Job Discussion Forums

[Gordon]

[sushi]

Sorry Gordon I tried to delete that from my posting.

[PAULH]

[PAULH]

[PAULH]

[quote="PAULH"]

[sushi]

Ok. Sorry about the snide remark, but my feelings are that the true English teachers are teaching literature in the hallowed halls of the IVY league universities or Oxbridge. We are ESL and that doesn`t really rate. We take pride in our jobs as you do and as I did as an ESL teacher, but in the long and short of it we are really an expenditure that the Japanese government has to make to help their own to have a working knowledge of English.

ESl is helping those who want to learn learn and perhaps showing the others that English(spoken written or whatever) is learnable. We do that with whatever skills we have. Some of us have organizational skills which earns respect from some students, others have the ability to make English interesting and that gets a little more respect from the students. Others can motivate, brecause they know the culture and are teachers that the students feel comfortable with enough to drop their reserve enough to open their mouths and speak.

That`s my thing I guess with learning the language. Of course students have to do there bit too. Memorization is necesary, and practicing too.

I think that ESL can only do so much as a facilitator for English. Anything else comes from the individual skills and talents of the teacher, and the students desire and hard work.

[sushi]

The Korean educational system is modeled after the Japanese system. After world war 11 they tried to push the American system, but the infrastructure wasn`t there, so they were stuck with what was imposed on them by the Japanese. So it`s only natural that I would make the asumptions that I have about the universities here and the educational system in general

[PAULH]

Sushi

on second thoughts, I think you need to get your feet wet here, earn your wings get a job at a university if its so easy for you and if you still think that uni teaching jobs are for idiots here and that all students are rejects, after a year of teaching at a uni here i will buy you a beer.

Pay your dues first before talking about things you know next to nothing about. Japan is NOT Korea.

[sushi]

OK wasn`t ment to be sniffing my nose down at students who were rejects, but there comes a time when in all exasperation you give up on some, because no matter what you try they aren`t going to learn. You go out after class and you see the lesson material you have busted your gut trying to prepare thrown in the garbage. The material I know was excellent and it was appreciated by other members of the class. How could I not in my normal sane mind call somebody like that a reject

What about your students that look at their cell phones in your classes. How do you classify them.

When you go all out to do your best and get that. Sorry any other above average cretin would at least appreciate the work of the teacher, but that like your telephone chatting females whom you give f`s to are about out of the norm don`t you think.

I tried to learn Korean, and have survival skills in the language, but it got better, because I was constantly translating from English to Korean to get my points across.

Hey we don`t need to advertise our qualifications to make a point. We just make our point and get on with it. I appreciate your responses to my comments, and I think they must have enough substance in them because you wouldn`t have so eloquently tried to add to them or rebut them.

Our qualifications and anything else we have done don`t make us an authority on anything. Our contributions in our chosen field do. I appreciate your comments and they show the you more than the spouting of your credentials.

[PAULH]

Sushi, call me jaded, but i have been in the university system in Japan since 1990, teaching full time for the last five. at the moment I teach 13 classes, each with 45 students. With over 600 names and faces to memorise and learn, I think what you are doing is setting yourself up for major disappointment as well as burn out on a grand scale.


You have to learn to pace yourself and you have to learn to pick your battles. Otherwise you are just going to beat yourself up for no reason.

[sushi]

Thanks for the info and advice.

[PAULH]

[taikibansei]

I was a "tenured" associate professor (modern American and British Romantic literature) at a national university for 6 years--left to take a more secure university job in the States.

"Tenure" for foreigners, like so many other things in Japan, is an extremely relative term. E.g., a number of people I know had varying degrees of job security--often in writing--yet still lost their jobs. Oh, they sued, and usually won--including large cash awards and reinstatement. Didn't help--often, they got neither the full cash award nor their jobs back.

See, and this is true for Japanese people as well, the civil courts here too often either seek to avoid confrontation altogether or don't (can't?) enforce their verdicts, meaning that even if you do "win" your case, you're often still stuck with a long battle getting the bad guys to meet the demands of the court. Indeed, this combination of high court costs and uncertain prospects even if you "win" is the real reason so few people sue in Japan.

Hence, despite what anyone tells you, there is really no such thing as legally enforceable "tenure" for foreigners in Japan. What you have instead are certain universities which agree to treat their foreign faculty as if they had tenure--i.e., it's really a gentlemen's agreement that could change in a second. Indeed, the only way to be relatively "safe" is to look at the particular university's long-term track record with regards to its foreign faculty--even one breach of tenure should be a huge red flag.

As to my tenured position--no, it wasn't "just" eikaiwa. I taught two literature classes, an academic writing class, an advanced conversation class, and two general English classes. Typically, I taught one literature class in Japanese (a large lecture class of 75-100 students--all non-English majors), the two general English classes (45-65 students in each--all non-English majors) about half in Japanese (usually to explain class activities, difficult grammar points, etc.), and the other three classes only in English. Also, I was responsible for the majority of the translation (Japanese-English and English-Japanese) of incoming documents, coordinated two overseas programs, was the main faculty adviser for about 6 Japanese students and almost all the foreign exchange students in the humanities, served on about 5 other committees (including the main hiring committee), attended all the faculty meetings (another 2-5 hours each week), regularly published (in two different fields and languages), etc. In other words, the position was quite demanding--I put in almost 70 hours per week at it--and absolutely required advanced academic degrees, extensive work experience, and advanced Japanese language skills.

Still, as I've shared here before, the position never felt secure--indeed, one of the reasons I took on so many responsibilities there is that I was constantly advised by my Japanese colleagues to make myself indispensable...to make them feel constantly like they would "hate to lose me...." A difficult requirement over the long term, let me tell you....

[Miyazaki]

Hi, Gordon:

[PAULH]