Job Discussion Forums

[jflack]

Hey there.

This is my first post here, and I hope it's not a problem creating a new thread as a first. I tried a search, but kept getting errored out, and I skimmed a few pages + crtl+f, and didn't find anything either, so thought I'd just go ahead and ask.

My inquiry is into the pros and cons of teaching elementary vs junior high vs high school, ESL in Japanese public school. I've already been hired to work and will be moving in less than two months, and I have a few weeks to make a decision as to my placement. One of the important parts of this decision-making for me is coming up with a preference as to what age range to teach.

I can kind of see offhand what some of the pros and cons of teaching these various age groups might be, but I think that my perspective may be a bit uninformed, really. I've never taught english; never formally taught anything. I don't speak any Japanese (yet) except for a few simple phrases. I'm a male aged 25 years.

Does anyone have any insight into this? Perhaps your own personal preferences, or can perhaps descriptions of your own personal experiences? How do Japanese high school students differ from American, or western high school students, for example? Were elementary students real easy to please? Were junior high students fussy, attentive, or detached from educational focus?

Thanks in advance for any comments.

[fluffyhamster]

Hope these threads will help:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=47433
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=67342
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=63145

One way around the Search results 'Page expired' problem is to refresh that page and resubmit the details when then prompted - still takes a few mouse clicks, but beats retyping the search terms from scratch.

Seeing as you're new to TEFL and Japan generally, it'd be best if you opted for JHS work (I'd be surprised if you get offered SHS work if you're not a JET) - elementary school (ES) positions generally require more initiative (so experience helps), if not some Japanese ability too, preferably/ideally. JHS work can however be(come) pretty thankless and/or boring (a lot will depend on the type of JTE(s) there), so you might like to seriously consider switching to mainly ES work if you decide to stay on in Japan beyond your first year:

In my previous job I was offered a choice of base JHS-type AET job or FT elementary "A"ET job (dispatch). I opted for the former, but when the guy who they'd ludicrously been expecting to do the same four ESs a second year running (believe me, it would be much harder work to develop enough new materials for potentially 6 grades, even if you had kept clear track of who you'd taught exactly what!) threw a wobbly, they "asked" me to reconsider, and I agreed to do the ESs instead...and whaddya know, I soon found that I was really glad that I'd taken on a more challenging and thus rewarding role than teaching in JHSs (which can be a pretty thankless and/or boring task). There are certainly very few discipline or motivation problems in ESs compared to JH.

[Glenski]

JHS kids are eager at first.
SHS kids are bored silly and have no motivation to study English except for the entrance exams to college (and native English speakers do little to help them).

Sounds like you may be looking at an ALT position...?

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

There are a lot of similarities between Japanese students and North American students (with the massive exception that the education system in Japan emphasizes conformity over creativity to such an extent that the result is students who, in the words of a Japanese Teacher of English I used to work with, "They cannot imagine". You might be thinking 'They cannot imagine what?' but he means they cannot imagine ANYTHING. Period. They have no power of imagination [side note: they actually DO but most of them are so tired from non-stop testing and being where they are told to be when they are told to be there and skipping sleeping in favour of playing video games for 4 to 8 hours a day that they seem to be doing what they can to crush that instinct]), but you have to understand the responsibility factor. Students in Japan have no resposibilities (other than physically being where they are told to be) and there are basically no repercussions for not trying.

And so although they are very similar, Japanese students are several years behind North American students in habits that come across as 'maturity'. Second year senior high school students in Japan (eleventh grade) are sort of like grade 7 kids in North America, first year senior high school kids act younger than that. Junior high school kids are like North American elementary school kids etc.

[flyer]

imo

both are good, that is , they have their good points.

I prefer the younger grades at ES. The older grades (5th and 6th graders) can be a problem (sometimes?) but that depends on the area/homeroom teacher/the school (in my experience) etc etc.
In general most if not all the lesson will be oral English. Most ES classes have no written English and no textbook (but this will change soon)
Often you do the whole lesson yourself?

JHS have less motivation but you can use writing etc in activities and they follow a textbook and most commonly you will be teaching along side a J teacher (??) so maybe you will be team teaching?

Its very hard to gernalize as the situation is difference in almost every school and BOE.

Hope this helps

[Brooks]

I have taught at a junior high and high school.
I think motivation is the key.
If I have students who want to learn, or at least try their best and aren't disruptive, then I will be satisfied.

I think teaching 7th grade can be boring, but by 8th grade it is ok.
8th and 9th grade do get rather repetitive. They need review.
By 10th grade the grammar and vocabulary get kind of difficult, and then 11th grade is really tough for them.
12th grade is a year for review and is also time for more demanding reading.

At junior high, some of them can be really childish. In high school, they can be too cool for school, and by 12th grade they either know where they are going or they could care less.

I think teaching 9th and 12th grade can be hard because they are going to change schools, so lots of them go to juku and get sleepy or just sleep at school (especially after lunch).

I think it easier to be a foreign teacher at a high school.
I think junior high is too regimented. I thought junior high teachers were too uptight and/or stressed out.

[Brooks]

I also would add that I thought I had to plan more at junior high than at high school.
You may have to use a crappy book like New Crown, New Horizon, etc.
I just hate those books.
I got annoyed because the Japanese English teacher wanted to call the shots and just let me follow her lead. I found the team teaching just annoying, especially since I have a MA and know more about education than some of the clowns I had to work with.

At high school, there are OC classes, which are better, and you get to choose what you want to teach, but of course, you have to get the students to speak English. That is the challenge.

[Glenski]

Good stuff from Gambatte, there. I would also add that JHS and SHS students are shy. That is, don't expect them to volunteer for anything or to respond well to direct questions, especially when the rest of the class is watching. Part shyness, part fear from making mistakes, and part teacher-centered environment they are used to.

Even in university, I have J teachers telling me that they don't have students asking questions during class. These are not English classes, either. Other subjects. Students wait until class is over then ask the teacher one on one.

[fluffyhamster]

It is difficult to please some JTEs, that much is for sure. Comply with their requests and repeat their methods too much or willingly and they will wonder if you have much teaching ability (or indeed, even linguistic ability! ); impose too much so-called "communicative" stuff (which may be anything but - a lot of what passes for CLT, especially in Japan, fails to incorporate genuine and thus fully functional discourse) and is it any wonder that students become reluctant to "teach themselves how to talk by simply talking" (and with each other rather than with the expert!). A compromize can of course be reached, but it may never be possible at JHS and SHS level, where there are simply too many "experts" opining for any one of them to stand much chance of developing their own genuinely best practices.

Me, like I say, I found that I could only develop functionally simple and clear, yet powerful, language-lessons, and ally them to a methodology where the teacher didn't "absent himself" too much (i.e. have full input and creative control as a native speaker, but "be there" for students as much as a JTE might need to be) at the elementary school level.

Until the Japanese decide (has anyone actually asked the JTEs themselves?) if native speakers are genuinely to be welcomed and professionally respected (and I guess having more genuinely qualified native teachers would help), perhaps JTEs should be left to just "get on with things". I guess however that if AETs (JET and even dispatch too) were one day phased out, there would "need" to be something almost as "onerous" imposed in its place to ensure the JTEs were fully up to the task of improving the nation's English themselves. (But I wonder if it is ultimately possible to really improve a nation's involuntary grasp of a foreign language, as opposed to certain motivated individuals' - I mean, I just have to think back to my schooldays and my resulting very poor French! I doubt if native speaking assistants hovering around all the time would've made the slightest difference, given that the teachers proper simply did not seem to be very methodical let alone methodological. Basically, we are expecting to put the Japanese's house in order when we haven't done so for our own FL education yet. It is tempting of course to borrow from TEFL, seeing how English is the subject matter in Japanese FL education, but I also find myself asking, as I did imply above, whether CLT really has all the answers or delivers such satisfactory results itself. The only thing I can suggest is that empirical facts are established, apparently frequent and therefore often useful items selected, and things only then simplified as much as possible and made as releveant as possible to the educational setting).

A few threads more threads that might be worth reading:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=65699
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=557894#557894 - but there are lots of threads if not opinions about JTEs and AETs, and/or JET.

[Hoser]

I don't have experience teaching elementary school students but I don't think it would be my thing. Probably a lot of songs and other silly stuff. Not for me. I haven't taught at a high school either but I think I can extrapolate just from seeing the differences between 2nd and 3rd year of junior high school. Teaching 2nd year JHS for me is a lot of fun. The kids are "relatively" into it, "relatively" easy to control and the language taught is fairly simple and useful. But even just getting into 3rd year of JHS things start to change. The kids have more of the "too cool for school" attitude so they're not nearly as fun to teach, and the language taught becomes a lot more difficult and a lot more useless-especially for English conversation. I suppose they might need it for university entrance exams but they'll never use it afterwards. So I'm assuming that teaching at the high school level is much the same as teaching the older JHS students but even more so.

[Glenski]

[Glenski]

[Brooks]

what I don't get is how the JTEs are going to be teaching in English from April, 2011, as MOMBUSHO says. At my school they almost never speak English in the classroom, so of course many students are poor at listening, especially the lower level students, since I don't listen to English, unless the teacher plays a CD in class.

So, I guess there will still be a need for foreign teachers, but I think it is weird how the roles are so fixed:

JTE - teach gramar, vocab, etc. but in Japanese only
foreign teachers - teach oral skills and teach what the boss says

[Glenski]

I'm sure the JTEs are sweating that answer, too. Is it really 2011, or is it 2013? Either way, they have time to prepare.

[fluffyhamster]

Personally I do not agree with a completely English-only approach (and certainly not for JHS-level), and wonder how e.g. the very solid lesson that I once saw, conducted in Japanese and which outlined English inflectional spelling and related pronunciation, would otherwise have been transmitted (assuming one agrees that such subject matter is of any value). The English-only input thus far (in the form of inauthentic contextualizations from the average JTE, the stock of often strange-sounding examples in Ministry-approved textbooks) is already near scraping the bottom of barrel, IMHO, and to cut the Japanese explanation out entirely could result in at best utter banality (if not completely inappropriate language), entirely devoid of any saving hints of actual sophistication. But try telling the autocrats that things like language education will not proceed simply by fiat, despite the perceived failings of previous dictats.

Glenski, I know that isn't the Monstersho manual, but is it really much different? I bet it also gathers dust or makes a good flyswat. Anyway, I'd hardly say the kind of manual/guide that I'm thinking of (i.e. a cr*p one) represents the average JTE's real opinions on TT (or rather, of their average team-teacher aka an AET), and certainly not the average AET's (ditto the 'or rather' bit, but replace AET with JTE LOL). The Ministry one is at best something that few bother to read and even fewer then continue to make reference to (because 'Compromise soon comes to those forced into it' (Analects of Monbusho)).

I wonder if we've put jflack off yet?