The Plight of the JT

To quote the wise sage Mr. Freddie Mercury: “Another one bites the dust.” This week I walk into class, unload my teaching materials and hunt out our Communication Notebook. This is the normal first day of the lesson week routine. Our Communication Notebook, something I’ve mentioned here a few times, is the means of conversation between the Japanese Teacher and the Native Teacher. Some JTs write a few lines, others a few paragraphs and it usually always equates to reminding us foreign staff to hand out the things that they forgot to hand out to the students. I use this book as a tool to give class breakdowns every now and then. I’ll write of kids that drive me nuts or classes that were amazing, ask questions about kids, classes in general to find out how things transpire in the JT lessons (any differences and similarities?) and every once and awhile I’ll pass on a little nugget from my personal life and attempt to gain such a kernel from my JT. This, outside of the occasional combined meeting, is generally the only means of conversation we foreign staff have with our Japanese teachers. There isn’t much more by means of a relationship between us. Pretty informal, if you ask me, considering the importance I think needs to be stressed upon the two people primarily responsible for the education of our students. I’d like to see one on one meetings between Japanese teachers and foreign staff, have tried to spark such meetings by offering coffee shop conversations or lunches. Nobody has accepted.

Anyway, recently another little blurb has shown up in the notebook and it has reached a point where I am starting to expect it. Today I would read this: “I am quitting” and another Japanese teacher vanishes into the night. This makes, I believe, my six JT leaving The Company since I was hired on back in February. When you factor in that I only work four schools a month (a total of eight schools since being hired if you include the changeover) then that is all my schools except two that has had to undergo a change of Japanese teacher. This, my friends, really sucks for our students. I understand that people move on and seek out new life experiences, jobs, etc. but there is a mass exodus that is occurring here with students in between. At one of my schools, for example, the kids have had a different Japanese teacher each month for about five months and they are fairly lost when it comes to focus because they’ve had varied teaching styles from a bevy of JTs and NTs for pretty much half a year. Obviously lacking a single teacher is effecting the kids. In three of my schools, now, I am the only constant. The parents have started to complain to the company over the lack of consistency and I don’t blame them. There’s going to be a difference in your students when the teacher that has been instructing them, in some cases for up to four years, leaves and there is going to be an even bigger shift when said teacher is replaced each week by a new face.

But I can’t blight the Japanese teachers for jumping into the lifeboats and bailing for the nearest island of sanctuary. As much bitching and moaning as us Native staff do about this job (including yours truly, folks…I am by no means exempt), the job for the Japanese teachers is a hell of a lot worse. They are paid less then us folks entering their country from all points of the globe, for starters. This already lower pay is then bonded to the amount of students they have in their lessons. Allow me to explain that one a bit. Classes have an average of about seven kids but they can reach to twelve. This is supposed to be the cutoff but the company likes to try to sneak in an extra kid every now and then. Whereas I dislike large classes (for a bunch of reasons but mainly because they are harder to teach) JTs embrace them as it means more money for them. The more kids in their class the more they are paid. Subsequently, if a kid quits the JT is docked pay. This is a really shitty thing to hang over a teacher’s head. JTs also work more despite the lower pay. Yes, the get a week off where we don’t but they also spend hours before and after lessons on paper work and phone calls. These phone calls consist of calling the parents of students who did not show for class that day. These calls can go on forever as parents will talk the ears off of JTs keeping them in the class after hours until late in the evening. JTs are also scrutinized more then we are. At our combined staff meetings they are practically graded on their demos, always watched by their area manager or supervising teacher. Yup, the JTs got it rough and as you can see most leave for the proverbial greener grass on the other side of the fence. Happy trails, girls. Hope you find what you’re after. And soon…soon I’ll be leaving too.