Keeping Track

Over the winter break, I sat down and looked at my schedule for the third and final term of this school year (remember, the Japanese school year – and even college graduate employment – begins in April). I went through my schedule provided by the Board of Education and made a table listing the dates at each of my three schools and the number of days per week that I will be teaching (many weeks this year only have four days, some only two! [I plan to use vacation time and travel during those weeks], due to Japanese holidays or village work schedules). I also created sub-tables for each of the three schools – Higashi, Arume, and Takae. Each of these sub-tables specifically lists the remainder of the elementary classes that I will teach until the last day of the first term of next school year, which leads up to the middle of July. I didn’t include junior high classes, as they are much more numerous and are planned primarily by my Japanese Teachers of English (JTE).

My goal in creating this schedule is manifold. One, I needed to give myself a very clear visual representation of how much time I have left in Higashi, should I choose not to re-contract. A normal calendar didn’t fit my liking, because I find having to constantly flip pages quite distracting. This one page visualization allows me to grasp in a very direct fashion the amount of time remaining on my current contract. I’ll give you an idea of what it looks like.

Imagine a three-column table, the rightmost column containing anywhere between two and five empty circles. Each of those circles represents a school day. At the end of every school day, I fill in a circle. There are 112 circles in total and I will have filled in eight of them by the end of today. Three more days and I will have filled in approximately ten percent of them, meaning 1/10th of my remaining time teaching here will already have been over. I did not include weekends or holidays in my table, because of the second purpose of the document.

That second purpose is, again, should I decide not to stay a third year, to give my successor a list of all the topics and classes I have taught for the first term of the next school year. One qualm I have with the JET Programme is the failure to provide incoming ALTs with any sort of idea about what we are “supposed to do.” One could argue that this is not plausible, as every Board of Education has a different idea of what they want the ALT to do. The situation is even more open-ended at the elementary level, where ALTs often perform their work without the assistance of a co-teacher (in some cases, this is considered more of an advantage than a problem).

When I arrived in August of 2007, my first month of work was spent mostly at the Board of Education. There, it was often suggested to me by my supervisor that I should prepare my lessons for school, as I’d be starting classes with the second term of the school year, which usually starts the first week in September. The month of low-key integration was a really nice buffer for allowing me to get used to Japan. That time was valuable for figuring out all the daily things that I would need to know – directions and travel times to my schools; where to buy things in Nago; exactly how to finagle the dials in the shower to achieve the perfect temperature of water, every time; even learning not to leave large amounts of so-called “burnable” garbage in the trash for too long, lest it develop a nasty infestation of insects. Given all that time, I was unable, however, to come up with anything decent in terms of elementary lesson plans past my initial introductory class. My predecessor left no history of what he taught, but offered minimal suggestions as to what kind of materials to use and where to find them at the schools. Unfamiliar with what the children knew and didn’t know, the method I ended up adopting consisted of using the first few classes to judge their level. Even in cases where the students had been exposed to what I was teaching, the lack of use and repetition ensured that they didn’t remember it well, if at all.

It is my hope that next year’s first term compilation will be at least somewhat helpful to the fellow who might be coming after me. And in the case that I decide to re-contract and spend (why do we call it spending?) a third year in Higashi, the record will not only be helpful for whoever comes after my third year, but also in reminding me what I’ve taught to my students one year before. I suppose, then, the third purpose of the schedule compilation that I’ve made relates not to the practical or the helpful, but the emotional.

A few days ago, over the weekend, I had the chance to catch a friend from Chicago (Hi, Chris!) on Gmail chat. It was Saturday morning here and he was still at work on Friday evening. Though smaller chances to chat have existed, the timing of this session just seemed to work out really well. We caught up and talked about whether I’d be staying another year in Japan, whether on JET or otherwise, or if I’d be returning to the US, or other options too many to list. I remember at one point we were discussing how long I’d been away.

After we logged off, I think the scope of two years that I’ve been living here took on a different feeling. And it reminded me of a session I attended at the Okinawa JET Mid-Year Conference in November. The facilitator was a doctor of psychology with extensive experience in personal counseling specializing in alcoholism. The theme of his session that day, though I can’t recall exactly, was something like “Life after JET: Coping with the decision to stay or go.” It was the best session of the two day conference. Though the details of his talk with us are worthy of a totally separate posting, the crux of his advice, what he really wanted us to take away from that day, was this: it is not the decision to stay or go that is important, rather what we do after that decision.

Since then, I’ve been putting lots of thought into what I’m going to do next. I’ve swung from each side of staying to going, and now find myself somewhere in the middle. What I have to keep in mind is that there is nothing wrong with whichever decision I make, if it has been made with sufficient thought and consideration. While I would love the chance to stay in Japan, I’d like to do it on more personal terms. I like working with kids and I like improving my Japanese, but the constant change of work schedule and lack of advancement opportunities in my current situation make me consider other more serious options. Nor do I want to leave JET and once again find myself behind the desk of a company like the Fed (nor do I want to travel for work – I know I missed so many opportunities in Chicago because of my time spent on the road). When I look over just these two criteria, my ideal job starts to look pretty clear. And though I didn’t believe her when she said it, there was once a girl who told me, “You are such a teacher.”

But the decision hasn’t been made yet regarding JET and my third year. To stay in Higashi; to leave Higashi yet stay in Japan; to leave Japan – these are all unanswered as of now. I have until February 6th. And ever after making that decision, it will take me a while to explain it all.