Basic Black

In the last 24 hours, lots of things fell to pieces. Yesterday, reaching to put a box on a high shelf at in a store room at school, I aggravated a pulled a muscle in my shoulder. A bath and rest will fix it. Meanwhile, I'm out of the dojo for a few days.

On my way out of the front hall of the school, I pulled too hard on the tab of my boot and ripped through the zipper. The school nurse patched me up with a boot lace and a few safety pins. And then the zipper of my cheap shoulder bag let go. The contents stay inside, fortunately.

Usually I come apart on the phone in Japanese. Some Japanese do not notice my accent, or my lack of full fluency, and do not slow down for me. I tend to fumble when confronted with someone motormouthing me inj Japanes. Today, the downstairs office phoned me in the administration room to say there was a visitor, and I went down to receive him as everyone else was busy. The officer who had received said visitor and called the admin room was a little surprised. Who had she talked to on the phone? Yes, that was me. I feel a lot more confident when I've been reading in Japanese.

I'm still nothing near fluent. My suspicion has been that, if I could read more, I could absorb more Japanese language in a natural way.

So, I've been looking for reading material I can read quickly, stuff that interests me. When I get tired of trying to memorize kanji cards out of context (easily misplaced and quickly forgotten), I have been reading A Graded Japanese Reader , which includes short stories, essays and newspaper items, and Instant Business Japanese which presents some funny dialogues loaded with useful vocabulary and expressions. My favorite Japanese as a Second Language (JSL) magazine is J-Life, which you can get online at ALC Japan. I find these materials keep me interested. This morning's train ride went by so fast while I was reading was an essay about a group of men who started a charity to preserve　the folk art (originating in Buddhist story telling) of kamishibai　紙芝居. Interesting insight into Japanese culture while learning vocabulary.

The vocabulary and themes I'm reading are varied and help me cope with everyday life in Japan. I just keep going, reading a bit at a time. Sensei tells us to build foundation a bit at a time. Fifteen to thirty minutes a day of reading plus grammar review will build it up. I'm drawing on the concept of extensive reading to learn to cope with longer texts, learn vocabulary in context, and review known grammar.

I'm a compulsive reader. Now I can start to satisfy this urge with the heaps of reading material produced in Japan.

あけましておめでとう！ Happy New Year

The banner on the wreath is a blessing of safety within the household. Lots of businesses and homes hang these 注連縄 shimenawa rope decorations in front of their doors. For safety, mine us hung in the genkan of my apartment. The landlord doesn't allow decorations on the door.

Why do I have a shimenawa wreath? It's a habit I learned from the year I lived in rural Ehime Prefecture, when my dear neighbour, the kimono teacher, madea wreath by hand and hung it on my door. She said I and my apartment could do with the blessing for the coming year.

This guardian deity meets you at the gate when you walk up to 布施弁天 Fuse Benten where I did my お参り omairi, a first visit to shrine or temple,

Benten is represented by the flow of water and the beauty of flowers. The temple is often very quiet when I visit any other day of the year. I sometimes make the 20 minute bike ride on a Sunday, and often have the whole place to myself. Once, the priestess invited me in to see the hand coloured devotional paintings made by parishoners. But this time, there was a line of people waiting to ring the gong in front of the offering box. There was a performance of 獅子舞 shishimai, the lion dance accompanied by drums and flutes played by children.

Resolution #3 is to make a one-day pilgrimmage between the three famous Bentendo temples. Fuse Benten is one of the three significant ones belonging to a branch of Shingon Buddhism. The other two are on Enoshima Island in Kanagawa and the Bentendo in the middle of Shinobazu Pond in Ueno. I'd have to start early. The trip is over 100 kilometers.

Learn English and feed people, too

Laundry's done, sent my new years greeting cards to the family, puttering in my pjs at home. This is homework avoidance at its finest.

All this domesticity is a cover for organizing my notes and writing reports. Ideas percolate while I'm doing other tasks, of course. A strange effect I attribute to living outside my first language community... I'm frequently at loss for words. My literacy in Japanese is weak, sure, so I can't blame my lack of verbiage on Japanese crowding out my language skill. It's more likely that I simply haven't used these words frequently enough, and I'm not reading English regularly outside of my university reading packets.

Listening to National Public Radio on the Armed Forces Network this evening, I heard a report about Free Rice, a website that combines vocabulary practice and a donation of rice to The World Food Program. Go play! Get rice! How cool is that!

Okay, back to homework...

Teacher and culture clash

This week, I've been reading essays about the native versus non-native teacher debate. The English language educator A. Suresh Canagarajah argues that, although English native speaker teachers have teaching skills, they may not have recieved the training that is necessary for teaching students from other communities. He says, that native speaker teachers are often chosen based primarily on their English speaking ability. Canagrajah says "Such undue emphasis on the linguistic status/proficiency of the teachers excuse them from understanding the local languages, cultures, and social conditions of the communities where they are teaching."

I believe it is essential that, as the non-native (non-Japanese) and the native English speaker in the context in which I live, I owe it to my colleagues, students, community and myself to work on learning the cultural and linguistic context of Japan. I don't profess to know all about a culture (who could say that about their own culture?!) but I work on my Japanese language skills, get to know people (Japanese and long-time foreign residents) and learn about the commonalities, sensitivities, and struggles between my culture and Japanese culture.

You keep yourself out of trouble if you do, and pay a high price if you don't. Gillian Gibbons, a teacher in Sudan, is now famous as the teacher accused of religous blasphemy for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Sure, this case is as much a symptom of the hysteria regarding blasphemy after a certain controversial cartoon that resulted in riots and firebombings. Ms. Gibbons has her supporters amongst the community who say that she never intended any harm, and I seriously doubt there was any malice. She was simply doing what good English teachers do best - giving students a choice, allowing them agency in the classroom.

Nova novices

G.communication picked up failing Nova Corporation last week, but after reading about the first steps on the Japan Times, it makes me wonder if there is anything Beyond Nova for these hapless former Nova teachers.

Asahi confirms that the tsunami of unemployed Nova people is swamping the job market. Nova fallout means that there are many more applicants for jobs posted on websites. The company I work for has seen as many as 80 applicants in a week to some of our posted jobs.

And so few of the applicants could fill the positions my company hires for. For the most part, the high schools are asking for experienced, Japanese-speaking teachers with some kind of teaching certification. Nova teachers seldom come with either teaching experience or training, and few speak Japanese. The lack of experience and spoken Japanese shortens teacher longevity in fast-paced school situations. I saw that high attrition when I worked for another recruiting company in Japan that hires non-teachers.

It just got a lot harder for a young foreign person to get his foot in the door in Japan.

Ruined Japan

Back in 1999 when I lived in southern Ehime Prefecture, I lived at the foot of a mountain at the edge of the sleepy little city. Crushed against this mountain were houses, temples, cemeteries and some crumbling "public works", legacies of the bubble economy when huge amounts of cash were squandered on public art, culture halls and hideous sculptures.

Above my place was a neglected lookout tower with a rusty jungle gym that no kids played on. Only the local grumpy old men with their Onecup Ozeki sake would sit on the benches. A short walk from the abandoned beauty spot, there was a decrepit farm house built in the old style, clay over bamboo on a cedar frame. The plaster was falling away exposing the bamboo ribs of the walls. It looked like a half-eaten carcass to me, the roof a ratty mane of reeds and invading kudzu vines.

Metropolis this week features the phenomenon of ruined places in Japan. The splendour of the bubble economy of the late 80s is faded, the birthrate is falling off, and the rural population is mostly old farm people. That leaves a lot of abandoned, ruined buildings. Sometimes whole communities or recreation areas are forgotten.  Check out Gunkanjima, once a thriving island city, now completely abandoned.

I used to marvel at how Japan's rail system could get you anywhere, or at least within striking distance of where you want to go. I was stunned when I saw the photos of the Okutama Ropeway which is within Tokyo proper. There are places the tracks won't take you.

Nova's ugly business practice brought to light

I just tell it like I see it. Here's the latest on Nova.

The Independent out of Britain reports on the plight of ex-pat English teachers stranded by collapse of Japan's Nova schools. The Nambu Foreign Worker's Caucus is soliciting donations for a relief fund for Nova teachers and a "Lessons for food" campaign. Former company president Sahashi is being questioned by the ministries regarding failure to pay staff. The Japan Times in an opinion piece describes how Nova failed due to recklessness on the part of the executives.

If you look at the books, it appears that Nova was sinking all that money from student fees into real estate investments rather than back into the company, human resources and overhead. Some analysts are pointing to the huge advertising costs Nova incurred for it's television ad campaign as a budget killer. Meanwhile, research companies show that the conversation school market became saturated and actually declined since the early part of the decade.

What it all boils down to is that Nova was run badly in a saturated market and failed. It's a shame so many students, teachers and support staff are being hurt by the fallout.

I'm seeing the fallout in my daily life, too. Nova's Kashiwa branch looked deserted this week, my business English student who I tutor on Sunday says his conversation tutor, a Nova worker, went home last week, and the company I work for is innundated by email from former Nova workers looking for full time jobs.

Hope for change in Japanese schools

Friday, when I walked into the school which I will now refer to as JHS, the teachers in charge threw yet another curve ball in the form of Change of Plan. I've been teaching this Friday one-lesson gig off and on since April, and initially I was asked to teach TOEIC Bridge Test preparation. Secretly I grumbled but went along with this out of loyalty to my company which placed me there and the offer of a look-see inside another institution.

For the first five lessons, we worked from paper bits - pair works, whole class mixers and the like - that I'd made myself based on the moribund materials required, namely a big, thick test preparation book, mostly in Japanese, produced by ETS. Boring, unhelpful, and darned hard for a group of eager yet frustrated junior high girls.

What a relief to be told, after summer vacation, that we could leave the test book behind. I puttered at the computer, and after much mulling over ELT journal articles, my own previous work teaching writing at another school, I produced a report summarizing the background of TOEIC testing and issues, and wrote a syllabus.

Nobody from JHS got back to me except the foreign teacher who I kindly asked to proof read.

This past lesson, they tell me they have a new idea - have the students read non-fiction, mostly news items. Yet they had no ideas or suggestions on how to follow up, and my report got tossed out the window. Okay, let's try this again. Starting in November, I'm intending to have the students manipulate the reading in some way that results in discussions, then treat any difficult passages, and finally journal about what they've read.

On the one hand, I have admiration for the English department at this school for their resistance to the test-driven curricula that adminisrations expect them to do. On the other hand, they make me crazy with all these changes. I just have to roll with it. Meanwhile, the kids really enjoyed the lesson which involved discussion and a writing homework assignment. So far, so good.

Nova update

Like Marc Kaufman says in Metropolis Magazine, Nova's demise is nothing to celebrate. While we may not ave much sympathy for Nova, the damage to students, teachers, staff and investors is a horrible thing.

If anything, my chronicle of Nova's troubles may serve as an insight into the English industry in Japan, a news outlet for those who are experiencing this upheaval, and a glimmer of light. I am hoping that this big change in the landscape of urban Japan, the absence of the blue and white signs, will spur the authorities to examine the English industry in general and consider the impact on foreign workers, the quality of English language education, and the way that service industries treat customers.

Meanwhile, over at Let's Japan, they say Nova losing control as locations close due to a shortage of teachers.

On a certain ESL forum, teachers are giving a poll to find out if Nova teachers were paid today according to the memo that came out a few weeks ago. It looks like foreign teachers did not get paid. You can follow the ongoing discussion here.

Teachers Part Two: Teacher Training

Last week, in Teachers Part One, I told you about connecting with teachers and discussing some of the realities of teaching in Japan.

Lately, I've been considering all the different kinds of training available to teachers. There is a bewildering variety of acronyms, certificates, awards, certifications and knowledge tests out there for English Language Teaching!

My teacher training in Vancouver was in the TESOL Program at Vancouver Community College. I took 300 plus hours of teacher training part time while I was teaching in Vancouver.

Some of my colleagues had done the CELTA program offered as part of University of Cambridge ESOL examinations, which are offered in Canada and abroad.

One of my colleagues in Vancouver who had been teaching immigrants and international students for many years did the Cambridge DELTA program and had only good things to say about it. He felt that the program asked him to examine his assumptions about teaching method, about the way students acquire language and how he wanted assessed his own teaching practice. International House in London offers the Distance DELTA program, too.

Cambridge is not the only internationally offered ELT certification. School for International Training offers a TESOL certificate, but the closest location to Tokyo is Chiang Mai, Thailand.

What's the next step for me? As I already have a Diploma TESOL, so I'm considering what to do. I'm enjoying the study at Temple University Japan. The only competition in the Tokyo teacher training market is Teachers College Columbia Tokyo. This program is now recognized by MEXT - the Japanese Minisitry of Education.

You may well ask, if you're already well on your way and teaching in Tokyo, why do more certification/training?

There are so many reasons I'm drawn back to teacher training. For me, examining my own teaching practices and beliefs in the context of teacher training gives me valuable feedback from mentors. While I have wonderful Japanese teacher-mentors at my company and in the dojo, I feel that I need to connect again with ELT teachers who have as much or more experience than I. Sometimes, techniques or methods that I have shelved (for lack of need) become important and useful again, and even I need a refresher to feel confident with reintroducing these methods into my teaching practice. And then there are the advances in the field which are worth exploring and understanding. ELT is a dynamic field with lots of room for research and experiments.

And really, it's mostly about people. Teaching, especially teaching English communication, is about relationships and people. I hope I can connect again, come out of my shell and apply what I know and learn something new.