the highs and lows of motivation

If someone would have told me at 10:00am this morning that I would end this day in a positive mood I would have never believed it. The kind of experiences that I am having today while teaching are analogous to many of my thoughts about living here: many highs and a good number of lows. But the one thing that will keep me interested in this job is that you honestly will never know what will happen next.


I woke up this morning feeling pretty high spirited (or 'genki' for those that know the term). My usual routine of finding something to wear while prepping a nice bowl of miso soup went by quickly because of my excitement for the weekend. I got to school just before the morning meeting and looked over my lesson plans for my classes. Three classes to teach and then band practice after school. Should be a good day. Well, my good mood soon crashed after attempting to teach my first lesson. I walked into a room of about 15 high school students who were all busy doing their own things before class. The top three things that fall into this category are: 1) reading manga (comic books) or drawing; 2) listening to music via headphones; and 3) messing around with his/her keitai (cell phone). All of this is fine. All of this is usual at this school (it is technical high school, mind you) but today the lack of motivation in these kids hit me harder than it has since I've been here. I began my lesson (the 'lesson' was a simple game where groups wrote down words that fall under a category...i.e. RED- tomato, strawberry, etc.) and explained the rules in simple English as always. My co-teacher translated and we split the class into groups and I began our simple activity after passing out papers to the groups. Now, I knew that a lot of these guys (the school is 95% male) were just going to put their heads down, listen to music, eat convenience store food, or do whatever else that would keep them from participating. That is par for the course here and I have learned already to not let it bother me when I try to teach the really unmotivated classes. But in this case EVERY single student ignored the activity kept up the laziness/rudeness that was there even before I walked in. In most classes like this here I just take it as a challenge and handle it from there but every bit of my energy and encouragement hit a brick wall with this class. There are lots of 'bad' kids here at this school but I usually get along with them and feed off their energy in really positive ways, but the thing that puts me in a corner with unmotivated students is the COMPLETE lack of discipline at the majority of my schools. Since there is absolutely no punishment system at all for these kids then they have no reason to listen to authority at any time. I have never seen a teacher take any action against a student and I have already had kids jump out of a classroom window as I was teaching and I witnessed one student punch another in the face just to show off in front of his friends (this happened in front of me and another teacher...she looked at me and just shrugged her shoulders). At one school I brought up the discipline issue to a teacher by mentioning possible consequences for bad behavior and she shot me a nasty look as if to say "how dare you question our education system...."

I could go on and on with arguments and examples but the fact is that it's my opinions versus an entire society's beliefs and that's a fight not worth taking on. I really never thought that any school would discard many (if not all) ideas on discipline. The fact remains at some of my schools is that I am the 'token Westerner' and I'm not there to teach but to 'promote internationalization' simply by showing up. This may sound like I'm getting really down on my job but I knew about this stuff before coming here. As my predecessor Jane once put it, "80% of my job is my existence." Right on, Jane.

But here is the other side of the coin.

After finishing up some sushi and tea for lunch I headed down the hall to attend my last class of the day. My co-teacher, Ogawa sensei, and I were talking about lesson plans as we walked to the room and I was feeling relieved that my last class of the week was finally here. As I entered the room I still felt a bit numb from that terrible first class of the day and thoughts like "What I am doing here?", "How am I a teacher?", and "Again, what made me decide to move to rural Japan?" were floating all around my head. So, I walk in to class. I see the eyes of the students all at once light up and am absolutely showered with positive energy and affection. "Ahh, Brad sensei! Good morning! How are you?". It was exactly what I needed to validate my existence here and to kick start my ambitions for doing what I am doing. This was homeroom 35- possibly my favorite class in the school. I see many of them around town and they are all such nice kids. One of them came up to me before the lesson and said (in Japanese) that he saw me at the local Kyoei (a grocery store) last evening. I remembered that I stopped there for a bottle of water and some lettuce after my Japanese lesson. You would have thought that this kid saw his favorite celebrity on the streets by the look in his eyes.

So, I do the lesson (Around the World Jeopardy) and it goes soooo well. At times where my teaching is right on like this I wish that there could be a audience witnessing it. The students are literally jumping out of their seats to answer questions and they're doing very well with some pretty difficult questions for high school kids. I know that they think I have some kind of prize at the for the winner...and that's fine because their motivation is very real.

At the end of the class, the student from before approached me again about my grocery store visit.

"What did you buy there??"
"Lettuce."
"Lettuce??"
"Yep."
"That's very cheap."
"Haha, yep...I'm cheap."

So that's how it is here sometimes. I think of my time in Asia as a long-term adventure because there will be a point when I say goodbye to all of things that I deal with in here, both good and bad. Every day has its challenges...but that's life, you know?