Gerpan

I was thinking about my time in Japan the other day, while munching away on my last Matcha Kit-Kat (sad times!), and wondering what I would stock up on when I next go back. Which got me thinking about my friend’s wedding that will be taking place in less than two weeks’ time in Nara. How my mind went from green Kit-Kats and Umeboshi to weddings, I don’t know. Stream-of-consciousness is supposed to be logical, no?

Anyway, the thought process led me to contemplate a Canadian friend and who first moved to Japan as an English teacher in 2003-ish. He intended on staying for “a year or two” and, like a lot of people I know, ended up staying for a good five or six. He met a lovely Japanese lady whom he is marrying in Japan where they will most likely raise their kids. To an extent, my Dad actually belongs to this ilk of gaijin, only he and my Mum had absolutely no initial intentions of getting married, especially since my dear mother was mere 19 when they met. They’ve been happily together for almost 26 years now. Just goes to show we shouldn’t trust our gut instincts.

I met my friend when I was 16 and he was, let’s say, much older than me. As we hung out alot, I’d say he is responsible for introducing me to a great portion of the English-teaching crew I have in mind while writing this post. They were all older than me and seemed so grown up, so I never questioned the notion of English teaching as a career. However, after a year of teaching English, my Canadian friend moved on to a different profession due to the near-to-nothing satisfaction rate of his English-teaching job at a large (and notoriously crap) corporation.

Now that I myself am at the age at which traveling is often assimilated with the concept of settling somewhere temporarily to teach English, I’ve been giving the profession more thought. Many of my friends, especially those who studied languages with me, have wandered off to teach English in various corners of the world. Recently, I read a rather disheartening article about teaching English abroad. It’s a bit old (2004 seems like ages ago now, huh?), but the reality doesn’t seem to have improved all that much in some places (cough, cough, Italy, cough), which really saddens me. Being able to effectively teach any language is a truly valuable asset and yet it often gets shoved into the “part-time job” category, along with bartending and waitressing. I have absolutely nothing against the latter jobs, but if we consider the qualifications required for all three then surely English-teaching ought to be ranked slightly higher in terms of wages (at least at the language establishments that actually require credentials). I mean, you do invest a certain amount of time and money in acquiring these qualifications. Certainly, this should be reflected in your pay cheque.

Ready for an injection of irony? I strongly believe that language teachers, or anyone filling an educational role for that matter, shouldn’t have to feel as though their jobs are not sufficiently financially rewarding, yet I work for the largest language school company in the world and know for a fact that our teachers don’t get a fair deal. I don’t expect to make loads, but the reality is my pay is also relatively poor, for someone living in Switzerland. Why is it that businesses in this sector tend to consistently exploit their workers? Of course almost every company exploits its employees, but I find it particularly disconcerting when it involves education-oriented companies. Personally, when businesses selling products that are designed to be genuinely beneficial to their consumers, as opposed to purely materialistic and essentially superfluous, I can’t help but feel that when the employees are mistreated, the positive image the company portrays is instantly marred and the hard work that goes into providing customers with a truly life-enhancing product goes down the drain.

Anyone care to share their views? Do you teach a language under really good circumstances? Are there some rewarding English teaching jobs that don’t get enough attention? Or do you think you’re under-appreciated?

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Reikalein is a half-Japanese, half-British, former English teacher. Comfortably straddling more than one culture, she contributes from Switzerland.

Before you point your finger and declare that I don’t belong here because I am not an English teacher in a foreign country, hear me out. Please?

I did, once upon a time, between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, teach English. Privately and as an assistant teacher in a Saturday language school for primary school children. I have even volunteered, out of the goodness of my heart (to rack up credits for school, admittedly) at a local kindergarten and taught the kids there some basic English. Incidentally, the latter two experiences have resulted in my coming to the conclusion that a few too many Japanese four to twelve-year-olds are misbehaved and mildly perverted. I have been labeled many things in my life, but only the bizarrely, yet somewhat innocently, twisted mind of a Japanese school kid would come up with oppai ne-chan, which can be loosely translated into “boob lady”. Charming. If it stopped at that, I would have kept my calm, after all, “sticks and stones” is a mantra our parents drum into us as children and we have it stashed away for comfort at times like these. Unfortunately, it never stopped there, it always, without fail, gave way to a little game called, “grab the teacher’s breasts”. I think kindergarten teachers in Japan should collectively be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for not declaring war on these kids.

After a while I decided that this groping game was not for me and I moved on to teaching in a slightly more professional environment. I used to baby-sit an adorable three-year-old kid from New Zealand while his mother taught English in the next room. The lady soon realized I could also double up as a substitute teacher and it would be a win-win situation in which she doesn’t have to teach but still gets half the money and in which I would be earning twice as much as if I simply baby-sat. I was only seventeen at the time, so I was lucky to have been given the chance to teach teenagers and adults. I did have to pretend I was twenty five and sadly, nobody questioned this. Not once. Ironic really, seeing as I got ID-ed in Zurich the other week where the drinking age is sixteen (I am now twenty-two).

Back to the point: I had upgraded from teaching little brats to teaching adults one on one and it was a breath of fresh air. With the children, I was not allowed to revert to Japanese, we had to convince them that none of the teachers could speak Japanese so they had to use English. In theory, this is a beautifully engineered take on language education, making English the only available means for communication would encourage the children to think in English more. In practice, it’s a soul-destroying system that leaves you feeling increasingly frustrated at the fact that disciplining the kids would be infinitely easier if you could reprimand them in the language they’re used to being reprimanded in. Don’t worry, I’m not some sort of Spartan she-devil who would willingly pull out a whip to thrash the children with: trust me, these kids were like monkeys on a 100% Red Bull diet. Luckily, teaching adults meant that their parents had already done all the disciplining years ago and it was no longer a concern and consequently the risk of being arrested for throwing a kid out the window was eliminated (until I have my own kids, that is).

Since I left Japan I haven’t gone back to English teaching. During my years at Uni I opted for waitressing instead, mainly because diners tip, English students don’t.

I am now done with my waitressing days, for now, and am working in Switzerland as a tri-lingual online marketing analyst (sounds glamourous, but most certainly isn’t). Being in a German-speaking region and being a non-German speaker, I was actually subjected to the experience of being a language student myself a few months ago. It was an eye-opening experience. I was put into the shoes of the people who used to pay me to provide such services. My teacher, in the nicest words possible, was utterly crap. He is a lovely man, but cannot teach a language effectively if his life depended on it. He always favoured the students who had missed classes, so the dedicated students ended up repeating the same lesson ten weeks in a row. This suddenly made me wonder about my own attitude towards teaching a language and how I would have taken a very different approach to this man. It’s much easier to be constructively critical if you have some experience in the field you are judging. Needless to say, I gave up on his lessons and am happily following an audio course and can now spreche ein bisschen Deutsch.

I’m no longer an English teacher, but my German boyfriend looks to me for grammar and vocabulary advice so I sometimes take on that role informally and feel a strong need to be a reliable teacher to him after my disastrous German lessons. He is just beginning to learn Japanese too: yes, that’s right, if you throw in the fact that I speak Italian, combined we are the Axis powers and yes, people have joked about this already.

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