Work and Stuff

Okay, a few words about my job here. Firstly, there is a lot of down time. A lot. In a given day, I have anywhere from 2-5 classes, which is normal for any teacher. However, unlike other teachers, I am only an assistant. This means that I have limited input as to the lesson planning, grading, and all that other teacher stuff that I did last year. This means that when I'm not in the classroom teaching, I have very little to do. There have been two days thus far where, because of testing, I didn't have any classes and sat around doing nearly nothing all day. This is not because of laziness, it's just the job. In class is a similar story. The JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) controls the class and will involve me for a few minutes at a time, mostly for repeat-after-me and canned dialogues. Essentially, I'm an extremely well-paid CD player. Hopefully, as time goes on, the teachers will feel comfortable giving me extra work and more responsibility. I have created a few tests and graded some papers, but it is slow in coming.
The students are a slightly brighter note. Generally, they are fun and interesting. There are, however, some unexpected discipline problems. In my high school, if you talked out of turn too much or disturbed the class, you were sent out. Here in Japan, that is illegal because no student may be denied an education. The teachers don't have a lot of tools for maintaining discipline in the class and so students, especially the 13-15 year old boys, can be a bit unruly. Another problem is that, just like in Taiwan, all students are required to learn English. This means that there are very few students who seem to actually enjoying learning English. In fact, the best lessons are usually met with quiet disdain. It's when the quiet disdain turns into noisy disdain that it would be considered a bad lesson.
The students are not bad people. I can sympathize. I was forced to take pre-calculus and calculus even though the extent of my daily-life math usage amounts to simple addition and subtraction (I use calculators for long division). So, I completely understand their apathy toward learning an incredibly difficult and complex language. However, sympathetic as I may be, it doesn't make class any easier. I try to spice it up by joking around with the students, smiling and laughing a lot, and trying to spend individual time with the students. Overall, it is beginning to work in terms of developing relationships with the students, but so far that hasn't translated into any increased interest in class.
That said, the students generally seem to enjoy my presence. I get greeted about every couple minutes. Sometimes it's a very bold "Hello Pete!" other times it is a quiet "konnichiwa sensei" but I always respond enthusiastically. The students seem to get a big kick out of the fact that I clean the school with the (Japanese students clean the school everyday for about 15 minutes). I also play tennis with the soft-tennis club. Suddenly it has become a spectator sport - dozens of students will hang around to watch me serve, return, volley, and generally get destroyed by 14 year old boys and, even worse, 14 year old girls. Hey, she has a good serve and I'm still out of shape. Anyway, I'm trying to have fun in whatever way I can.
My co-workers are all very nice. All four of my junior high JTEs are quite nice and helpful. The other teachers are very friendly and I have several Japanese conversations a day. I guess compared to my predecessor, my Japanese is quite good. They have said they are happy to be able to actually communicate.
So there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's not all gloom and doom. Things will get better if I work at it. That's my mission and I think the effort will be worth it. Next time I'll talk about the 4 elementary schools I teach at.