10 March 2012
Up and Up
Posted by Roland under: JET .
Things have been on an uptick here in Japan. Some of it probably has to do with the seasonal change (it’s not freezing cold all day now!) but a good amount of it has come with getting to know the kids I work with better. As I’ve been told, it’s quite a change to go from working with adults to working with children. Immaturity is such a fun game. But almost every day is a realization that we were all probably jerks in school to our teachers and we didn’t think anything of it. That was one thing I had to get into my head, that most of these kids don’t mean anything when they’re being annoying or disrespectful. There’s usually no ill intent there (i.e. they’re not really going out of their way to be disrespectful), that’s just how they act. Kids being kids. Once I started to stop being annoyed/offended at every little thing kids would do, I found myself a lot more at peace with what was I doing. Instead of dreading certain school visits, they became much more enjoyable. Sure, they still acted up or made stupid jokes/comments every now and then, but if I didn’t worry so much about that, I found out that for the most part, they were still learning some English. How about that? And if anything, they weren’t terrible all the time, they had their fun moments too (usually recess related).
I think one of my biggest mistakes early on was believe kids were going out of their way to mock English, either by saying words in a obviously poor accent or mixing up common phrases (like “good morning” when it’s afternoon, “nice to meet you” when we’ve already met multiple times). I eventually realized that these kids are not trying to make a mockery of English but rather that was all they knew English wise. So now it’s my job to fix those poorly pronounced words and incorrectly used phrases.
There was definitely some measure of unmet expectations when I came into Amakusa. That’s not the students’ fault, that was something I needed to adjust to when I came in. But over time, I came to realize that there are really no bad kids here. There are kids having moments when they’re being annoying, but that’s just kids being kids. There’s no class I have that’s beyond repair (and really, they’re all a bit far from that point). Once I learned more about them and found out what they were really like, they all became somewhere between the ideal student and the worst student possible. And then when I came to meet them at that point, I found that teaching here became immensely easier.
Luckily, I work with the same kids year to year so I won’t have to go through this adjustment period again. If anything, this should hopefully help with making stronger connections with the students. Culturally, it takes awhile to build close connections in Japan, but I’ve been slowly building that up. I’m thinking it can only get better from here.