(no subject)
So these past two days were the JET mid-year conference which was hilariously something that I was looking forward to but wound up being exceptionally disappointing.
I shall explain.
So the mid year conference is essentially two days that I get to spend NOT TEACHING CLASSES and meeting up with all of the other JETs in the Kyoto Prefecture. Given that I was a late arrival and missed my orientation, this was going to be the biggest meeting of JETs I had seen since my arrival. Which was great news! Meeting people! Opportunities to find ways to emerge from the little Kameoka bubble that I have been living in for the past two months! And possibly useful advice on how to deal with classes and other things.
Except on the very first day before I had even arrived at the conference, I'm asked by one of my fellow JETs if I had prepared the lesson plans I needed for the conference. This almost immediately sets me into a panic. The lesson plan had been mentioned in some papers that I had received nearly immediately after I arrived and never mentioned again. My supervisors never mentioned it. My fellow JETs never mentioned it. My English teachers who were supposed to be attending this conference but weren't because my city is kind of special of course never mentioned it to me. So already without having even arrived at the conference I'm kind of in a state of DDD: because this means I now have one night to print out 15 copies of a lesson plan that I haven't even written up when I have no printer at my house.
So with that hanging over my head I go to the conference. The first day was. Interesting to say the least. The entire first lecture I felt was mostly irrelevant to me, because it was introducing teaching strategies and ideas that I don't think I can reasonably implement in any of my schools. Basically, the guy giving the lecture had only ever taught senior high students, I never teach senior high students. The techniques he introduced could be utilized for Junior high students at most and most of my time is spent at elementary schools. So that was kind of frustrating.
Also during the first lecture there was a sign up sheet passed around for a bunch of people who were going to shabu shabu that night. And since I had to prepare a damn lesson plan that night, I decided to pass since it would be too much nerves to go out eating and drinking and worry about catching a train home in time to do my work and get to bed at a reasonable hour. Which was honestly frustrating, since I really wanted to use the conference as a chance to meet new JETs in the area.
The next session was also kind of frustrating despite the subject matter being something that I was honestly interested in getting more help with. Basically, we were supposed to discuss activities that we could use in class with minimal prep! Great idea, yeah? No. The presenter talked for maybe a few minutes, introduced only a few games and then we broke out into groups. The groups were given the option of discussing minimal prep games or topics that they found difficult to teach. As a result, my group trended toward the latter and I really didn't get to add very many games to my arsenal because there was no collective sharing of ideas between groups.
The last session of the day was frustrating in entirely different ways because it was essentially an hour long presentation that could be summarized as "Active Listening is necessary for learning a foreign language." And I just really felt. Talked down to, I guess. All the activities that were used in the lecture had really obvious goals, they lasted for too long, and once they were done the lecture was over. There was no real take home, I just felt like I was told something that I already know and it just felt like a huge waste of time.
And then, of course, becuase I can't stay out drinking and getting to know other people I go home. In the process I did manage to tag along with a few other JETs and visit a nice Indian restaurant but the conversation at dinner was kind of severely alienating. Basically, all the other JETs in Kameoka have been there for at least two years. They all know each other. They're all at much different stages of culture shock and JET adaptation than I am. And they talk as a collective, as though everyone present has been there for more than a year when I have only been there for two months. On top of everything it was just. Really frustrating and annoying and so I wound up sobbing like a baby on my way home through Teramachi. It was pretty boss, let me tell you.
(Though I should footnote that to say that I really did appreciate the JET I was with at the time for how willing she was to be honest about how everyone has their moments of stress and sobbing like a baby and such.)
Anyway, that was day one. I came home and skyped katmaxwell for like an HOUR and roleplayed sociopaths in "love" and generally felt a little bit better.
So I go back for day two! I determine that I am going to get contact information from people and generally try to make a better effort and being more positive about things! I get my lesson plan done in the morning, put it on a flash drive, and decide that I will try to get it printed out at the center where we're holding the conference if at all possible. This works fairly well through the first presentation which is on ikebana. It is interesting! I only fall asleep for part of it!!
Then we get to the second part which is sharing lesson plans. This also goes kind of well, but my frustration starts to get the better of me when we're asked to evaluate the lesson plans of the other people in our group based on criteria that we are given no explanation of. Like literally, the criteria are flashed on the board for less than a minute and we're supposed to remember them and use them to evaluate the other lessons plans in the group. And then the first person in our group decides to go over the time limit and the lesson plans themselves are supposed to include all this superfluous information (which I did not include) such as how many students are in the class we used it for, what the name of the class is, the atmosphere of the classroom and so on and so forth. Basically I can see why it's useful? Except for how it's really not useful when there's only 10 minutes to present each lesson plan. Anyway, we also only get to hear the lesson plans from our own group (four plans total) and lesson plans that the other groups have selected as the "best" from within their groups (five plans total) so in the end I only come out of it with a few new ideas.
The final lecture we had for the meeting was probably one of the most annoying. Essentially, it was someone from CLAIR, JET's parent organization, telling us that they really expect JETs to get more involved in the community and activities outside the classroom and the thing is, at times in this presentation, the presenter made comments directly to the Japanese teachers in the room. But did any of the suggestions he offered put any of the onus of community participation on those teachers? Nope! They were pretty summarily removed from any position of responsibility with a simple "But oh, they're always so busy." The crowning irony on this is that just prior to the presentation they mentioned that sometimes they use the mid-year seminar as a time to talk about stress and culture shock, because mid-year tends to be a time when it's hitting JETs the worst. So essentially, in the same breath that they're saying "Hey, we know you're probably kind of stressed out and it's a bit difficult getting used to living in a new country and working in an unfamiliar culture." they're saying "But by the way, we would really appreciate it if you worked more than your contracted hours for the week. But, just fyi, you've got to do these things, we're not really expecting the Japanese people you're working with to initiate or present you with these opportunities."
Now on the one hand, I understand this logic. If you want to get more out of your JET experience than just teaching English classes and toting yourself about to school after school after school, you're going to have to have a bit of self-starting and just go for it. But on the other hand, it is a goddamn exchange program. The E in JET stands for Exchange. And it is not an exchange when all of the effort of sharing and showing and involvement is coming from one side of the arrangement. This program is not just about me touting my gaijin ass about and forcing my way into Japanese life in this city as much as possible, there should also be at least some effort put forth from my schools and the community to provide me with opportunities to do just that. And I really feel from CLAIR's presentation that they expect the majority of the onus in initiating that interaction to be on the JET, the stressed out culture shocked living in a new country JET, as opposed to the Japanese teachers, some of whom have lived in these communities their entire life, who probably know the activities around town and in their schools like the back of their hands, but who can't be assed to help the people who are helping them because "they're too busy." (This is entirely ignoring the fact that, more often than not, when JETs are not in classes they are SITTING ON THEIR ASSES doing absolutely nothing because the Japanese teachers don't give them anything to do like, oh, correcting tests or homework or other things that, golly gee, might give them less work to do and therefore more free time to help the JET in question.)
Then the entire conference ended in a hideously ironic note when the head of CLAIR, an organization that prides itself in assisting in international relations between Japan and other countries, gave a speech in Japanese. At a conference where the primary language of interaction was English.
So yeah, if nothing else this conference highlighted for me some of the most intensely frustrating points of the JET Programme from my two months interaction with it. I didn't get what I wanted out of the conference, I didn't even really get to hang out with people much outside of ten minute exchanges between sessions, and even those were a little sparse because people were already breaking off into groups of people they knew from living in the same area, having met at orientation, or what-the-hell-ever.
Anyway, that wound up a lot more long and rambly than I was originally intending. Tomorrow I will most likely be submitting a type transfer application to see if I can somehow nab a CIR position in the coming year. If that happens, I will probably stick around, if for nothing else than the chance to experience Japanese (dis)organization from a different perspective. But if I can't transfer to CIR I'm not sure if I want to stick around in this broken system for much longer when there's not really a good way to fix things without being incredibly overbearing and culturally insensitive about it. I suppose I could try to find a way to work around the problems to achieve a solution, but it's really just...so very irritating right now that I have to take a while to consider whether or not it's worth the effort.
I shall explain.
So the mid year conference is essentially two days that I get to spend NOT TEACHING CLASSES and meeting up with all of the other JETs in the Kyoto Prefecture. Given that I was a late arrival and missed my orientation, this was going to be the biggest meeting of JETs I had seen since my arrival. Which was great news! Meeting people! Opportunities to find ways to emerge from the little Kameoka bubble that I have been living in for the past two months! And possibly useful advice on how to deal with classes and other things.
Except on the very first day before I had even arrived at the conference, I'm asked by one of my fellow JETs if I had prepared the lesson plans I needed for the conference. This almost immediately sets me into a panic. The lesson plan had been mentioned in some papers that I had received nearly immediately after I arrived and never mentioned again. My supervisors never mentioned it. My fellow JETs never mentioned it. My English teachers who were supposed to be attending this conference but weren't because my city is kind of special of course never mentioned it to me. So already without having even arrived at the conference I'm kind of in a state of DDD: because this means I now have one night to print out 15 copies of a lesson plan that I haven't even written up when I have no printer at my house.
So with that hanging over my head I go to the conference. The first day was. Interesting to say the least. The entire first lecture I felt was mostly irrelevant to me, because it was introducing teaching strategies and ideas that I don't think I can reasonably implement in any of my schools. Basically, the guy giving the lecture had only ever taught senior high students, I never teach senior high students. The techniques he introduced could be utilized for Junior high students at most and most of my time is spent at elementary schools. So that was kind of frustrating.
Also during the first lecture there was a sign up sheet passed around for a bunch of people who were going to shabu shabu that night. And since I had to prepare a damn lesson plan that night, I decided to pass since it would be too much nerves to go out eating and drinking and worry about catching a train home in time to do my work and get to bed at a reasonable hour. Which was honestly frustrating, since I really wanted to use the conference as a chance to meet new JETs in the area.
The next session was also kind of frustrating despite the subject matter being something that I was honestly interested in getting more help with. Basically, we were supposed to discuss activities that we could use in class with minimal prep! Great idea, yeah? No. The presenter talked for maybe a few minutes, introduced only a few games and then we broke out into groups. The groups were given the option of discussing minimal prep games or topics that they found difficult to teach. As a result, my group trended toward the latter and I really didn't get to add very many games to my arsenal because there was no collective sharing of ideas between groups.
The last session of the day was frustrating in entirely different ways because it was essentially an hour long presentation that could be summarized as "Active Listening is necessary for learning a foreign language." And I just really felt. Talked down to, I guess. All the activities that were used in the lecture had really obvious goals, they lasted for too long, and once they were done the lecture was over. There was no real take home, I just felt like I was told something that I already know and it just felt like a huge waste of time.
And then, of course, becuase I can't stay out drinking and getting to know other people I go home. In the process I did manage to tag along with a few other JETs and visit a nice Indian restaurant but the conversation at dinner was kind of severely alienating. Basically, all the other JETs in Kameoka have been there for at least two years. They all know each other. They're all at much different stages of culture shock and JET adaptation than I am. And they talk as a collective, as though everyone present has been there for more than a year when I have only been there for two months. On top of everything it was just. Really frustrating and annoying and so I wound up sobbing like a baby on my way home through Teramachi. It was pretty boss, let me tell you.
(Though I should footnote that to say that I really did appreciate the JET I was with at the time for how willing she was to be honest about how everyone has their moments of stress and sobbing like a baby and such.)
Anyway, that was day one. I came home and skyped katmaxwell for like an HOUR and roleplayed sociopaths in "love" and generally felt a little bit better.
So I go back for day two! I determine that I am going to get contact information from people and generally try to make a better effort and being more positive about things! I get my lesson plan done in the morning, put it on a flash drive, and decide that I will try to get it printed out at the center where we're holding the conference if at all possible. This works fairly well through the first presentation which is on ikebana. It is interesting! I only fall asleep for part of it!!
Then we get to the second part which is sharing lesson plans. This also goes kind of well, but my frustration starts to get the better of me when we're asked to evaluate the lesson plans of the other people in our group based on criteria that we are given no explanation of. Like literally, the criteria are flashed on the board for less than a minute and we're supposed to remember them and use them to evaluate the other lessons plans in the group. And then the first person in our group decides to go over the time limit and the lesson plans themselves are supposed to include all this superfluous information (which I did not include) such as how many students are in the class we used it for, what the name of the class is, the atmosphere of the classroom and so on and so forth. Basically I can see why it's useful? Except for how it's really not useful when there's only 10 minutes to present each lesson plan. Anyway, we also only get to hear the lesson plans from our own group (four plans total) and lesson plans that the other groups have selected as the "best" from within their groups (five plans total) so in the end I only come out of it with a few new ideas.
The final lecture we had for the meeting was probably one of the most annoying. Essentially, it was someone from CLAIR, JET's parent organization, telling us that they really expect JETs to get more involved in the community and activities outside the classroom and the thing is, at times in this presentation, the presenter made comments directly to the Japanese teachers in the room. But did any of the suggestions he offered put any of the onus of community participation on those teachers? Nope! They were pretty summarily removed from any position of responsibility with a simple "But oh, they're always so busy." The crowning irony on this is that just prior to the presentation they mentioned that sometimes they use the mid-year seminar as a time to talk about stress and culture shock, because mid-year tends to be a time when it's hitting JETs the worst. So essentially, in the same breath that they're saying "Hey, we know you're probably kind of stressed out and it's a bit difficult getting used to living in a new country and working in an unfamiliar culture." they're saying "But by the way, we would really appreciate it if you worked more than your contracted hours for the week. But, just fyi, you've got to do these things, we're not really expecting the Japanese people you're working with to initiate or present you with these opportunities."
Now on the one hand, I understand this logic. If you want to get more out of your JET experience than just teaching English classes and toting yourself about to school after school after school, you're going to have to have a bit of self-starting and just go for it. But on the other hand, it is a goddamn exchange program. The E in JET stands for Exchange. And it is not an exchange when all of the effort of sharing and showing and involvement is coming from one side of the arrangement. This program is not just about me touting my gaijin ass about and forcing my way into Japanese life in this city as much as possible, there should also be at least some effort put forth from my schools and the community to provide me with opportunities to do just that. And I really feel from CLAIR's presentation that they expect the majority of the onus in initiating that interaction to be on the JET, the stressed out culture shocked living in a new country JET, as opposed to the Japanese teachers, some of whom have lived in these communities their entire life, who probably know the activities around town and in their schools like the back of their hands, but who can't be assed to help the people who are helping them because "they're too busy." (This is entirely ignoring the fact that, more often than not, when JETs are not in classes they are SITTING ON THEIR ASSES doing absolutely nothing because the Japanese teachers don't give them anything to do like, oh, correcting tests or homework or other things that, golly gee, might give them less work to do and therefore more free time to help the JET in question.)
Then the entire conference ended in a hideously ironic note when the head of CLAIR, an organization that prides itself in assisting in international relations between Japan and other countries, gave a speech in Japanese. At a conference where the primary language of interaction was English.
So yeah, if nothing else this conference highlighted for me some of the most intensely frustrating points of the JET Programme from my two months interaction with it. I didn't get what I wanted out of the conference, I didn't even really get to hang out with people much outside of ten minute exchanges between sessions, and even those were a little sparse because people were already breaking off into groups of people they knew from living in the same area, having met at orientation, or what-the-hell-ever.
Anyway, that wound up a lot more long and rambly than I was originally intending. Tomorrow I will most likely be submitting a type transfer application to see if I can somehow nab a CIR position in the coming year. If that happens, I will probably stick around, if for nothing else than the chance to experience Japanese (dis)organization from a different perspective. But if I can't transfer to CIR I'm not sure if I want to stick around in this broken system for much longer when there's not really a good way to fix things without being incredibly overbearing and culturally insensitive about it. I suppose I could try to find a way to work around the problems to achieve a solution, but it's really just...so very irritating right now that I have to take a while to consider whether or not it's worth the effort.