Teaching Japanese

I have been very fortunate with the different kinds of opportunities that have been presented to me during my stay here. I’ve stayed with three different families giving incredible insight into Japanese life. I’ve traveled a little and will do more in a little over a week to see different parts of the country. And recently I had the opportunity to teach an American Culture class. Ishy gave me a whole period to teach about anything I thought appropriate; and through my preparation, teaching, and feedback I’ve been able to gain a whole new perspective, or at least strongly reinforce what I already knew about both the American and Japanese teaching systems.

While I was planning for my class I talked to Ishy a lot. My first idea was to do some sort of collaboration with a class of high school students in America. But with only a week and a half to complete lesson plans I quickly gave up on that idea. I had a bunch of ideas about activities that I wanted to do, getting groups talking about American celebrities, playing a big game of human knot, tossing a ball around asking questions, and tried to form these into some sort of lesson. But when I presented it to Ishy he asked, “that’s all good Scott, but what do you want to teach about?” He meant lecture. That’s when it hit me that maybe Ishy isn’t so different from other Japanese teachers after all.

Now, Ishy is the most active, engaging, funny Japanese teacher I know. Most teachers stand at the front of the class, write on the chalkboard, talk, and give tests. Ishy asks questions, has students present work, and attempts to get students to open up and be comfortable enough to not care about making mistakes. But compared to any one of my teachers at Evanston he still teaches very much in the Japanese method. He talks from the front, writes on the chalkboard, talks, and gives tests. He’s creative but has nowhere near as many ideas as Vankrey did. He’s exocentric but Old Man Benson puts him to shame. So when he asked me, “Okay Scott, what do you want to teach about?” I was a little surprised.

I kept it simple. I decided to teach about American high schools, specifically Evanston. My plan was, lecture, game, in that order. I told Ishy I wanted to do a Jeopardy style game using information from my lecture in the questions. It’s a fairly standard procedure that I’ve seen in plenty of my classes back home. We did Jeopardy in Junior-year American history every unit. But he was ecstatic. “Yes, that’s perfect! Then they can use what you teach them in the game!” Um, yes. That’s the point.

My lesson started off with some facts about Evanston. I tried to emphasize how big it was. I stared impressing myself listing off the facilities that it had. Oh yeah, I guess we did have a greenhouse and planetarium and an indoor track and football stadium. What really got them was when I said we have 15 gyms. I always took it for granted that Pom Kits, track, volleyball, basketball, badminton, gymnastics, and everything else had separate places to practice. Here they all share one gym. So I got across the size pretty well.

Next I went about a normal day at Evanston. Up at 8:00, bike (or drive) five minutes to school, nine periods, move from class to class, don’t get caught in the halls without a pass or a security guard will give you a detention, multiple cafeterias, ping-pong in the physics lab during 8th, track or math team or stage croo till 6, go home, don’t don homework till Sunday. Those are the basics but every single thing in that list is different from the way it’s done here. They had a hard time believing that security guards roamed the hallways. They asked me, “what for? Why aren’t they in class?”
“Either they have a free period, lunch, or they are skipping class.”
“Skipping class? Won’t their teachers find out? How can you skip class and nobody notices?”

I found I had a hard time explaining the things that I find wrong with Evanston. How come students feel that they can just wander around and nothing bad will happen? Why don’t they feel an obligation to be learning? How can the system be set up in a way that allows kids to move around without being accountable for their whereabouts? And for all the security at ETHS and all the punishments, it still happened. You could miss eight classes and nothing would happen. They have no system for dealing with any of that here. There are no such things as detention. Ishy couldn’t translate the word. I tried describing it like, “they make you come in on Saturday and sit down and do homework.” To which they asked, “oh, so it’s Saturday school.” Kids do that here when tests are imminent.

Next we played Jeopardy, sort of. It was actually more like this Japanese game show. Basically team members rotated answering questions and racking up points from questions that I asked. The prizes were chocolates and Chicago souvenirs. Thanks for the Chicago pens mom. You sent too many to give them all to my host family but they were very popular with my friends. They liked those more than the candy. Here is my list of questions that I asked (answers at the bottom)

True False
American high school students usually wear uniforms.
Most American high school students do a club activity.
ETHS has an aquarium.
Eishin is smaller than ETHS.
American high school sports compete often.
Students take off their shoes when they enter the building.
Students attend the same class every day.
Japanese is commonly taught in high school.
Most students travel a long way to school.
American students always eat breakfast.

Free response
What is the American version of the bento?
ETHS has how many pools?
How long has ETHS been open?
What do you need to go to the bathroom?
What will the security guard give you if you don’t have a pass?
How often do schools in America have Saturday classes?
How many cafeterias does ETHS have?
What does ETHS stand for?
What do students do during their free period?
The school year lasts from when to when?

Ishy taped the whole thing and is giving me a DVD of it as a parting gift.

I stopped thinking about the Japanese school system a few months ago. It became normal and I stopped noticing differences. But this class, especially the feedback I’ve received, had made me think about it again, and about the American system. Everyone loved my class. They all said it was tons of fun and they learned a lot. Ishy said he learned not only about high schools but also about new methods of teaching. He said that I am a much better teacher than any of the student teachers Eishin is now hosting and most of the teachers in Japan. While I like praise as much as anyone else, I don’t feel I deserve as much as is being piled on. I was fairly disappointed that I lectured. I wish I could have found a more interesting way to present the material. In the end, I was just a person talking and writing on the board. True, I did try to engage the class by asking questions throughout but it's hard when everyone just wants to take notes and shut up. And my whole idea about playing a game with the lesson was apparently a novel idea. I know that these kids will remember more of what I taught them because we played that game than if I had just talked the whole period. I don’t know why teachers here can’t see that.

What’s even more perplexing is that it works. All students listen. No one ever interrupted me, make jokes, or even failed to follow me for a second. And that’s how all classes are. Kids listen, take notes, learn, memorize, test, and remember. And this is without any punishments added on. The teachers don’t motive kids, so what does motive them? I got to wondering and came up with an answer. It's the society they live it. Parents, teachers, even friends, expect them to try hard in school and test well. Teachers are there to present material; students are there to learn. That’s how it works. In America we're all so focused on the teachers, good teachers, bad teachers, how to teach, how to get teachers to motive students. Obama has it right. Education starts from the home. Anyone who thinks they can drop their kids off at school and leave them to be educated does not understand education. This may not be new information but it’s a powerful realization for me. I’ve seen the extreme; a nation of boring classes but highly motivated students.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression and say that I think the Japanese way is better. Every teacher I’ve talked to says that they wish they had more freedom in their class to do creative, fun stuff. My homeroom teacher said, “you think learning that way is boring, it’s boring for us too. No one likes teaching dry, boring stuff.” So what is it that I’m getting at? Our education system is not failing. We don’t need to retool or revamp or whatever word is in use right now. Any money that goes towards rebuilding the education system should instead go towards rebuilding the culture that permits failing students. I’m not quite sure what kind of program that would look like, but I know that failing students are failing their school; their school is not failing them. I believe this to be the general case. Of course there are bad schools that are failing on their own merit, but I think if we invested in parents instead of high tech classrooms we’d get better results.

Answers: although if you really need these I’m a tad embarrassed.
(1. F T F T T F T F F F 2. Brown bag/ sack lunch 2 126 years hall pass detention never 4 Evanston Township High School Anything (like ping pong) September to June)