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Joined: 24 May 2009
Posts: 318
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 Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 5:55 am Post subject: |
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| chongalice49 wrote: |
| Tiger Beer wrote: |
| The rare occassion that I meet someone who JUST got here, I will always be polite, listen to a few of their cultural adjustment stories, then politely excuse myself. |
I find this to be a funny attitude to take. There might just be some newbies who aren't interested in cultural adjustments, and who aren't hanging out at bars all the time. I certainly have no desire to stick together with first year teachers, because that's not what I came to Japan for, and although there are things that shock and will continue to shock me, it hasn't and won't be a thing that is on my mind for very long. I hope not all veterans think that all newbies are like that or lack knowledge about life in Japan. |
I have a few friends who have only been in Japan a few months (though none of them are English teachers), but I understand how a lot of recent immigrants can be unpleasant to hang around. It isn't so much the culture shock stories as it is something that goes hand-in-hand with them, the idea of a "Japan experience." They've come to Japan for a year or two, leaving the "real world" to get some vague "cultural experience" from a place that they don't consider "real." For me, at least, sitting and listening to people talk like this about a place where I'm trying to set up a life is at best grating and at worst downright offensive. |
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ghostrider
Joined: 30 May 2006
Posts: 147
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| Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 6:21 am Post subject: |
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| As for over over-excited newbies, I just remember I was understandably the same way when I arrived. I wouldn't have wanted to hang around people who've been here for 3 years+ then either as they would not be as interested in seeing the touristy things. It's just harder to relate to that now and they aren't going to listen to me if I try to bring them down to reality. They'll just think I'm a negative person, so I just play along and assume they'll be leaving soon anyway or will come to reality on their own time. I don't like the newbies who treat me suspiciously for being here for more than a couple of years. Like they expect I should have an awesome Japanese job, fluent in Japanese, a million girlfriends, with something to do every night. The 2 worlds description fits. There's a 3rd world actually, the tourist. They're the newbie on speed. "I love everything here!! Got to see everything now!!!" Worse are running into the ones who act like they're too good for English teaching and they'd somehow do something completely different if they ever worked here. |
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Mark
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2010 2:30 am Post subject: |
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I more or less agree with you. I really like living in Japan (been here 6 years), but I have yet to find a teaching position that I really like. I work in high schools, run my classes, and make my own curriculum, but it's still in the context of the broader school curriculum.
You have to accept that if you work in the K-12 system there is a way of teaching and learning English. The JTEs have learned this "way" and follow it when teaching. Plenty of people know it doesn't work, but they can't rock the boat, so to speak. You may be lucky and find a school that includes a lot of comprehensible input rather than a lot of grammatical explanation in Japanese, but I wouldn't hold your breath......
As for eikaiwa, I only worked there my first year (and then subsequently off and on part-time a little), but they are primarily about salesmanship. Trying to get students to buy long contracts and getting them through the door. Relatively little thought seems to be given to what happens after they get through the door. And the sales pitches often make grandiose claims about what the students can expect. You know, show up once or twice a week for these magically effective lessons and then in a year or two you'll be fluent in English. That's for adults. From what I've seen, most of the kids' classes seem to be an expensive waste of time. Parents pay thousands of dollars to have native-speakers sing songs to their babies.......
If you really like Japan, I wouldn't give up. If you continue getting higher qualifications (and you'll have to do that - even most decent high school positions would like to see an MA) and keep searching, I think you'll eventually find something satisfying.
But if you mainly just want a satisfying teaching position where your students actually learn, Japan may not be the best choice......
| Imseriouslylost wrote: |
My main gripe about Japan is teaching English. I haven't been doing it very long but it feels extremely dead end.
That's the first thing I noticed when I came here from Korea. Korea has a decent 30+ crowd. You can make a rewarding career out of teaching English if you put the time in and have the right connections. You can find a school that leaves you alone, you can find a school that pays you well and you can find an environment that respects you enough to let you grow as a teacher. It takes a lot of work and Korea is a very stressful country to live in (that's why I left) but in the end you can have a rewarding job, have an active social life, travel and leave with a huge nest egg. The only problem is that living in Korea for too long can make the most sane of us go crazy.
Japan seems to be the opposite. I like it here quite a lot; people are friendly, it's clean and orderly, the culture is quite interesting, it seems to be extremely layered in so far as you are always learning new things about the country and it's customs... The thing I can't stand here is work. Everything else is gold.
Teaching English here is such a dead end. The industry is revolting. Dispatch companies suck. I don't know any Eikaiwa workers but from what I've heard Eikaiwa are even worse than dispatch companies.
I thought the Koreans didn't know how to get the most out of English teachers... Hah! Here in Japan, the water cooler gets more of a say in what goes on in the classroom than I do. They treat English teachers like expensive tape recorders. They get pissy when we look bored even though they give us nothing to do. I seriously think they expect dispatched ALTs to sit perfectly still at their desks without flinching, just waiting to go into their next classroom so they can stand in the corner with a fake smile for 45 minutes only to say "REPEAT AFTER ME: APPLE, APPLE, APPLE" and watch their JTE teach in the exact same way they were probably teaching in 1965 to a bunch of students who are rightfully bored out of their minds all the while thinking that they're god's gift to education. It's retarded.
At first I was shocked to come here and find out that no one seems to stay for more than a year. In Korea I was about mid-range in terms of length stayed (3 years) and age... here I'm the oldest English teacher I know at only 26 years old and I'm the only person I know who wants to have more responsibility and move up the ranks in teaching. It seems like every English teacher in Japan is between 22-24 years old and they're only here for exactly one year (two tops). There isn't any optimism amongst English teachers and the payoffs are so low that no one would ever consider it a career. It's a shame, really.
I don't regret coming here from Korea. I like living in Japan a lot more than living in Korea, it just feels like teaching English here is nothing but a toxic dead end. Even if I went and got an MA and some more credentials, from what I hear, I'd just be fighting tooth and nail for a university job that will eventually vanish anyway and will never actually be 'worth it'.
I have a plan to go part time with my company next year and fill the rest of the time with privates. If that doesn't work out, I guess I'm out of here because there is nothing else I could do. It's a shame because I really like Japan. I just don't like it enough to stay at the bottom rung just to live here. |
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