A Closer Look

This is an honest look at what I do everyday:

I am an English teacher at all the elementary schools in Ogimi. Even though I work every day, I only appear at each school once a week. In elementary school, English class is a break from the normal routine, and most of the kids view it as play time. I think it's fair to say that I am just an extra curricular teacher. So when "real" school stuff needs to take place, I'll have canceled classes for the day. Like on Wednesday. Grades 1-6 were taking some test, so I did not do anything. And it's this "not doing anything" that best summarizes my job.

When I first got my welcome DVD from Okinawa, I was expecting the camera to follow JETs into the classroom and provide a glimpse of what was expected for me as a teacher. I had never done any kind of teaching before before and I had no idea how to approach the job. Instead, it was over 2 hours of following different JETs to parties, some culture lessons, nice vacation spots, etc. I remember commenting "Looks like JETs don't teach". Looking back, that DVD was almost spot on.

My contract requires me to show up at school from 8:15-4:00 every day, regardless if I teach a lesson or not. Out of that almost 8 hours, I teach about 3 classes a day, each 45 minutes. So, about 2 hours and 15 minutes of my 8 hour day is working. And I would say half of that 2 hours is fending little kid's fingers away from my private places.

What am I doing for the rest of the time? Nothing. But I'm pretty good at not doing nothing. I enjoy spending most of my time in the break room, which is a tatami room with table for coffee and snacks. If you were to show up at my school, you would most likely find me there either studying Japanese, reading a book, or asleep.

Yes, I sleep on the job. But I didn't start it! I got the idea when I saw another teacher asleep at her desk. Then I saw a teacher asleep on the floor in the snack room. I even once went to the town hall and my superintendent was asleep in his chair. So I guess it's okay. Nothing beats a power nap, anyway.

JET has a motto of "every situation is different", which is true. I know people who work at only one high school and work 10 hour days. To those people, I say, I take my 2 hours of work very seriously.

So why do people quit JET? If it pays so much for so little work, who would want to leave? I think half of them are people who just want to go home. They get tired of not being able to read the signs and not communicating well with people at school. I think the other half are people tired of doing nothing. JET is a great 'figuring-out-what-to-do-with-your-life' job. There is, after all, plenty of time to think about it. And it seems to take people a year, or two, or three, to figure it out. These people are tired of being a human tape recorder and want their own classroom. That kind of thing.

Next week is my last kindergarten class for the school year (school years go from April-March in Japan). This is awesome because I won't have a kindergarten class for 5 weeks. That means I get a 3-day week for 5 weeks!