I taught for two years in three Japanese secondary schools as part of the Japan Exchange of Teachers Program. I was based at Amakusa Senior Secondary School in the town of Hondo in Kumamoto Prefecture, where I taught English three days a week. I also visited three other area high schools where I taught English. One of these, Kuratake High School, emphasized commerce; another, Reihoko, specialized in oceanography; and the third was Amakusa Agricultural School. Below is a detailed narrative of my experience during these two years.

General Overview: The JET Program

The JET Program was established by Japan's Ministry of Education (Monbusho) with the following objectives: (1) to improve English education in Japanese primary and secondary (and some tertiary) institutions, particularly in conversation; (2) to internationalize segments of Japanese society, which is extremely monocultural and homogeneous; and (3) to maintain harmonious relations with other countries (primarily Western ones) through individual-level diplomacy.

People who participate in the JET program sign a one-year contract that can be renewed for up to three years, depending on the candidate's performance. Most participants are teachers or, more likely, "assistant teachers," though there are many who also work within the educational bureaucracy as translators, textbook editors, and advisors. Participates receive a salary comparable with that of a full-time teacher in their own country. Medical and dental insurance, and other work-related benefits, are excellent. Housing is usually adequate; sometimes a participant's host institution will cover a significant portion of the rent. Although Japanese teachers work six days a week, and sometimes seven, JET participants are only required to work five days per week.

Teaching Responsibilities and Innovations

I was "based" at Amakusa Senior Secondary, the largest and the "best" secondary school in the Amakusa islands, three-days a week. During my first year I taught a great deal of grammar, usually by way of organizing classroom activities around certain target grammar exercises from the textbooks. I also covered--in both English and Japanese--cultural issues that students encountered in their textbook readings (the changing roles of women in Western cultures, how the elderly are viewed, how the multilingual, multiethnic composition of most Western countries has impacted notions of "culture," et cetera).

During my second year I abandoned the grammar segment (which my Japanese colleagues knew ten-times better than I did anyway) and instituted a project devoted to refining verbal communication processes that I believe was very helpful to the students and colleagues who frequently joined me in the classroom. Most Japanese schools do not have language labs; very little attention is given to oral communication beyong the rote "repeat-after-me" sequence; hence, many Japanese students and teachers have little awareness of the importance stress, intonation, and syntactic emphasis play in spoken English (They do learn basic pronunciation, but do not pay much attention to the distinctions made between sounds like, for instance, the voiced th in "though" and the unvoiced th in "throw. Such distinctions are particularly noticeable when a Japanese person who says "I like to eat rice" is heard as saying instead "I like to eat lice.")

In the project I developed, students were introduced to the phonetic alphabet. We spent some time on vowels and how the mouth forms them, paying particular attention to distinctions between "high" vowels and "low" ones. We then moved onto consonant sounds and practiced aloud the different pronuciations of [t] and [d], [p] and [b], and so on.

We then moved onto stress and intonation. Students were asked to read scripts in front of the class like this one:

(A) Nobody loves me! Nobody!
(B) I love you.
(A) But you love everyone!
(B) I love you.
(A) You only "like" me.
(B) I love you
(A) Really?
(B) Really.

The Japanese students read this in a perfect monotone. They understood well the context of the conversation, but not the context of the linguistic interplay of terms: they did not, for instance, realize that the word "I" in the first "I-love-you" statement should be stressed because it counters the previous statement that "nobody" loves person A. To the students, each "I-love-you" statement (there are three) was enunciated with no change in stress; the upward intonation of the interrogative "really?" and the downward intonation of affirmative "really" went unrealized; even negative-stress and exclamatory-("!") emphasis were missed. The native speaker would speak this script automatically as follows:

(A) Nobody loves me![emp] Nobody![emp]
(B) I love you.
(A) But you love everyone![emp]
(B) I love you.
(A) You only "like" me.
(B) I love you.
(A) Really?[/]
(B) Really.[\]

There's quite a lot going on here communicatively that native speakers take for granted which is central to the distinctive meaning of each utterance. The project I instituted at Amakusa Senior Secondary focused students' attention on features integral to spoken communication in English. Since, like most other AETs, I was the only native English-speaker in the school, I was exceptionally qualified to cover this material.

Internationalizing Japan

One important objective of the JET program is to introduce students--and members of communities--in this exceedingly homogenious culture to people of other nations, particularly Western nations like the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

As a way of "internationalizing" Japan, many AETs teach at more than one school. Some go to as many as seven or eight schools. I was based three days a week at Amakusa Senior Secondary, an academic school. But two days each week I traveled to one of three other not-quite-so-very academic schools to "teach" English. These included a "commercial" school (Kuritake Secondary), and "marine studies" school (Reihoku Secondary) and an "agricultural" school. The students in these schools were not on academic tracks and studied English only because they were forced to. Many couldn't even speak basic English, though quite a few could understand when spoken to in English slowly and clearly. I quickly gave up trying to "teach" standard English at these schools and focused instead on internationalizing. I taught them how to greet people in Western nations by handshake (rather than bows) and how to interpret conventional gestures. I also taught them some popular songs (The Beatles, the Carpenters, Elvis and other classic pop songs that are English "staples" at karaoke clubs across the country), showed them videos of American television shows and commercials, and often just conversed with them (usually in Japanese) about everyday things. This part of my job was quite easy, sometimes fun, but tedious for one who takes teaching seriously.

Community Involvement

Part of being an AET involves interacting with the community. Some AETs go all out and join civic organizations, judo and karate clubs, cooking and handicraft workshops. I attended once per week an English-only conversation class open to the people of Hondo who wanted to practice their English language skills. Other than that, I did not participate in very many organized activities, although I did maintain an active social life and was fairly well-known around town.

Presentations at Conferences

I presented several times at conferences of English teachers, both foreign and Japanese, throughout Japan. My first presentation was on "Teaching Reading." I also presented on "Team-Teaching Effectively," "Effective Use of Textbooks," and "Initiating Classroom Participation" at various conferences. In addition to being a "guest speaker" at a number of "enkais" and other local functions, I played and sang piano at both school functions and one prefecture-wide fundraiser.

Final Words

Teaching in the secondary school system can be frustrating for those who like to "change" or even "challenge" The System. Although school administrators will often bend over backwards to accomodate you, the system itself remains stubbornly resistent to change that is not painfully incremental. I learned this early on and pretty much ignored The System and pursued my own academic strategies. After "playing the game" long enough to "prove" myself to my colleagues, and by always acting in a professional manner, I was afforded no small amount of leeway to pursue my own interests, especially during my second year. It was possible for me to "do my own thing" within the parameters of the small space I operated within. Had I tried to impose my ideas on the System at large, however, I most likely would have ended up frustrated.

Back