The "Internationalization" crutch

I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I think having "internationalization" as a stated aim of JET is a crock. I'm fine with it being a desired outcome, but as a goal, I think it's too easily used as an excuse or crutch for indifferent teaching.

When internationalization is there to fall back on, ALTs can tell themselves it's OK if they're not actually teaching students English, as long as the kids are having fun (interacting with a "foreigner").

Again, fun is great for an English class, but it's not the point. If fun was the main goal, teachers could play Bingo, karuta and fruits basket variations all the time and students would have tons of fun. But would they actually learn English?

I think the role of an ALT is to help students learn English. We do this, for the most part, through coming up with fun games and activities to reinforce learning. That's the key point here: learning.

Honestly, if all teachers needed was games, they could spend a lot less money and invest in Genki English or something. Why do they want us, as people from different countries, to help the Japanese English teachers (or homeroom teachers for elementary schools)? Because we were educated differently and thus bring a different perspective to English education. Besides, the Japanese teachers have other concerns (making sure students do their homework, pass tests, understand concepts, behave properly, etc.) whereas we, as assistant language teachers, are free to focus solely on engaging the students in learning. (And the advantage we have over curriculums/resources like Genki English--great as they may be--is that we can adapt and create new things to suit the needs of our classes.)

So yeah, even though it's difficult when you only see a school once a month or once or twice a term, I believe it is our responsibility to help kids learn English. This means diversifying our methods/games to appeal to different types of learners (bodily kinesthetic, verbal/linguistic, etc.), targeting games to develop specific skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), and etc.

Basically, I think it means we need to start thinking of ourselves as actual teachers and not just "(international) circus performers." True, there is no teaching experience requirement to become a JET, but teaching is the job, so I think the expectation should be there that for ALTs to develop and carry themselves as teachers.

I think the fault here in not setting such expectations lies with the JET Programme as well as the individual ALTs, contracting organizations/school boards/teachers, etc. (Here's where I go back to my first point.) By leaving such a fuzzy crutch of a goal as "internationalization" in the mission statement of JET, the Programme is setting the wrong tone right from the get go. It's not surprising, then, that teachers, schools, and even ALTs don't necessarily expect ALTs to do more than "making interacting with people from different countries (using English) interesting and fun for students."

And I think that's doing a huge disservice to everyone involved:
- to the students who, at the end of the day, still need to pass the English portion of various entrance exams;
- to the teachers who have to accomodate ALTs periodically coming in and "disrupting" the usual flow of classes;
- and to the ALTs who are sometimes paid to do nothing more than sit around the office or to be human tape recorders in classes.

The responsibility for rectifying matters, I believe, must necessarily fall to the ALTs, who arguably have the most free time out of all parties involved.

I have seen the incredible results a little bit of initiative (and probably a lot of tact) from ALTs can create. Admittedly our city has had the advantage of a veteran (five year!) ALT and supportive supervisor/Board of Education, but I sincerely believe it's within the powers of all ALTs to effect changes, even if they are only small and slow in coming.

So yeah, at the end of my time on JET, I want to be able to look back and honestly say that I worked "isshokenmei" (with all my might) to leave the state of English education in Towada a little improved from when I started.

Voting overseas

Luckily I took some time earlier last week to catch up on friends' blogs, since I learned from one of them that the election was actually set. Since moving to Japan I've been pretty out of the loop in terms of news (Japanese, Canadian--everything, really). To my defense, I did know that there was probably going to be a federal election called soon, I just didn't know when specifically. But yeah, reading about electionproject.ca prompted me to get on the ball and to find out what I needed to do be able to vote from Japan.

Thankfully the process for obtaining a special ballot to vote while overseas doesn't seem to be too difficult. The Elections Canada website has a convenient "Get the special ballot voting kit" page which took me through a quick survey to determine my eligibility for the special ballot and then led me to a page to download the registration form. Now that I've gotten and printed out the scans of my driver's license from home, all I have to do is mail the form and documents (making sure it arrives in Ottawa by 6pm local time on October 7th).

Other than going through the information available on the aforementioned electionproject.ca site, however, I didn't really give much thought to how I would vote until I read another friend's post on "Who to vote for?" After reading about how she emailed the candidates in her riding to ask about their specific plans for poverty reduction and environmental sustainability, I decided I would at least check out the websites of the candidates in my riding (Mississauga-Erindale).

Maybe I'm just lazy, but simply doing that was enough for me to decide: I'm going to vote for Omar Alghabra (Liberal) again. I was impressed by the fact that it only took me a single click to find exactly the information I was looking for on his website: information about election issues and his plans for addressing them (in the "Your TOP Priorities" section). Admittedly it's a little lacking in details/specifics, but at least it shows that he is aware of more issues than health care (a perennial Canadian concern) and the environment. I was particularly reassured to see that he had immigration (and specifically the accreditation of foreign trained professionals) and affordable housing in his list of priorities. I wish I had seen something there about education, but I think I recall some things I read in his newsletters before...

At any rate, I think that if I spent just a little more time going through the website--reading past newsletters and press releases--I could probably find more detailed information about his policies.

When I looked at my Conservative candidate's webpage, however, the first thing I saw was stuff about Stephen Harper vs the Liberals which immediately gave me a bad impression. I mean, sure party stuff is important to consider in a federal election, but I'm voting for the candidate in my riding, not for a party. I don't need mudslinging propaganda-ish rhetoric: I want to know what the candidates think about specific issues and their plans/intentions to address them.

Along those lines, I couldn't find anything beyond the bio for the Green Party member, and nothing at all online for the NDP candidate. I suppose the Marxist-Leninist candidate could have a great website, but I decided it would probably be OK for me to just avoid researching that one altogether.

I guess I could be a bit more active and, like my friend, email the candidates to ask them their thoughts specifically, but I rather think that the type of information candidates make available, as well as how easily they make it available to the public says something about the character of the candidate and the type of relationship s/he intends to have with her/his constituents.

Just from spending 5 minutes on Alghabra's website, I felt like he actually cares about what his constituents think and that he tries to anticipate as well as address our concerns/needs. On the other hand, I felt mildly insulted (not to mention frustrated) that all I could find on the Conservative candidate's site was links to other Conservative websites and pro-Conservative, anti-Liberal propaganda.

I mean, if you want me to vote for you, could you at least tell me what YOU have been working on and what YOUR thoughts are on key issues? I'd like to think that I'm not completely biased against the Conversatives, but I admit that I don't think their policies are in line with what I want to see happening in Canada. So, it's not a good strategy to try to convince me to vote for you when the only real reason to do so that I can see from the website is that you're a Conservative candidate. I need to know why I should vote for you in spite of the fact that you're Conservative!

So yeah, maybe I'm not examining the different candidates' policies as closely as I should, but I nonetheless feel satisfied with my decision to vote for Alghabra (again).

Ping Pong!

So this weekend was the Chuutairen again (apparently called the Shinjinsen for fall) and it was super tiring but exciting.

Part of the reason it was super tiring is that I was stupid and ended up staying up late both Friday and Saturday night (until, respectively, 2am and 1am) so I felt like I zombie when I got up around 5:30am to prepare lunch and get to the school by 6:45am.

At any rate, it was exciting because this time around two of our students got certificates! An ichinensei girl got 5th (along with three others) and a ninensei boy got 9th (again, along with three others). The Japanese ranking system seems strange to me since rather than competing for a definite ranking, they award multiple prizes/certificates after 1st and 2nd. For example, the two semi-final losers were both awarded 3rd place instead of having to compete for it. Similarly, the four quarter-final losers all got 5th place, and the four losers from the round before that were all awarded 9th place.

But anyway, despite my confusion over the ranking thing, I was really happy that the ninensei boy, Maiya, got 9th! He's my favourite student from that grade, and he's also the one who had a really tough loss during the summer Chuutairen. It was probably a little bad of me, but I made it a point to follow his games. Even though I was on the other side of the gym cheering for another student at the time, as soon as his game was announced, I left and went to get a better view of Maiya's game. (The student I had been cheering for was well on his way to winning, but still...)

This particular game (his second) was particularly stressful to watch because it was eerily similar to his last heart-breaking match. His opponent was, like last time, from the strongest school, Tomari (although it was a different guy this time). And, once again, he won his first two sets without too much difficulty and lost by a fairly small margin in the third. Even though I could see from his play that he had gotten a lot stronger (he made some really spectacular plays throughout the first three sets), given his past experience, I thought that this game would be the biggest test of his character growth. Would he be able to brush off memories of the past and regain his composure to win?

He also lost the fourth match (this time, though, by a fairly small margin) and I got really nervous by this point, thinking it was going to be a near-total replay of that unfortunate game (where he lost his composure and the match), but he managed to keep his cool to win (albeit by a fairly small margin) the fifth and final set for the match. As one of the Kirita students who was cheering with me described it, it was a "giri giri win" (meaning he just barely made it). I can't be sure, but his expression of happiness and relief after winning the match made me think that he also felt he had overcome his disappointment from the last Chuutairen.

Although his third opponent was also from a strong team, he was able to win fairly convincingly (with only a few bad moments in the final set) in three straight sets.

His fourth match determined whether he would be able to go to the quarter-finals or not. Unfortunately, he lost in a hard fought match, but he definitively showed his character growth when he came back up to the gallery after the loss.

He had looked a little upset when he lost (another ninensei boy--one of his better friends--commented that he was probably crying), but when he came back up he was very composed. I told him "otsukaresama" (an acknowledgment of someone's hard work/efforts) and, a little later, "yoku ganbarimashita" (you worked really hard). To the latter, he gave me a bit of a puzzled look and said something along the lines of (roughly translated): "Not yet. I can't (or won't) cry because I still have a match." In my confusion over the ranking system, I had thought that he had either already earned a certificate or was completely out of contention for one. It turned out, though, that, like last time, he still had another match and if he won that, he would get a certificate for placing in the "top ten."

When I realized that he was in the same situation as last time and how focused on the next game and calm he was, I felt this huge burst of pride/satisfaction/happiness at seeing how much he'd grown since the summer. The fact that he went on to win that "top ten" match was really just icing on the cake. ^_^

Anyway, apart from the performance of one of my favourite students, there were a few other interesting things at the tournament. I noticed during the practice this morning that even if you knew very little about table tennis, you could tell by watching the practice which students were considered "top dogs." Since there aren't enough tables for all the students to practice on at the same time, the way practice work is that four students practice at a table at a time: the two pairs rallying make an X-pattern across the table. Four other players (two other pairs) await their turns behind the players using the table. When a pair's rally ends, the next pair steps up to the table while the original pair chases down the ball. This means that there are typically six to eight players at a table.

When I looked down at all the tables, however, I could see that there was a table with only four players practicing; it was occupied by two pairs from the top school, Tomari--they took first, second, and one of the third prizes for the guys' individual games in the summer, as well as first place in the team competitions. I saw a couple of pairs wandering around looking for tables, but rather than joining the Tomari table, they went to tables that already had eight people practicing!

Next to the Tomari guys' table, there was a table with seven girls. Four of the students were doing the normal switch off, but the other three girls were different: one girl always stayed and the other two practiced with her. Even if that girl missed the ball, the girl partnered with her would go chase after the ball (usually the person who misses retrieves) while the waiting person would step up to allow her to continue practicing. This girl, as you could guess, was the girls' first prize winner from the last event.

So yeah, even though I was really tired, thinking about the table dynamics helped to keep me awake and interested during the practice.

The last (well, chronologically the second, since all the stuff with Maiya was at the end, and the practice stuff was first) interesting thing was an incident during another of my ninensei boy's match. This particular student is quite a character. He's really tall, but he never stands or sits straight. Even when he's walking, his shoulders and slumped and he's hunched over! Apart from his posture, he also doesn't speak clearly. He speaks in a mumble and uses improper Japanese (not to mention English). For example, when calling home after an event to ask his parents to pick him up, he won't identify himself or greet them properly but instead just says "ittekoi" (a rough, dictatorial way of saying "come")! My JTE has described him (and I agree with her descriptions!) at various times as "an alien," "an injured soldier" and "an octopus." It's hard to explain, really, but he's the most unique character I've ever encountered.

Anyway, so this student, Takumichi, won his first match. I was a little surprised because his style of table tennis play is similar to his normal carriage (kind of boneless and lethargic), but it was understandable since he was against an ichinensei student. In his second match, though, he was pretty thoroughly outclassed. He lost in three straight sets by very wide margins each time. But yeah, during one of the sets, I happened to turn to watch him (another Kirita student was playing at a table in front of me, whereas Takumichi was to my right) as he made a rather desperate shot.

Apparently he assumed the shot wouldn't go in, so, for reasons unknownst to me, he turned around and started walking away from the table (even though it wasn't a set/match point!). But the thing is, the shot DID go in, and his opponent returned it! So of course Takumichi gave up the point. In fact, he only turned around when his opponent's return shot bounced off the table past him! I was so shocked that he would just walk away from the table like that, I actually YELLED "BAKA! Saigo made akiramenai, Takumichi!" (Idiot!! Until the very end, don't give up!) After I got over my surprise, though, I immediately saw the ridiculousness of the situation--not only his play, but my own behaviour in calling him "BAKA!" so loudly in public! =P

So, all in all, it was quite a memorable Chuutairen!

And, on a random, but related note, I highly recommend the Ping Pong movie! It's based on the manga (also excellent!) by Taiyo Matsumoto. It's an entertaining but...thoughtful? (don't know if that's the right word) story about friendship and the search for a hero in the competitive world of high school ping pong!

The novelty factor...

One thing that's definitely better in Japan than in Canada is Baskin Robbins (also known as "31 Ice" here). They not only have the standard ice cream, shakes and floats, but they also have crepes and fabulous looking sundaes!

But for me, the best thing is the variety they offer. Every month they have at least two or three "new" seasonal flavours. This month, for example, they added Darjeeling Tea, Ringo (apple) Sorbet, Tiramisu and Baseball Park (a nutty flavour). And of course, to keep the number of flavours constant, they also have flavours discontinued every month, so the seasonal flavours are only available for about 2-3 months.

They're also smart about their advertising for new flavours. They have pamphlets (Ice Cream Flavor Menus) showing all the flavours to be released and discontinued over a period of three months, as well as all the standard flavours. And the strategy of appealing to people's love of novelty seems to work: everytime I go by the Baskin Robbins, I always see at least one or two (if not more!) people buying ice cream--all year round!

At any rate, I know the marketing strategy works on me. It's actually a wonder that I've managed to lose weight since moving to Japan, considering that I buy ice cream from Baskin Robbins at least once or twice a month--I've even gone as often as four or five times a month!--and I almost always get one of the seasonal flavours. This may change now that I've been here for a year and I'm starting to see repeats of flavours from last year, but still, there's usually at least one flavour that's completely new to me. I've also got a collection of all the Flavor Menus that have come out since I came to Japan--with the flavours I've tasted checked off. =P

When I finally move back to Canada, I'm definitely going to miss Japanese Baskin Robbins! (But it'll probably be better for my health. ^_~)