Mid-year conferencing in Jaypan and more.

So, these past couple of weeks have been an interesting couple. To those who I've spoken to about it you already know what happened, and to those who don't know you can just keep on guessing. There's been some good times, and there's been some bad times. You've got to take it all together though. I was discussing it with a couple of older ALT's and we were talking about how it's all well and good to talk to people from back home about it but they generally don't really understand the situation because it's something so completley alien to them. I agree, as it's been talking to a select few of the more senior JET's that's really helped me out recently. I guess I'm just feeling a little funky because of illness. I took byokyu today because I woke up, felt terrible, and just felt the need to sleep. I'm not feeling so bad now (It's 4 in the afternoon) but it's not exactly been the most productive day in the world. I've tidied up my apartment a little bit and I went out and bought a chair and a kotatsu cover. Came back and have been sitting under the kotatsu ever since. I love this thing, I can see myself spending a lot of time under it in the coming winter months.

I feel bad about missing school today cause today was supposed to be day one with the first year selective English class. My third year english selective class was dropped so they can prepare for high school entrance exams. Don't really agree with it but that's the way the system goes so I can't force the kids to go against it. I've been discussing it with my 2nd year JTE and he isn't happy with the way English is taught at my school, he thinks there's not enough time spent on it. This is a topic we discuss regularly and we're going to try work together to change it for next year. Both of us agree that speaking is not concentrated on nearly enough. Funnily enough we were at our mid-year conference last week and the curriculum for JHS is changing - more emphasis is to be put on reading and writing. Not how it should be, in my opinion. I don't understand why being able to read and write the language are considered more important than being able to speak it. It jsut baffles me. The good thing though about my first year selective class is I get them early and can focus on teaching better spoken English, especially as I'll have them (hopefully) for the next couple of years. Plenty time to work with them.

Onto my thoughts on the mid-year conference now. Seemed like a bit of a waste of time to me. Yes, the presentations were useful to see how different people taught, and to pick up the odd idea or two, but I could just as easily discuss with my fellow teachers in the Kenpoku than have the goverment pay for all the Fuku-ken ALT's to get together. Especially when the JTE's said almost nothing throughout. The one thing that came from JTE's speaking was that generally they have very little confidence in their English ability or they have a lack of English ability. I'd consider myself quite lucky with my JTE's, especially my 3rd year JTE, her English destroyed almost all of the JTE's at the conference. The people they got in to lecture as well were absolutely horrible. The first guy looked like Indie Jones Snr (Don't care what you say Brent, Vinnie, and Christian) and while he obviously works at a very prestigious university (Waseba I believe) he started spouting quoting the bible. That's when I got very suspicious. He then followed on to talk about teaching Holistic Growth. With "Jesus's face behind it". Religion and education should be kept completley separate. In fact, I believe in Japan there are some pretty strict rules on it because of the issue of State Shinto in the run up to World War II. I agree with the concept of teaching holistic growth as these kids spend so much time in school it's going to be one of the primary moral educators they have. I just don't agree with teaching it with a hidden agenda behind. This could just be because I'm an atheist. Maybe not atheist, probably more agnostic.

The 2nd speaker then went over data he'd collected in research done 8 years ago. During his lecture he even said that some of the data wasn't valid anymore. He just spouted statistics and left me wondering what the hell he'd actually talked about. The final lecture was a joke, I just gave up with it and went to one of the VIP boxes and talked over issues with a like-minded JTE.

Enough bitching for now. All I seem to write on this is problems I have with the job, but whatever, I'm loving it just now. I'm enjoying teaching, generally, I'm enjoying the people, and I'm enjoying the country and learning the language. I think I'm just starting to feel a little bit of culture shock and in that I'm trying to find comfort with food, drinking, and as Christian put it questionable actions while out drinking...