Everything I Have and Everything I Am

So far, I have been in Japan and teaching English for about two months, and it has had its ups and downs. Usually, there are moderate downs and very high ups. However, there is one personal issue that I always seem to be coming back to every now and then, and this issue has to do with my feeling of failing my kids as a teacher. So far, I have one elementary school day a week, and the rest of the time, I am supposed to be working with my JTE (Japanese teacher of English) to teach English at my middle school. However, my primarily JTE does incorporate me at all into any lesson plans. She doesn’t ever have any work for me to do, and when she does give me a task to plan a few activities and lesson plans, she completely ignores my efforts and ultimately does the same activities and lesson plans that they have been using for years. I have taught more classes at one day of elementary school than I have my entire time at here at my middle school. Without going into a harangue of all the problems with the system and my JTE, I basically want to get the point across that I am literally get paid to sit at my desk all day, which I substitute the time with learning Japanese and interacting with the students in classes other than English.

The real issue from all this lies in the fact that my JTE doesn’t actually know English. Thankfully, she is not the primarily homeroom English teacher, but she still teaches half the school English. When I say my JTE doesn’t know English, I mean that she has the equivalent English-speaking and grammar skills of a second grader from the United States. Every time I attend one of her classes, I cringe at her incorrect usage of English because I know I shouldn’t and wouldn’t correct her in front of the class. So, with the classes learning English incorrectly, this is where I get the feeling that I am failing at my job as an English teacher, a feeling I’ve never really had in the past. I’m not here to change the curriculum but to serve as an assistant language teacher, and my job description is literally to help my JTE with whatever she needs. However, because my English doesn’t use me and because her English is so poor, I can’t help but feel that my students are being cheated out of a proper English education.

The reason this failure bothers me more than any other failures in the past is because of how incredible these children are, and I would go to the ends of the earth for them. They never cease to impress me with their hard work, determination, motivation, personality, and so much more. Knowing that I have made my decision to go back to the U.S. after teaching only one year, it makes me wonder how teachers do it. How do teachers watch and raise their kids for years and years, and then when they graduate or move onto junior high school or high school, just watch them leave with the unlikely chance of ever seeing their kids again? I have spent less than two months here, and the thought of not seeing my kids when they transition from grade to grade or from elementary school to junior high school is already quite saddening.

This thought, combined with the fact that these kids are deserving of everything I have and everything I am, helps me to get up every morning to do the best I can to go above and beyond my duties as an ALT (assistant language teacher). If, for any reason, I ever feel like hating my job or like not wanting to go to school the next day, I think of my kids and of everything they have given me thus far just by being their incredible selves. Instead of thinking “I HAVE to go to school tomorrow,” I start to think “I GET to go to school tomorrow.” Even if I have no classes to teach, I will make an effort to sit in on as many classes as I can, to get away with whatever I can, so I can interact with my kids and encourage them to practice their English. Because as long as I don’t quit and as long as I stay positive, I am doing the best I can with what I have to help those kids get the education that they deserve.