Job Discussion Forums

[nikkeimama]

I post this to all you parents of school-aged (or pre-school-aged) children in Japan.

I gather from the posts that there are many different situations out there, with some kids attending International Schools and others in Japanese public or private schools. I'm sure that I am not unique in my concerns for the education available, both in the Japanese and English systems.

The older of my two sons will be beginning Kindergarten this year, and then continuing on to Japanese public school. I have many misgivings about this, having had an eye-opening inside look at the Japanese high-school education system. For the time being though, logistics and finances dictate our options, and so, public school it is.

Having spent the first 4 years of his life in Vancouver, my son speaks English as his first language. We knew that we would be moving to Japan, so we really focused on English with him, and he heard Japanese only from his father at home, until he began attending a Japanese language preschool 3 mornings a week when he was 3. In less than a year in the local preschool in Japan, he now talks to himself in Japanese, and has to be told to use English with his little brother. He can swich from English to Japanese and back again at the drop of a hat. (yes, that was my little bit of oya-baka there)

I want him to keep his hold on English, and ultimately become fully bilingual (speaking, reading and writing) so that he can opt to attend high school in Canada without any language worries. To do this, I need to supplement his education at home, giving him lessons in English Language Arts, as well as Math and Science. These 'lessons' of course must also include exercises to encourage free thinking and creativity, which are sorely lacking in the Japanese system.

I have brought a few home-schooling exercise books over with me, and I can begin with those, but I hope that there are some good materials available in Japan as well. What kind of materials do you use, or do you plan to use, with your children in Japan? Do you buy books in Japan or order them from overseas? Are there any texts or materials that you have found useful, fun, and easy to use? I really hope to keep learning fun for my son. So far, he likes having 'mommy's school' at home.

I also dread thinking about how to deal with the education of my younger son, who is in daycare 5 days a week in a fully Japanese environment. Although he seems to understand English, he speaks almost exclusively Japanese.

I really hope to hear some of the good and bad experiences from the rest of you parents out there, either through this post or through a pm.

Thanks!

[kdynamic]

I have no good advice for you since I have no experience with this, but I just wanted to throw something out there I found interesting. After talking with a few bilingual families living in Japan I have heard several times that the older one is fully bilingual while the younger one only gets by in English while being only truly comfortable in Japanese. When I asked why this was, I was told it was because the older one had to learn both to communicate in both environments, while the younger one always had the older one around to translate/mediate so they never had to buckle down. I found this to be interesting. Sounds like you're going to have to think about how to avoid this problem with your younger one too. Good luck though! I hope you succeed, since bilingualism is a gift.

[Sherri]

nikkeimama

I chickened out on that problem and left Japan when my kids were 3 and 1. I did do a little research and I know that there are non-Japanese moms in Japan who have homeschooling groups. I'll try and search them out for you.

I guess you realize that it is really hard to raise a balanced bilingual, but with hard work, planning and money, it can be done. Some things I learned are:

1. kids in Japan have a lot of homework and little free time, the little they do have --they usually do not want to spend it studying English at home with mom. It makes them hate English.

2. once kids reach highschool age, they have their own self-identity (Japanese) and their own wants and desires (go to high school with their friends in Japan). It will be hard to convince them to change. I have a couple of friends that this happened to. One ended up giving in and letting her children finish school in Japan. Another forced them to go back to the US and attend boarding school.

Some advice--go back to your home country with your kids frequently and for as long as you can. It gives them a real reason to want to use and maintain their English. And what is so bad about taking a few ESL classes once they do go back?

All the best
Sherri

[abufletcher]

[kdynamic]

If that is true, how did all the non-native speakers who didn't even speak English at home end up in my university back home? It is possible. I know several Japanese people who had fully Japanese families but went to American universities for 4 years. Sure, they have language gaps, but being really good in two languages i still pretty good.

[abufletcher]

I also agree that that certainly appears to be the case. On the other hand, almost every accredited university in the US requires a 550 (paper) on the TOEFL for undergrad admittance and 650 for graduate school. But I think a lot of foreign students are able to slip in via the universty's "pre-academic" preparatory ESL program. In this case, I think it is possible to pass through the system and into univeristy courses without actually attaining a 550. BTW, I have taught some of those "LED" university students in an upper-division course in the US and their performance on an essay exam was not a pretty sight.

Also bear in mind that this is the first year California has made the exit exam mandatory and it's already predicted that some school districts (for example heavily Hispanic areas) may seen failure rates of 50% or higher. And given the dropout rates in some Hispanic areas are already around 40% and that's a educational disaster on the horizon. My older son was in the first group to take it and he sailed through the math (thanks to the headstart from the Japanese school system) but squeaked by on the English by 1 point. I expect my younger son to fail the English on his first try.

But of course in the end money talks and there's always a (completely legitimate) way for someone with cash to get their kid into a university.

[johanne]

Nikkeimama,

What preschool did you send your son to? My daughter was in a Japanese pre-school in Vancouver from January '05 to June'05. Maybe our kids know each other - wouldn't that be a coincidence? PM me if you're curious.

As for your education question, having worked in the Vancouver public school system I would say the issues raised by Abuflection are less of a concern if you are intending to return to Vancouver. The high schools there tend to mainstream any student who has functional English, offering pull out sessions to work on any weak language areas. Another thing the schools do is exempt a student from second-language classes to work on his English, especially if he is bilingual and therefore already has another language. There are no exit exams in B.C., at least not yet. There are provincial exams in Grade 10 and Grade 12 that count towards the final grade, which are in turn used to get admittance to universities. This is the system as it exists today. It may change in the 12 years it takes your children to get to university.

As for home schooling, I have the same plan for my daughter. She's 4 years old now, going to kindergarten in the international school I'm working at only because we can't get a place at a hoikuen. We are planning to send her to Japanese elementary school and I am planning to keep up her English and develop her critical thinking skills at home through books and projects that peak her interest.

I don't agree that you can't home school with a full time job. I would agree with this if the child was not going to any school at all, but if the child is attending Japanese public school they are already learning a great deal that you don't have to cover in home school. For example he's learning number and math concepts in school - you don't need to re-teach it. You just need to teach the vocabulary in English (plus, subtract, geometry terms, etc) and perhaps a few things that are different due to language such as place value which in English involves learning what "twenty", "thirty",etc represent, whereas in Japanese it's much simpler ("twenty" is 2 tens).
If he's learning how to organize his sentences to make a clear paragraph you don't need to re-teach this. You just need to ask him how they do it in Japanese and explain how it may be different in English.

As his reading and writing skills get better you can combine your language and critical thinking lessons with social studies from around the world or Canada. These can be fun projects, using the internet for research and creating poster board to ship home back to the grandparents. If you are homeschooling you have the advantage of using what interests your child as the topic to teach research, thinking and writing skills. If your child is interested in video games, you can do a research project about where video games come from - the history of them for example. Your reading lessons could concentrate on books that are somewhat related to his topic.

I taught French Immersion in Vancouver and the children received all their instruction in French until Grade 4, where English was introduced and accounted for 20% of their day. By Grade 6 all of the children were on par in English with the peers who had studied exclusively in English. Many of the children were on par by the end of Grade 4, because so many of their skills learned in French were transferable to English. While Japanese if obviously not as similar to English as French, and the children heard a lot more English in their daily lives than your children will learn here in Japan, there is still a lot from their study of Japanese that can be applied to reading and writing well in English.

As for materials, in my opinion, there are no "right" books to teach language with. As long as you have a good selection of fiction and non-fiction with increasingly sophisticated vocabulary and concepts they don't have to be prize winner. The bookstores that do carry English books tend to have many more children's books geared towards ESL than native speakers. However, there are tons of lessons plans and resources available on the net. Google homeschooling in BC and you will get a bunch of stuff applicable to the curriculum. You can order books from Amazon.jp - look them up on Amazon.com and then order from the Japanese site to save the shipping costs. I'm assuming your husband in Japanese and can help out here.

Anyway, PM me if you would like to discuss this further. I am a certified elementary school teacher who has taught from Kindergarten to Grade 5 in Vancouver. Good luck

[abufletcher]

I was perhaps a bit overly pessamistic in my posts. The transition to US schooling hasn't been easy for two of my three children. They'll get by, but not without their share of drama. I honestly expected fewer problems.

The point I suppose was to highlight the fact that just "doing some English reading" at home with your child isn't going to do the job of making children bilingual enough to function efficiently in two differnt educational cultures.

I think you really would have to make a concerted effort at organized homeschooling -- even if as Johanne rightly points out you don't have to duplicate everything. And of course it's a lot easier to do if you're a trained elementary school teacher. In fact, I wish I had run across someone like Johanne who might have been able to counsel people in our situation.

I faced the prospect of having to homeschool our children one year in Oman when it looked like there wasn't going to be a place for them in the only available international school. I looked through lots and lots of homeschooling websites and it certainly looked like a huge undertaking to me. Luckily at the last minute spots opened up.

Anyway, you've still got lots of time to think of a game plan.

[abufletcher]

[rvsensei]

Being in ELD classes in CA as an elementary school student isnt so bad, i teach an SEI (sheltered English Immersion class) in the LA area and most of the kids eventually become classified as English proficient in a few years. In fact, they usually outscore the regular school population in test scores. Of course as a high school student the transition would be tougher.

[abufletcher]

That's just it. Making the transition from Japan to the US (or Canada) wouldn't be so bad at the elementary level-- but it becomes increasingly difficult for a range of sociocultural and institutional reasons the longer you wait.

My experience (and that of my sister who manages an AVID program for kids at risk in a largely Hispanic high school) is that high school students caught in the ESL ghetto are likely to stay there without radical intervention.

[nikkeimama]

Hmm.... very much information to chew over.

I knew that my 'ideal situation' of putting my son into high school in Canada would have its challenges, but I now know that I had better do a whole lot of research before I make any decisions. I certainly wouldn't want to throw my son into a horrible situation if there were better options. In the case that I am met with nasty opposition when the time comes, I will be prepared to deal with it. Never come between a mother and what she thinks is best for her child!! I already anticipate numerous clashes with the local BOE in regards to his early education in Japan. I'm sharpening my claws already.

Fortunately, I am looking at Canada and not the US, so at least for now it looks like its not too bad. I have no grand illusions of having an easy path with the home-schooling. I was a geek myself and loved studying, but chances are my son will have different ideas! Hopefully if I get him started early enough though, it will feel natural to him. I figure with the time Japanese kids spend at Juku schools, my son can handle an hour a day with me at home instead. I am also being very up front with him now, so that nothing will come as a big surprise or slap in the face later.

I appreciate all the thoughts and advice, and I hope it keeps coming. There is no such thing as knowing 'enough' about this kind of issue.

[abufletcher]

[zenzuata]

There are several active and upcoming online schools, both live and semi-live, in the US, a couple in the UK - and I assume Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have some, too. Mainly aimed at Secondary / High school kids, though. Just a thought, to supplement your Home Education ideas.

[zenzuata]

There are more and more of these online schools - some live, some by correspondence.

CompuHigh claims to be the first live US school, but there are several others, notably catering to pupils in PA, where the geography dictates and the authorities allow parents to take their child's funding to spend elsewhere - including online. BUT places at these establishments are hard come by - there's a waiting list of 1400 at one I contacted.

Of the live ones elsewhere, the only one that caters to Primary-aged students in the UK is Briteschool; there are several secondary-caterers: InterHigh, Nisai Education and Briteschool is Secondary, too.

I've been looking in Australia, too, but haven't found any non-state ones - yet ?

Anybody got any other ideas or schools (NOT tutors, I'm afraid) ?