The world isn’t exactly our playground

My friend and sparkling source of inspiration, Lisa wrote about her experiences and concerns with being an English teacher in Ankara, Turkey. (Brick in the wall, READ HERE)Her essay highlights the unexpected challenges and conflicts that come with the well worn in tradition of teaching English abroad after college. In Turkey in particular, she deals with having to answer for America’s questionable foreign policies in the middle east, her students cultural and ethnic diversity and how to mediate this as well as feelings of privilege because her native language “happens to be the current international one.” Although my experience in Japan is quite different from Lisa’s experience in Turkey in many ways, fundamentally we face many of the same challenges as we jump into an experience we had no way to properly prepare ourselves for. Because in choosing live abroad and teach English, the “teach English” part is understated by the much more glamorous “live abroad,” most people don’t gauge how much the full time job affects our adventure. As to this, I suspect that teaching English abroad is much more challenging, exhausting, troubling and rewarding than anyone expected before signing on.

First of all, we are teaching in different countries and that means different ways of thinking, different educational systems and different life priorities. We can realize this to an extent when we leisurely travel, but only when we’re forced to join in and do things on our hosts terms, will these differences etch long lasting effects into our preconceived notions of society and people.

Secondly, we’re suddenly torn away from the things that feed our confidence and self esteem, the person we always thought we were is smothered with imaginings and conceptions of the other, the westerner, the American, the white person. We become the sole representative for things much much bigger than us that we may or may not have ever though about before. Whether we asked for it or not, we are put in a position were we are expected to shape people’s idea of an entire country, language and culture, as well as single handedly take the blows of their stereotypes and associations. Our indecision comes with responsibility.

Lisa’s students are mixed up in a diverse and clashing country and deal with issues that we’ve only heard about on television. Upon realizing this, she had to step away from the front of the classroom, abandon the clever lesson plans and learn quickly about what is important to her students and their country. Japanese students are also learning in a changing society, but their country is suffering from a more quiet identity crisis. I was placed in a Japanese school with no knowledge of Japanese, no specific job duties, and no idea of the student’s abilities or goals, but with some lovely pronunciation, soft brown hair and blue eyes I was supposed to create magic. My urging them to not be shy, speak up, make mistakes and be proud of themselves starkly contrasts their educational system that encourages them to not ask questions, not be critical, and not express themselves. I can’t think of anything more directly opposite than the educational system I went through. The system that has formed not only the way I approach and solve problems, but the way I think and communicate. I realized that if I were going to teach my students anything, I too would have to carefully consider what was important to them and their lives.

When I first came to Sakata Chuo High School and realized my job was a bit like a glittery accessory on a well oiled effective machine. As the only non-Japanese person in my school (as is always the case with the JET Programme) I felt like my difference could only either elevate my status or lower it. Sometimes I was treated like a special guest with care and other times I was ignored, but I was never part of the so important team that makes up any Japanese workplace. Even now after a year and six months, I’m peripheral. The membership requirements are gruesome though, no vacation, no weekends, no sick days, late nights, skipping lunch. I didn’t know if I wanted to be pitied for being left out and ignored or feel guilty for getting all the benefits but not having to play by the rules.

It really bothered me that I had to constantly turn into a character. A living textbook character that told stories with a perfect accent to help students with their English listening skills, not so that they could engage in conversation, but so that they may pass a series of exams that lead to more exams and eventually a place in Japanese society. I felt like my stories, my words, and their meaning oddly enough disappeared in the translation. They were something to be learned from so much as another learning tool for the methodological and in a global sense, practically useless way of teaching English in Japan. But then I realized that no one wanted me to come here and change his or her life.

We move to our respective abroad lands with lots of ideas about the world, freshly graduated from college, used to being praised and perhaps over confident in our feeling so freedom, and general understanding of things outside our own experiences and then suddenly the rug is pulled out underneath us. You’re left in the staff room with the lights and heat turned off or you’re language limitations are constantly a source of humiliation. A lesson bombs, no one has a single question, the kids make fun of you in a language you can’t understand, and you realize how insignificant you are in their teenage dramas. We are on their territory and it’s going to be by their rules.

So then how does one adjust? Well, one day I decided to accept my inescapable role as a foreigner, not take myself so seriously and go through the motions set before me, but go through them as myself rather than a character. Greet the students with “Hey, what’s up” instead of “Good afternoon,” put the textbook down to tell them about how I wore a kimono for the first time or that it’s totally okay for high school girls to have their ears pierced in America, in fact it’s totally okay for them to be pregnant! I let myself crack up at the silly mistakes we make together or have them correct my Japanese compositions. And then in ways in which they don’t have to be singled out, I try to pry little bits of information from them. We don’t have debates and I don’t often get their opinions, but I learn so much about Japan and it’s people, their culture, their problems, the way they live up to expectations and the way they defy what everyone says about them.

Although there is nothing I have no choice but to be a representative for whatever is not Japanese, I mitigate this by only speaking for myself. But by doing this I am also imparting a lesson on how American society operates. Of course there is plenty of unspoken for variety amongst Japanese people, but my inability to strongly connect to a national identity as is often the case for “nihonjin” must break loose a few stones in some of their minds. And as teachers, we can’t always immediately see results, but we have to have faith that even amongst with really cool cell phones, tumultuous political conflicts, the invisible and terrible stress to pass a test or fade away, or lunchtime there are always at least a few kids we really matter to.