Timothy Baril

It’s Monday morning. Rain drizzles down. I show up to school wet, dreading a dull day of classes. Lucky for me, it’s just as I fear.

First period grade 9s. I stand next to the chalkboard after a good morning greeting that wouldn’t register on a decibel meter for singing mice. The Japanese teacher teaches. Homework check, going over homework, grammar. My input isn’t invited. It’s all in Japanese so there’s nowhere for me to jump in. Ten minutes into class and I’m lazily wondering how far I could toss a desk out the second story window.

Minutes later I’m bored quite senseless in the same way I’ve been for months in this school. Only it’s starting to get on my nerves now I’ve been in this country and job long enough to see just how much of a waste of everyone’s time this is. I envision tossing the teacher out the window with the desk previously heaved and wonder which would go farther. Then I envision taking over the class and actually seeing kids have fun with their schooling.

Visions of sugar plums follow the ridiculous teacher tossing ones and I’m bored stiff again. I look up at the clock and watch the hands struggle valiantly as if going through molasses. I sigh and notice some coloured chalk. The teacher drones on. Students reluctantly drone back half as energetically but twice as listlessly as the teacher and I begin to draw Halloween pictures on the corner of the chalkboard. I wonder at the joyless society so devoid of imagination that they so easily ignore not only Western events and themes but local ones as well. Lesson plans don’t include Halloween or Christmas or any local Japanese flair either. At least not for most of the teachers. Cool senseis are an exception. I continue to draw. A bloody haunted house. A witch. Apple bobbing. Oops, teacher needs the board. Sayonara drawings.

A student asked before class with a flair of hope and life if they could do apple bobbing at school. The teachers says “maybe” in a way that means no and in fact you’re as stupid as the idea for suggesting it openly to me, you should know better, now wipe that joy from your soul we have school to torture you with. I’m tempted to just buy the damned apples and pull a screw you and do it anyway. Wish apples weren’t so damned expensive here and I wasn’t so damned broke. Without the drawings to occupy me now and forced to stand away from the board I’m getting bored fast again. I try weaving back and forth and yawn a few times just to shake up the routine.

Strolling to the back of the room I play a game to see how little I can make the old floorboards not creak. Oops, destination reached, that was my excitement for the day. I’m standing at the window and watch the grey rain fall from dull grey skies onto dull gray concrete, rust bleeding from old uncared for metal everywhere the way our students bleed their intelligence in this intellectual wasteland and the leaves are turning red in the fall coolness outside right now. The teacher drones on behind me. I keep glancing at him, listening with a quarter of an ear (half was too much) but he ignores me and there’s no room to contribute to the pointless reading of their answers off their papers that consumes most of class. Why am I here? I’d be more productive in the staff room or at home in bed. Well, that’s not true. Here I’m producing at least twice the CO2 and doubling my contribution to global warming.

I really need to sit down with the English staff and say enough is enough of this. We need more imagination. We need energy and caring and to give the students a reason to learn. Your lesson plans are terrible and don’t involve me AT ALL! I need some professional fulfillment so I quit feeling like a piece of furniture. Look at their faces. I can see how bored, bitter and annoyed to be here the students are. I recognize the same emotions I’m going through on their faces. We relate.

But I can’t talk to my teachers. They’ll feel bad instantly. They’ll apologize twenty thousand times and bow too much and not do anything unless I take the leadership role. They’ll like me less. They might cry or cut the amount of words they say to me outside class every week from 2 to 1. I should stop caring about that. I know it. But that doesn’t make the confrontation that needs doing any easier to do. I’ve talked to them before, but it’s SOOOO frustrating when you’re trying to communicate something needs to change and you get this blank look and nod and totally know they don’t understand half of what you’re saying and are misinterpreting the rest of it because their English is so limited. It’s blah blah blah - huh? And you can see their faces cloud up and back off at any prospect of changing the norm or defying any normal practices.

We need a manual for Japanese teachers on how to teach. And how to use ALTs. The JET Programme is like a great many human endeavours, brilliantly conceived as a general notion, poorly implemented and terribly maintained. Should die out in a few years. Been writing teaching manual notes myself for over a year. Hope to publish it to local teachers before I leave. This school has been disheartening. Don’t think I’ll do much in the next few weeks. But the next school is a fresh start and I’ll act on the lessons learned to date.

I exit my day dream of professional ambition stage left. A mosquito drones dully by me through an open window and over the dull students, drearily looking for a victim, but not putting much life into its reason to live. It probably sense the students doing the same. Blood harvested here will likely result in a fraction of its potential offspring production. (Again, kind of like the Japanese…) The blood of these students is kind of like watered down alcohol or coffee - what’s the point?

I notice the principal with a ladder and a jacket. What’s this? Another gardening project? Does this guy do any work at all, or is this some kind of perfect retirement? Get three teachers worth of wages, show up to the morning meeting most days for 10 minutes and spend the rest of your time relaxing? I sigh.

Class is winding down. Teacher asks me to come over. I read aloud 7 new words in English. I try to use them in sentences. Teacher doesn’t translate. Students don’t repeat or understand me. Bell goes and the lesson is cut ’short’. I swear one of these days I’m going to slap this teacher…

I return to the staff room after that one class. I take a nap at my desk, too disillusioned with the place to find something productive to do. I wake up an hour later. Second class is cancelled. I go home. To hell with this place.

Wake up, Japan! Your education system needs an overhaul. Welcome to your future.