Misunderestimation

As you may have gleaned from some of the posts on this blog:

1. If the entire surface of the Earth can be conceptualized as an immense cosmic dartboard hurtling through space, then each living human being could be represented by an individual dart in that board.

2. Furthermore, if there were a scale that measured human intelligence and capacity to learn a foreign language (represented herein as the "sharpness" of each individual "dart"), then naturally there would be a wide variation in sharpness evident in any given sample of people.

3. Bearing in mind points 1 and 2, I would posit that the relative sharpness of the students in my classes at Sakishima High School would be below the 50-percentile mark for the overall dart board.

Zing! And a new record for world's longest non-gorilla-related set-up!

Anyway.

My experiences teaching high school students have often been somewhat...what's the term? Disappointing? Yeah, OK, disappointing. Xenu knows I don't spend all my time at work writing lesson plans and...you know, working -- I'm at work as I'm writing this, for one thing -- but I do spend a great deal of time planning out lessons that will engage the students and help them have enough fun learning English that they might put their cell phones away for 30 seconds. I think I'm at least a decently smart guy, I've got some experience in a classroom, I have a passable knowledge of the English language. In short, I really, really think that with sufficient effort and practice, I can get through to these students, I can push past their apathy and make them learn some English even if they really, really, almost monomaniacally don't want to. The problem is, there are all these obstacles in the way.

Obstacle (ŏb'stə-kəl): n. This sonofabitch right here.

For instance, there's the textbook, Green Prep English. We go chapter-by-chapter at a pace secretly coordinated by the other English teachers; the process they use to determine when to move to the next chapter is a trade secret, but I have a theory that involves the alignment of the planets and the behavior of a decades-old Tamagochi. What's worse is that each chapter covers what I've been told is a fundamental, elementary part of English grammar, which comes as a bit of a surprise; little known fact, English-speakers: did you know that the difference between "going to" and "will" is, measured by coverage in this book, exactly as important either the present or past tense? You learn something new every day, huh?

I frequently feel that the greatest obstacle, however, is neither the materials nor the students, but the teachers with whom I have to work. Like pretty much all gaijin employed in public schools over here, I teach all of my classes in coordination with Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs). Some gaijin are little more than "human tape recorders" (the actual term used by most recruiting organizations), in charge of taking attendance and reading dialogues aloud; others are asked to plan and carry out all lessons, plus they have to get coffee for all of the JTEs. In my case, I'm in charge of...actually, I'm still figuring that out. Let me walk you through the process:

1. I attempt to deduce where in the textbook we are.
2. I try to somehow come up with a game or activity that lets student practice the difference between "must" and "have to."
3. I finish preparing the lesson, then get ready to show it to the JTE.
4. I wait for the JTE to come back from other classes, lunch, business trips, climbing Mt. Fuji, whatever they're doing, I dunno.
5. The JTE says, "OK, no problem." / The JTE says, "I think maybe it's too hard for the students." Go back to Step 2, remove half of the activity, repeat as necessary.
6. Stand in front of class and laboriously explain what we're doing today.
7. JTE translates into Japanese / JTE hangs out and shoots the shit with the students.

By no means am I a perfect teacher. Frankly, some of my activities have sucked. Plus, as much as I would like to convince myself otherwise, I really do need a Japanese speaker in the classroom; my Japanese is good enough that I can spout off the occasional phrase in class (this usually elicits gasps from the students), but not good enough to keep order in the classroom or explain complex concepts or directions. And of course, some activities fail through my own planning or classroom behavior. But the thing that really kills me every time, that puts me into full-on shirt-ripping purple-pants mode is Step 5 above, where the JTE tells me that the activity is "too hard" for the students, that they "can't do it."

Some of the activities that I plan are too hard, I'll admit that, and I need to learn to tone down the demands of students' vocabularies, sure. But last week, to practice using the future tense "will" form, on Jenn's excellent recommendation, I planned an activity that focused on making those little origami fortune-tellers. To make it as simple as possible, I would print out templates all ready to be folded, we would brainstorm fortunes together and I'd write them on the board; all that was required of students is that they copy sentences from the blackboard onto paper and that they fold paper according to directions and demonstrations. My JTE said, "I think maybe it's too hard for them, the folding. Some of the students can't make things, it's too hard maybe."

SO. HARD.

I tried to compromise, really I did. She suggested that I just make four or five really big fortune tellers that I could show to them, and maybe they could write in them in pencil and then I could erase what they'd written and just do it already. I spent an hour folding huge posterboard origami fortune tellers, having them rip as soon as I was finished. Then: f*** it.

Guns blazing, laying mushroom clouds, I approached the JTE and politely told her that I would prefer to do things the way I originally recommended for many prudent reasons, if it's OK with her, sorry for asking, okay, sorry.

And you know what? Before I had even started giving directions on how to fold them, half of the class had already finished folding theirs. Yeah, we had problems with coming up with paying attention and with writing English fortunes -- it wasn't until the end of the class that they realized they could be dicks and use "You will die" or "You will have 100 children" -- but overall, a smashing success.

Students should be feared, mistrusted, and occasionally noogied. They should not be underestimated, however.