Igor The Troll

Japan school classroom

After working in Japan for ten years as an importer of fashion goods, I decided to try my luck at something else. I grew up and was educated in United States of America, so I had the right qualifications for a job as an English teacher. Actually, when I first came to Japan my intent was to teach English. But by accident I sidetracked and got involved in running my own import company. Finally my dream of teaching English in Japan was about to come true.

Being that I have tons for business experience, I was able to get a English teaching job with an outsourcing company that sent me to big Japanese corporations. The pay was great, and I only had to work a few hours a week. But I had to spend a lot of time on a train to get to my classrooms, which were at the companies’ facilities. I did not mind the train ride, but what I found difficult to bare was that I had to literally scream at my students to get them to learn. They were not interested in studying English, but did it because their employers required them to. After doing it for about a year, I had enough and quit. I just did not find it motivating enough to do.

I took a bit time off for traveling in South East Asia. After a short break, I tried again. This time I challenged myself to teach young kids. I figured, I might as well instill knowledge to young members of the society that will find the English language useful. Was I wrong, but I did not figure it out until a month into my new job.

I singed up with a temporary agency that sent me to a junior high school. I was to teach classes together with a Japanese English teacher in a classroom. The faculty and the principal treated me really nice, with respect. There were three grades that I had to teach, first, second, and the third grade of junior high school. The kids in the first grade were easy to teach because they were really young and did not know any English. So I taught them alphabet, words, and simple sentences. The kids in the second grade were a bit more demanding, but I had no trouble covering that with practicing to read short paragraph and role-playing. The third grade was really hard. Our job was to prepare them for high school entrance examination. So, I had to teach them to read and write.

I found the job challenging and exciting. The Japanese English teachers who taught with me in classrooms were not really good, but adequate. Their English accent was atrocious but correcting them made them lose confidence. So, I tried not to do it too often. The first grade Japanese English teacher was not bad and handled the kids really good. She was like a mother figure for them. I pretty much served as a bouncing board for her. The second grade Japanese English teacher got involved and we pair worked teaching the kids. The third grade Japanese English teachers were a problem. They could not get the kids to concentrate and left all the teaching to me.

I speak Japanese, and I was able to befriend the kids by talking and joking with them outside the classrooms. They were very much interested in American culture like sports, movies, and music. I shared with them stories about my travels. I also played basketball with them. I might be a bit on a fat side, but I can play mean ball. I practiced in NYC with some black brothers. So the kids and I were copastatic! Until one day!

In Japan there are many cases of kids bullying other kids in school. Sometimes there is a tragedy, like some kid kills another kid. One day there was an announcement on the news that an elementary school kid cut off another kid’s head and hung on a school gate. I was shocked, so were the other teachers in my school. That day a 13 year old boy, who was one of my students, came over to me and said that he will kill another student today. I am like, what is he saying? I knew he could not be serious and was just talking, but I was concerned. The boy was a troubled kid who craved for attention. Recently I saw him, after school, sitting on his bicycle and just banging it into a fence. I was concerned.

I approached our principle and told him what the boy said. He recommended that I talk to a guidance counselor. I told the guidance counselor what transpired and asked him to look into this. I went back to teaching classes and concentrating on my work. At lunchtime I got a message to go to the teachers’ room to see the guidance counselor, When I got there I saw the problem kid and the guidance counselor talking. I came over. The guidance counselor, right in front of me, asked the kid if he told Mr. Berger, that is my name, that he is going to kill another student today. The kid’s face turned red, and he vehemently said, No! The guidance counselor excused the kid, and he left.

I was concerned. Why did the guidance counselor asked the kid such a question, referencing me as the guy who complained about him? I knew there is going to be a problem. I tried talking with the guidance counselor about what to do, but he said nothing could be done. I left the teachers’ room, and went out into the hallway. The problem kid was waiting for me. He spat in my face. I took him by his hand and brought him to the principle’s office. The principle and the guidance counselor talked to him privately.

Before the incident I found it difficult to teach third grade, because the kids were rowdy and where not interested in learning. The Japanese English teachers just gave them a book to read and administrated tests. I tried to get the students involved, and had them answer questions from what they read. While I was interested in teaching the kids how to communicate in English, the Japanese English teachers just wanted them to prepare for the high school entrance examine. They did not really care if the students learned English or not. Students who were motivated to do well were expected to go to after school prep schools to get help with their English. Leveraging on my friendship with the kids, I was able to get them motivated and interested in the lessons. But all this changed after the Nakano incident. Nakano, the boy who I had a problem with started laughing and disturbing the lessons really bad. While he and others did this prior to the incident as well, at that time I was able to calm them down.

The Japanese English teachers never intervened and asked the students to behave themselves. To them it was non-emotional teacher student relationship. While Nakano disturbed the class to the point that the lesson could not be taught, the Japanese English teacher, who I was teaching that class with, just set there and did nothing. I did not know what to do and how to address the problem. I realized the Japanese educational system is not set up to deal with problem kids. The kids who want to learn are bullied into not learning by their classmate. And the only way the kids who want to learn do learn is that they must attend after school high school preparation classes.

Nakano became more and more belligerent. When he saw me at the school grounds he would spit at me and throw a soccer ball really hard at me. All I could do is tolerate the abuse. One day while teaching in his class he freaked out and went over to a wall and started banging his head into the wall. The Japanese English teacher and I tried to come him down, but he grabbed a broom and started threatening me with it.

The principle called me for a talk. He told me that I couldn’t teach the third grade students anymore, that I should only teach the first and second grade students. I protested! Nakano did not only take out his puberty aggression on me, but he had fights with many kids. I said to the principle, “This kid is clearly the problem. Why we cannot do something about him?” He told me there is nothing that could be done. He told me he tried talking to Nakano’s parents but they were not interested. I explained to him that in America we have special schools for problem kids. The principle explained to me that in Japan unless the parents agree to place their kid in a special school the board of education could not enforce it. I had no choice but to comply and teach first and second grade.

I continued to teach other classes while trying to avoid Nakano as much as I could. One time Nakano followed me to a bathroom with a mop stick and tried to attack me. I grabbed him and the stick and carried him to the principle’s office. After that he left me alone! He realized that if he kept messing with me, that I would retaliate. A month passed and nothing bad happened. Then one day, Nakano got into a really nasty fight with another student. There was blood all other the place and he cut another student’s eye. The school’s principle blamed me for the fight because I was there and did not stop it. I said to the principle, how could I have stopped the fight? If I had intervened, the kids would have taken their aggression out on me. Because of the fight incident, I was told I couldn’t teach in the school anymore.

I was really angry. The principal called my employment agency that sent me to this school and asked them to come and collect me. When they came I at first refused to talk to them. Finally they got me to sit down with them, they said I was being fired, and they would compensate me for one month. My contract was for one year, and I expected them to honor it. I threatened them with calling the English teachers union and going to the newspapers. I went to the city’s mayor office to launch a complaint against the school and the board of education.. The board of education sent a representative to talk to me. The employment agency started caving in and offered me to work at their office instead of the school. I protested. I was hired to teach not to sit at an employment agency office.

After further negotiation the board of education offered a solution. They said I can teach at a nearby elementary school and a couple of kindergartens. I will be using their building for my office. I knew it was not what I was hired to do, many kids at the junior high school really liked me and wanted me to continue teaching them, but I had to compromise. So, I agreed with the board of education decision. If I were a really bad teacher and the whole Nakano incident was my falt would they have offered me the opportunity to teach at an elementary and kindergarten? Clearly not! I proceeded to teach the little kids with no problems. It was kind of fun, because the kids were adorable.

At the end of my teaching contract, the agency gave me a good letter of recommendation and even a one-month bonus. In Japan it is not important how well you do your job, but how well you fit into their society. In public schools, they do not hire foreigners to teach English but to entertain the kids. If you actually try to teach, you will get resentment and jealousy from the Japanese English teachers. You are hired as an assistant teacher while they are the main teachers. So, your job is to act dumb, entertain, and assist. The kids are not really interested in learning English and only do it because they have to pass a test to enter the next school level. Japanese kids learn English from kindergarten through college, but majority of them cannot speak English.

Even though my English teaching experience in Japan has been convoluted, I still enjoyed it and found it challenging to try to educate people. I may attempt to try teaching English again!

Tags: education, english teaching, japan, society, travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 12:07 am and is filed under education, japan, society, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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