Job Discussion Forums

[shuize]

[John Hall]

Hey, I teach classes that are three, sometimes even four, hours long. Try doing my classes! (On the other hand, perhaps that is why I have started a new thread about concentration! )

Funny how Japanese teachers are unlike most workers in Japan insofar as they show up late for class. This encourages students to be late as well, which is not a good habit for the students to develop in Japan, a society where being more than two minutes late is considered to be an offense to the people that you are meeting.

Also surprised that nobody has mentioned yet that as a non-Japanese teacher, you are a cultural ambassador for your country. Teachers in your country don't usually show up late for class, do they? So why then should you?

[furiousmilksheikali]

Of course dmb is right. I don't know how anyone can think otherwise.

If you have a 90 minute lesson that students have paid for and expect then they should be given a 90 minute lesson.

Stealing bicycles and umbrellas is also a common practice in Japan. Does that mean I should do it too to fit in more?

[Brooks]

there is a phrase for this in Japanese.
The translation is salary thief (kyuryo dorobo).
Students (or their parents) have to pay a lot for university tuition.
Slacking off doesn`t cut it as an excuse.

In Poland I had 90 minute classes and in Russia, classes were for 120 minutes. I think it would be better to have two lessons of 45 minutes in Japan, but that isn`t the way it is.

[gaijinalways]

John Hall posted

[rusmeister]

Good posts, Glenski!
But they apply more to adults. With wee ones (5-7 year olds) more than an hour is too long because they can't take class-style lessons. At 3 hours a week, we break them up into 3 one-hr classes instead of 2 90-minute marathons.
But adults can definitely take it, and I always need more time. (I'd say at 2 hours they need a break and a little time to absorb).

(Edit - duh, missed the whole 2nd page here! )

[rusmeister]

[gaijinalways]

But anyway, my question still remains.

Brooks posted

[furiousmilksheikali]

gaijinalways: What do you mean your question remains?

I think most people have answered it one way or another.

As for your additional question, the answer is simple. Teachers have been allowed to get away with lax standards and that has creeped into the working culture of where you teach.

"Everyone else is doing it" seems like the unspoken excuse there when it should be seen as an indictment.

There are all kinds of things that are considered normal in some society or another whether it is something that is "good" or "bad".

I don't know why you would want to immitate teachers doing things that you don't seem to agree with in the first place.

"Hmmm... those teachers seem to bunk off after half their lesson and they're always late." I can't help thinking you only posted this because you thought that there was something wrong with doing that.

Your instinct was correct, it's completely indefensible behaviour. So what if the other faculty do it? Would you extend the same liberal interpretation of time to your students?

Of course not!

Where I work the younger Japanese teachers ask me which teacher I want to be like. As you know, in Japan this means which teacher do I consider as my sempai that I want to immitate. I tell them that there are no teachers that I want to immitate which probably makes me sound extremely arrogant.

I'm not arrogant, I'm just better than everyone else.

[gaijinalways]

I have to say agree with you furious. It's just frustrating to see the standards so low, and as a part-timer, I feel I have very little power to influence any changes at the schools where I work. That and as a foreign part-timer, my opinion carries even less weight in Japanese society (if any weight at all).

[Brooks]

I don`t know how many slacker teachers there are.
My wife has worked with a couple lazy JETs, and thankfully they quit after a year.
One guy worked 4 jobs and sometimes ended class 30 minutes early.
I don`t know why.

Another teacher missed some classses and then, to make them up, she did them during lunchtime, which means it was only 30 minutes long while she ate lunch.
This woman worked 4 jobs so basically she was doing too much.
She wanted to make money but didn`t factor in all the time she spends on the trains and having to wake up early, too.
Some part-timers just get greedy and want as much money as possible.

I think the problem is that Japanese teachers don`t really speak frankly about other teachers. They don`t want to be thought of as negative.
This allows lazy teachers to get away with it.

[helmsman]

My approach is to always be professional and by the book, wherever I have taught. If you are sincere the students, or some of them anyway, will pick up on it and appreciate it. Eventually management will hear about you.

You sound like the kind of person I could work with, rather than the type who try to be popular with students by always cancelling the second half of the lesson. Show integrity and set an example for those lazy Japanese profs.

[gaijinalways]

I'll keep that in mind whenever I think of Japanese teaching standards, wait, perhaps a contradiction in the making .