I can't deal with this anymore.

[Shanti418]

I love teaching too. I try to grab extra time to come up with additional resources for my students and create new PowerPoints/videos and whatever. My mentor in grad school actually warned me at one point. Said that she destroyed her health and her marriage trying to make sure she got tenure. At this point, I'm a little more careful when I stress out over teaching. It helps to have kids, I guess, and keep the perspective that other people depend on my presence other than my students.

Wait, they appreciate teaching over there in English? Being at a research university, the idea that you would even like, care, or give a s*** about teaching is NOT to be discussed openly, and could actually reflect poorly upon you. If I said, "you know, I'd really love to settle down at a nice liberal arts college and just teach," I could lose funding.

[bumblemusprime]

Yeah. Teaching is actually cool in this part of academia. Come on over. We'll accept you for who you are. What's the point of researching a bunch of useless **** if you can't get your students interested in the same useless ****?

[Professor Smooth]

I've got to ask Kevin...

Given that, from all accounts:

• You really work well with your students

  Yeah. Kids love me. Something I credit to remembering (vividly) my time in school. And not fondly.
  

  You like teaching

  Very much.
  

  You have excellent Japanese skills and have worked hard to improve further

  Excellent's way too strong. My Japanese is mostly situational. I can get around in my circles alright, but not much more. Also, I understand a LOT more than I can speak.
  

  You want to continue helping the students to achieve

  Yep.
  

  You are very capable at getting them to achieve

  Some would say "shockingly" so.

Why are you still working as a supply teacher? Essentially brought in to a place for a rolling contract for a variety of reasons and then sent on somewhere else at the whim of employers and clients.

I understand that's how the English Language Schools work, but it sounds like you're way beyond that whole 'backpacking gap year' level of teaching now: surely you must be more than qualified to work as a formal English teacher in a formal school setting (e g High School) with a permanent contract?

It's my understanding that English doesn't feature particularly highly on the formal Japanese curriculum, hence the industry for English Schools and poorly treated English Language Tutors, but you seem more than capable of breaking in to that and making a bigger career out of it.

That way you would have a far less nebulous contract and you could, in theory, join teaching unions (if you haven't already). No more moving about, no more having to deal with client's whims. You'd actually have some rights in the organisation you work in.

You'd also then have the ability to climb the ladder (potentially. I appreciate to win out over competing Japanese, as a foreigner you would have to work twice as hard as them for promotion) and start earning pension rights (again, potentially).

Alternatively I might be talking absolute horse **** so feel free to ignore it. That's cool too.

I could go and work as a teacher in a private English school, that's true. If I really wanted to, I could put up with the crap involved with the first few years of a University job. It'd almost definitely pay better, and I could do more to teach English. But teaching English isn't the only part of the job I like.

Japan's population is overwhelmingly Japanese. Of non-Japanese, most are Asian (Korean and Chinese). Outside of the big cities, there's not a whole lot of (non-Asian) foreigners. Even IN the big cities, most foreigners are tourists.

So, psychologically, it can be difficult to get Japanese kids (or people, in general) to speak to foreigners. If somebody takes the step signing up for a private English school or study it for credit in college, then they've already taken (or are prepared to take) steps to overcome that. Working with kids in public schools helps in that respect. Foreigners aren't an abstract concept. We can be a bit intimidating (you know, size-wise), but that's no big deal.

I consider it part of my job to get the kids interested in English (or just in something outside of Japan) enough to go out and pursue it on their own. Be that signing up for private language schools, doing home-stay courses in other countries, or maybe just considering foreign countries as vacation spots in the future.

I don't mind not being the be-all-end-all of their English experience. And I understand that there are limits to how much can be accomplished with one or two 45 minute classes per week. But when I (and people like me) go to the BOE and say, "Excuse me, but this curriculum is full of errors. I'd be happy to go over it and fix them, free of charge," and just get dismissed, it's frustrating. Beyond the errors, there's just so much that we shouldn't be wasting time on when working with kids. You can't do everything with one or two 45 minute classes a week, but you CAN do a hell of a lot more!

Today was a very draining day.

The directions I got to this school didn't take into account that I haven't lived in this town for my entire life. Not that it would have mattered, I asked residents and even they couldn't tell me where I was supposed to go. Long story short the "ferry terminal" was just some random pier and the "ferry" was just a guy who'll take you to the island for 400 yen.

So, I was "late." "Late" meaning they (someone, somewhere) expected me to be at school at 8:30 and I got there at about 9:15. Nobody (who I met) cared. Principal, VP, other teachers. I didn't have a class until 11:50, anyway. But it was frustrating.

As it turns out, I got some bad info on the school. I wasn't working with any of the disabled students. Those kids are at school a bit down the road. Instead, I was working with the 5th and 6th grade orphans.

Simple class. We were teaching colors. It was the class' homeroom teacher, an assistant, and myself. They asked me to do a short self-introduction then take some questions. I was warned in advance that these kids are very quiet. (This, of course, flies in the face of "violently distrustful of adults," but I've come to expect stuff like that from the telephone game of communication my company, the schools, and I play. So, no problem. Self-intro. Q&A. Teach colors.

I launched into my self-intro lesson, which is basic information about me and then a few sentences that are designed to get the kids to want to ask for more information (another thing that elementary schools don't think is important enough to include in the lesson plans). I say I like comic books and Transformers (so the kids will ask which/how many I have). And say I don't like deer or the singer Matsumoto Jun (so the girls will ask/demand why).

I had about half the class cracking up in about a minute. When I finished my introduction and asked for questions, most of their hands went up. One of the last questions was, "Can we introduce ourselves to you?" This was shocking to the homeroom teacher and assistant, and they couldn't help but agree. Every student in the room (more on that in a minute) introduce him or herself. Very short. "My name is xxxxx. I like xxxx. Nice you meet you."

After the class, I got mobbed by the kids (requests to play Paper/Scissors/Rock, a few more questions, and a few who wanted to see if they could be as tall as me if they jumped. They couldn't. So I picked them up to show them what it was like to see things from my perspective. After that, it was back to the teachers room. I thought it was a pretty good class.

The homeroom teacher was a bit more outspoken about that. She'd never seen the kids excited like that. Never seen a class where everybody was participating. One of the girls who introduced herself had NEVER spoken to ANY teacher at the school. I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me smile a bit inside.

On the way back to the mainland, I got some background on the school and the kids. They're all kids with no parents. Some have died, of course. Others are in jail. Some, though, just weren't wanted by their parents. And others were taken from abusive homes. I hoped that being there was just temporary, but I was told that it's permanent for all of the students. They live in little dormitories at the school. Some of the kids are as young as two years old.

"What about adoption?" I asked, hopefully. No dice. Adopting kids in Japan is criminally difficult. With very few exceptions (and I mean lottery winner type odds, here) only married couples with exceptionally high incomes can adopt. No singles. No divorcees. No foreigners. Even if you meet those nigh-impossible standards, adoptions is still rare. None of those children are going to have families again. Some never did. And there's nothing I can do about it. There's nothing I can do for them. Nothing except try to give them some reason to be interested in something outside not only their little island, but outside the country that has completely and utterly failed them.

"It's sad about these kids," the homeroom teacher said. As if that could cover it. "They really seem to like you, though." That didn't make me feel any better. It kind of makes me feel worse.

[Professor Smooth]

Today, I offered to volunteer my services at the school for orphans on that island off of Hiroshima.

Also, I got a quick review of my performances at the other schools. "I've heard a lot of good things from your schools," said my boss. "They said you're a fantastic teacher."

After the absurdly bad day I've had, that was kind of nice.