Working at a Japanese high school

Working at a Japanese high school

I have been working at my current Japanese-high-school for over one year now. Before starting at this high school, I used to work at junior high schools and before that I had worked one year at elementary schools. The elementary schools and junior high schools I used to work at were located in the countryside and the average IQ-level wasn’t very high. Both elementary and junior high schools were lots of fun but the focus of the English classes was more on entertainment and having fun with English than on actually learning practical English. It was a tough decision to quit working at the junior high schools where I had been for about three years but I really wanted to teach English in a more serious and effective environment.

My current high school is located in Ibaraki prefecture in the Kanto region of Japan. Again I have ended up in a quite rural location and the average student is more interested in sports or other club activities than in studying. But now, with a year of experience I have found ways to have (most) students pay attention during class and cooperate while doing other activities than studying from the textbook. In Japan the general idea of teaching a class is that it has to be an entertaining and fun class. Whatever the subject, even math, should be a fun class. How the teachers are supposed to do that has never been clearly explained… Of course it is a fact that when teachers and their classes are interesting the students will pay closer attention to what is being said, and will probably learn more than when teachers are boring and the classes are dull.

Somehow I guess that I am a cheerful person and that I like to crack a joke once in a while, so this helps during my classes to keep the students smiling and paying attention to whatever I say. Compared to junior-high-schools and elementary-schools I am doing less dancing and jumping in front of the class these days and can make simple jokes with words only.

Surprisingly I have been made manager of the soccer club instead of the English club. Actually I’m not sure if I want to complain about this since the most students interested in the English club are a bit nerdish and weird. The students of my soccer club are much more fun, alive-and-kicking…