to get a team teaching schedule, it's been nine months and I've only had one real schedule. Yesterday an event occurred that made me absolutely livid. Three minutes before third period class started, one of the two teachers in charge of the English department came to my desk.
They said they are teaching the unit "Try to be the Only One" and that there isn't a lot to teach in it, not many vocabulary words etc... they then said the word crying is in the story, so the teacher asked me to come to class and demonstrate crying. Yes, come to class and pretend to cry.
Inside of me anger ignited like dark rolling clouds filled with thunder and lightening. Six years of university, specialized in teaching English as a second language with five years experience and they want me to come to class and pretend to cry. I would have been OK with pretending to cry if it was part of a lesson plan, say, on emotions or anything else related.
An ALT is an assistant language teacher, our job is to support the Japanese English teachers, if there is a lesson that doesn't have much content, or you need an activity or an idea, that's what we are here for. However we cannot do our job when you give us three minutes warning. The week of would be fantastic, even the day before is acceptable, and if you're quick, even 50 minutes before the class I could have whipped up something that would have used the skills that you don't teach them (speaking and listening) to add and compliment the lesson.
In-spite of the turmoiling rage inside of me, I kept a passive face, and agreed to their request. I am a professional, and even when others are lacking in professionalism I grit my teeth and do my best to maintain my standards. I went to class and in class they asked me on the spot to talk for five minutes about anything, OK. I manage to talk about something that actually interested the students to listen and even ask questions. When the time came and they asked me to demonstrate crying, my teaching instincts took over.
I asked the students what is crying in Japanese. They answered, then I said you all know what crying is, now, let me tell you some different types of crying. I wrote on the board crying, sobbing, weeping, and wailing. I then gave a demonstration of each, OH and I did a goooooood joooooooob too. The students liked it and they were able to give a Japanese word for each of the English words. I think said we have a tree called the weeping willow, and we call it that, or at least I call it that because the tree looks like it is sad and crying all the time. They told me that in Japan The weeping willow tree represents or symbolizes a ghost or something to that effect. Afterwards we returned to the teachers lesson. I get so little, but I tried to stretch the little have into something more.
I had set my mind to write to my supervisor at city hall about this experience and to suggest that a workshop be made for Japanese English teachers and vice principals in April and in August (Start of the new school year, and just as the new (JET) Alt arrives at the school. I don't e-mail my supervisor lightly about things or problems, I rarely e-mail him at all. I decided to wait until the next day to give myself time to calm down and relax and think more about it.
This morning when I came to work, I knew wouldn't have any classes. I figured that my supervisor probably gets lots of complaints of the same nature from other ALTs now and over the past years, so to take my complaint/suggestion from a different angle I decided to do some math.
Here it is;
From April till now I've had exactly two team teaching schedules, one which wasn't followed at all because of the music festival.
Subtracting winter, spring, golden week, and summer holidays, as well as my vacation and sick days, and finally special school events. From April until now, I've been at my J.H.S. for 100 days.
Of those 100 days, I could have taught 335 classes, I taught 72.
335 minus 72 equals 263 classes that were not taught but very well could of if I had a schedule.
One class is 50 minutes, plus a 10 minute break is an hour. If we look at 263 as the number of hours I did nothing to contribute to my school, but could have been teaching, and multiply it by my hourly wage, then my school has wasted just shy of 5000 dollars from April 2010 to Jan. 2011.
5000 isn't exact but it's very close, my situation is extreme, but there are many ALTs who are similar situations and do not have schedules and are not used a lot, so if one school is wasting around 5000 dollars on an ALT imagine what the city and province is wasting by the misuse of ALTs.
When it comes to the misuse of ALTs, schools are quick to blame the ALT, sometimes it IS the fault of the ALT, there are MANY ALTs who are lazy, entitled, incompetent, and unprofessional. However when a problem of misuse occurs between a school and ALT more often it is the school being unorganized and misinformed on how to use their ALT.
National AJET has been meeting for years with the ministry of education to help try and find a way to have a standardized guideline for duties and use of ALTs. Unfortunately because every school district, every board of education, and every school operate under rules of their own, and because of culture the ministry is very reluctant to try anything.
It's unfortunate that my last year at this school which was pretty good previously is frustrating. I could contribute so much, and do so much but again, wasting tax payer's money. However it' s not all bad. As I wrote this post (I've been working on this for a few days)good things do happen. As I was teaching in the afternoon with the head of the English department (of course only about an hours notice and they asked for an activity that takes hours to prepare, but me being awesome still had an old version of it from last year and had time to update it), they were surprised that even the students who don't really care or participate were doing the activity. They also commented that it's so hard for them to understand listening.
One the teacher said the students have a hard time listening, I said " that's because you don't speak English in the classroom, if you don't speak English of course they can't understand. It came out as an attack, and I almost left it that way. However, attacking never helps, and I then went on to say, next week you know I have the mid-year seminar, and that last year one of the things we talked about were how Japanese English teachers are shy to speak English and in class to the students.
She explained to me how the need to be perfect is there and that if they speak English and make mistakes that students will say something or their co-workers thing they are bad. I told her that student's will never know as they can't even form a sentence and that there is not one English teacher in this school including myself who doesn't make mistakes in English.
We ended up talking about teaching for about an hour, I told her about the different intelligences of learning and using different teaching techniques, it was interesting for them, whether it will change anything, I doubt it. But at least I'm trying, and the teacher did learn some new stuff.
This teacher while I often want to punch them in the throat, I don't hate them, just they are not professional or efficient. However it turns out one of the teachers who teachers math I think, wants to practice English with me everyday, but they were really nervous to approach me, which is silly, I make so many efforts to be open, I even told everyone I have a free eikaiwa every week and anyone is welcome to join, but the English teacher got the other teacher and together came talk to me, and it was good.
I always hope that my school will get better, more organised, but, who knows, and with only having six months left, I feel less inclined to keep fighting and just accept things the way they are.
It being the new year, I was hoping against steep odds that my J.H.S. would start the year fresh and pleasantly surprise me a team teaching schedule. Alas, the head of the English department didn't make any new year's resolutions to be more organized or efficient.
I've given up the battle to get a team teaching schedule, it's been nine months and I've only had one real schedule. Yesterday an event occurred that made me absolutely livid. Three minutes before third period class started, one of the two teachers in charge of the English department came to my desk.
They said they are teaching the unit "Try to be the Only One" and that there isn't a lot to teach in it, not many vocabulary words etc... they then said the word crying is in the story, so the teacher asked me to come to class and demonstrate crying. Yes, come to class and pretend to cry.
Inside of me anger ignited like dark rolling clouds filled with thunder and lightening. Six years of university, specialized in teaching English as a second language with five years experience and they want me to come to class and pretend to cry. I would have been OK with pretending to cry if it was part of a lesson plan, say, on emotions or anything else related.
An ALT is an assistant language teacher, our job is to support the Japanese English teachers, if there is a lesson that doesn't have much content, or you need an activity or an idea, that's what we are here for. However we cannot do our job when you give us three minutes warning. The week of would be fantastic, even the day before is acceptable, and if you're quick, even 50 minutes before the class I could have whipped up something that would have used the skills that you don't teach them (speaking and listening) to add and compliment the lesson.
In-spite of the turmoiling rage inside of me, I kept a passive face, and agreed to their request. I am a professional, and even when others are lacking in professionalism I grit my teeth and do my best to maintain my standards. I went to class and in class they asked me on the spot to talk for five minutes about anything, OK. I manage to talk about something that actually interested the students to listen and even ask questions. When the time came and they asked me to demonstrate crying, my teaching instincts took over.
I asked the students what is crying in Japanese. They answered, then I said you all know what crying is, now, let me tell you some different types of crying. I wrote on the board crying, sobbing, weeping, and wailing. I then gave a demonstration of each, OH and I did a goooooood joooooooob too. The students liked it and they were able to give a Japanese word for each of the English words. I think said we have a tree called the weeping willow, and we call it that, or at least I call it that because the tree looks like it is sad and crying all the time. They told me that in Japan The weeping willow tree represents or symbolizes a ghost or something to that effect. Afterwards we returned to the teachers lesson. I get so little, but I tried to stretch the little have into something more.
I had set my mind to write to my supervisor at city hall about this experience and to suggest that a workshop be made for Japanese English teachers and vice principals in April and in August (Start of the new school year, and just as the new (JET) Alt arrives at the school. I don't e-mail my supervisor lightly about things or problems, I rarely e-mail him at all. I decided to wait until the next day to give myself time to calm down and relax and think more about it.
This morning when I came to work, I knew wouldn't have any classes. I figured that my supervisor probably gets lots of complaints of the same nature from other ALTs now and over the past years, so to take my complaint/suggestion from a different angle I decided to do some math.
Here it is;
From April till now I've had exactly two team teaching schedules, one which wasn't followed at all because of the music festival.
Subtracting winter, spring, golden week, and summer holidays, as well as my vacation and sick days, and finally special school events. From April until now, I've been at my J.H.S. for 100 days.
Of those 100 days, I could have taught 335 classes, I taught 72.
335 minus 72 equals 263 classes that were not taught but very well could of if I had a schedule.
One class is 50 minutes, plus a 10 minute break is an hour. If we look at 263 as the number of hours I did nothing to contribute to my school, but could have been teaching, and multiply it by my hourly wage, then my school has wasted just shy of 5000 dollars from April 2010 to Jan. 2011.
5000 isn't exact but it's very close, my situation is extreme, but there are many ALTs who are similar situations and do not have schedules and are not used a lot, so if one school is wasting around 5000 dollars on an ALT imagine what the city and province is wasting by the misuse of ALTs.
When it comes to the misuse of ALTs, schools are quick to blame the ALT, sometimes it IS the fault of the ALT, there are MANY ALTs who are lazy, entitled, incompetent, and unprofessional. However when a problem of misuse occurs between a school and ALT more often it is the school being unorganized and misinformed on how to use their ALT.
National AJET has been meeting for years with the ministry of education to help try and find a way to have a standardized guideline for duties and use of ALTs. Unfortunately because every school district, every board of education, and every school operate under rules of their own, and because of culture the ministry is very reluctant to try anything.
It's unfortunate that my last year at this school which was pretty good previously is frustrating. I could contribute so much, and do so much but again, wasting tax payer's money. However it' s not all bad. As I wrote this post (I've been working on this for a few days)good things do happen. As I was teaching in the afternoon with the head of the English department (of course only about an hours notice and they asked for an activity that takes hours to prepare, but me being awesome still had an old version of it from last year and had time to update it), they were surprised that even the students who don't really care or participate were doing the activity. They also commented that it's so hard for them to understand listening.
One the teacher said the students have a hard time listening, I said " that's because you don't speak English in the classroom, if you don't speak English of course they can't understand. It came out as an attack, and I almost left it that way. However, attacking never helps, and I then went on to say, next week you know I have the mid-year seminar, and that last year one of the things we talked about were how Japanese English teachers are shy to speak English and in class to the students.
She explained to me how the need to be perfect is there and that if they speak English and make mistakes that students will say something or their co-workers thing they are bad. I told her that student's will never know as they can't even form a sentence and that there is not one English teacher in this school including myself who doesn't make mistakes in English.
We ended up talking about teaching for about an hour, I told her about the different intelligences of learning and using different teaching techniques, it was interesting for them, whether it will change anything, I doubt it. But at least I'm trying, and the teacher did learn some new stuff.
This teacher while I often want to punch them in the throat, I don't hate them, just they are not professional or efficient. However it turns out one of the teachers who teachers math I think, wants to practice English with me everyday, but they were really nervous to approach me, which is silly, I make so many efforts to be open, I even told everyone I have a free eikaiwa every week and anyone is welcome to join, but the English teacher got the other teacher and together came talk to me, and it was good.
I always hope that my school will get better, more organised, but, who knows, and with only having six months left, I feel less inclined to keep fighting and just accept things the way they are.