Opening the doors to communication.

I have 2 projects in the works (well, none of them are started yet but it should only be a matter of weeks at the most) and they consist of giving tools to people to communicate. So far so good. But as we all know, some people (*cough* teenagers *cough*) sometime tend to abuse of their communication channels. I`m all for free speech and I`m not fond of censorship but sometimes, some comments or things said are just not having any positive or constructive consequences.
The first project is simply a pen pal one. I want some of my Japanese students to write a letter in English to a student in Canada. I`m convinced that my Japanese students` letters will pretty much all go like ; ``Hi! My name is JD and I like candies. Do you like candies?``. The only worry I had was about the letters coming back from Canada... As you probably know, Canadian teenagers tend to be a bit more... hmm...``knowledgeable`` about birds and bees, funny cigarettes and these kind of things.But I`m probably just paranoid; the students taking part in this exchange will probably know how to behave and won`t try to corrupt the nice and  innocent Japanese students. So no big deal.

The second project tho is a bit more ambitious. While discussing with a parent which also happens to be involved in the school`s publishing committee and the PTA (I think), we agreed that there would be a need for an online tool that would allow students, teachers, parents, alumni and everybody involved with the school to communicate about various subject. At the same time, that tool would promote the use of English in school related discussions.
Part of the solution is an online forum where all these people can exchange knowledge. When we say forum, we also say ``threads`` and ``posts``. All this usually involves moderators...
I have no problem being a moderator and making sure that the forum is not used in any bad ways (attacking someone`s reputation, cheating...) but I can only do it for posts that are written in English (or French, but that won`t happen). I`m pretty sure that most of the posts will be in Japanese because it will naturally be more efficient for most of the users even if we try to promote English communication.
I`m pretty sure that everyone will behave and use the forum for positive sharing of ideas and building a better community but all we need is one person with bad intentions and everything could turn into a  PR nightmare. We would be hoping for the official school`s webpage to link to our forum. Even if it would not be managed by the school itself, any drama happening on the forum would have consequences for the school. So we need to be very careful.
We need to think and discuss more to figure out what level of security we really need and if the whole thing is a good idea or not. I think the possibilities of a tool like that could be amazing and it would be a shame to take it away from this community even before it comes to life because we are scared of what one individual could do.
To be continued...

Procrastination

(La version francaise est ICI)

(from pro- ‘forward’ + crastinus ‘belonging to tomorrow’)

It seems that procrastination is really a world wide phenomenon. I’m pretty sure a good part of any country’s population “suffers” from it. I’m trying to rationalize that weird human behaviour and I’m having a really hard time doing so. Where in the evolution of our specie was procrasting an advantage? How did it end up being such a strong tendency for so many?

I can kind of understand why we tend to do it; avoiding painful or difficult tasks, being overwhelmed by the amount of work to do and being scared to take the first step, wanting to relax now… But that surely didn’t help us catch more mammoths.

Which leads me to wonder if our society of instant gratification made the problem worst. I guess we kind of loss that threat that we’ll starve during winter if we don’t stock enough food during autumn. It seems that pretty much whatever people do, there is a way for them to get bailed out.

Consequences would usually be one thing that gets us going… but few things really bring consequences that are truly worth not forgetting about. After a student gets detention a couple of times, he just doesn’t seem to be more motivated to do his homework the next time; “well, I prefer relaxing now… worst thing that could happen is I get another detention. I survived two already. No big deal.” And he goes back to playing video games…

So some people try to give themselves punishments or rewards in order to motivate themselves. Even if it is a pretty low level motivational tool (punishments and rewards), it works very well on kids and, it seems, on many adults too. The tricky thing is that to follow through with a “self punishment”, you need to be very disciplined… or masochist (how different these two things are from each other is open to discussion).

Ok… Discipline! Parents (some of them at least) try to teach their kids discipline, teachers try to teach their students discipline and most adults are trying to kick themselves in the butt to be more disciplined. It’s not easy. But it seems that good discipline is the key to achieving great things (or maybe obsessive-compulsive disorder is…). Being disciplined is being able to listen to the good little voice inside of you that reminds you about the consequences and being able to ignore the other voice that tells you to slack off and have fun now. No wonder why it’s so difficult to have a good discipline. I think there are two things that can help us be a bit more disciplined: our education and being intrinsically motivated.

How do we become intrinsically motivated? By caring, first; Which is not a given for most teenager thinking about school. Secondly, by having a passion for something. I think passion is one of the strongest weapon against procrastination, but we rarely have a passion for everything important that we should be doing. And finally, by keeping  the (good or bad) consequences in mind and being really concerned about them (so we kind of go back in a loop there).

I really wish there was a secret recipe to beat procrastination. When our students would be immune to Tony Robbins, we know there is no easy solutions. In the end, I guess the best we can do is the same as for everything else: find a decent balance between all the extremes. In this case,  between working too hard and mental health. It does seem that culturally, Japan has a tendency for the first one (which opens another huge discussion…), but teenagers are teenagers and some seem to be very fond of their mental health.

That being said, I do have some of the most motivated students I ever had right now… I think I’ll go ask them some tips…

____

Hello, my name is JD and I’m a procrastinator.

Will you join my support group?

Some humor from professional procrastinators: Grad Students!

Bullying

Please tell me about your experiences (or I’ll take your lunch money)

(La version francaise est ICI)

Bullying takes many forms, from the big kid punching the smaller kid for his lunch money to the 13 years old girl sending anonymous hate mails to her unpopular classmate. In both cases, it can have devastating effects on the victims (and actually on the bully as well).

I know that bullying is a big problem in Japan that is sometimes accentuated by a culture of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. I also know that many suicides are related to bullying here. What I don’t know is “how” it is happening. What form it is taking. I have not witnessed any bullying first hand in Japan (and I hope I won’t) but I know other JETs have. I want to hear about you.

It seems that the most frustrating thing is that JETs (and teachers, for that matter) can’t do anything about it. The bullies appear to get away with it without facing any consequences. A teacher was telling me that a bully can’t be expelled or suspended from a school because he has a right to be educated (I think the school is actually missing a very important opportunity to educate that kid). So instead, the victim is the one trying to avoid school. The kid wants to stay home but he/she gets in trouble for doing so. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but is the bully really facing no consequences at all while the victim is forced back in the lions cage without any support?

It would also seem that parents of victims will sometimes try to hide that their kid is being bullied because it is a shameful thing. So they would definitely not try to push the matter with the school to find solutions.
On the other hand, I also heard that some parents might go talk to the school’s administration about a dispute between two “friends” instead of trying to deal directly with the other kid and his parents. Making the problem bigger than necessary by doing so.
Which scenario is more likely? Does it depend on the school? On the region? Did you observe any of this?

Back in Canada, I didn’t spend a lot of time teaching in big high schools so I haven’t witnessed much physical bullying. I think the kids are now more inclined to act against and condemn bullying. The “third player” is fulfilling it’s role more and more. (There is the bully, the victim and the 3rd player is the “witness”. If he is a silent witness, he is actually encouraging and supporting the bully, I think this is mostly what happens in Japan; leaving the victim isolated and without support. If the witness speaks out and affirms that he does not approve of the bullying, the bully is now the one being isolated and maybe thinking about changing its ways.)

The problem that I witnessed in Canada was actually young girls having psychological warfare with each other. It often turned out to be 2, 3 or more girls against one who was singled out as different or not as “cool”. At first, the lonely soldier tries to fight back but as the war becomes more intense and the big weapons come out (anonymous hate mails, starting atrocious rumours, getting more and more people to “hate” her…) she ends up needing a lot of support from adults. Luckily, I didn’t see this too often but it did happen.

In Canada, every school as a social worker or another professional who helps students work out these situations. As far as I know, there is no equivalent in Japan. Is there?

I would really like to know more about your experiences with bullying (in Japan or anywhere else). Please tell me in the comments below, or you can email me (jddinjapan@gmail.com) if you don’t want to make your story public.

My next move will be to look into the situation of England. I think they had a big anti-bullying campaign some years ago. I’ll update this post if I find anything interesting.

Snow Days and the Fight Club Equation

(La version francaise est ICI)


When I looked out the window last week, I saw something magnificent: Snow! Ok, it wasn’t everywhere on the ground and only in the many tall mountains surrounding Urasa but still, this is visible snow in October. Even for Quebec City, it’s a rare occurrence.

First snow of the season

Of course, with it came the cold. Last week as been surprisingly chilly compared to all my previous experience with Japanese weather (it will actually be my first winter in Japan).  I’m not too worried about the cold though since Quebec’s coldness can probably only be matched by Siberia and Antarctica.

Seeing snow in October reminded me of a time, back when I was in high school, when they actually closed our school on the 31^st of October because of snow falls. They very rarely ended up closing the school, so this was a very exciting moment. What student doesn’t like a snow day!

Sometimes, I wondered why we didn’t get more of them. Actually, teachers like them too! Sometimes it can be a bit annoying when an important test is due soon and you are not done preparing the students for it or if you worked very hard on a lesson plan and that day was the only time when you could teach it. But most of the time, any teacher won’t complain about a snow day.

I can’t tell for sure, but I would think that school principals don’t mind them either. An extra day off from all the crazy stuff they have to deal with is probably welcomed once or twice a year.

So I still want to know why we didn’t get more snow days!

Maybe the weather itself is one of the reasons. Actual snowstorms that make transports and walking outside really dangerous just don’t happen that often. But still, there were some days where I felt like it would be easy to justify closing the school. As a matter of fact, on these days, there were often half of the class missing because the parents decided not to send their kids to school. Of course, my mom would not be one of those parents; if the school was open, I was going. That’s it.

The cities’ readiness to deal with snowstorms is a big factor in deciding if the school closes or not. In Quebec, most of the main roads would be kept in pretty good shape even in very bad weather conditions. But in Victoria… ah! …Well, to be fair, I think I saw snow only 3 times during the 4 years that I lived there. But it was still kind of funny to see the whole city shut down after a 3 centimetres snowfall.

Ultimately, it’s apparently the school bus companies that have the final word on whether they will offer service on a given day or not. If they choose not to operate on a specific day, the schools would be pretty silly to stay open for only the students who can walk to it.

So how do the bus companies actually decide to operate or not? I’m kind of picturing the guy in his office doing actuarial calculations to see what are the probabilities for a bus to crash and how much it would cost them in lawsuits versus how much money they would lose by not working on that day… kind of like in Fight Club when Edward Norton explains what his job consists of. (I hope everyone as seen Fight Club at least once!)

But do the bus companies really loose any money when there is a snow day? If not, we should really get way more snow days!

If I put my juvenile wishes aside. I do understand that it would be a bit irresponsible to call snow days every time there is a snowfall. Especially since the people that are most affected are probably the parents. If their kids can’t go to school, what are they supposed to do with them? These parents need to go to work and the kids are not all old enough to stay home by themselves all day.

That being said, it might be a good excuse for these parents to take a day off from work and spend quality time with their kids… I think many families really need that.

100% - The Perfect Score! - A+

(La version francaise se trouve ICI)


*This week I won`t be talking specifically about my work with the JET Programme. Although, the matter of subjectivity with perfect scores was not really an issue when I was teaching science. Now that I teach English, I need to deal with that sneaky lady: subjectivity.*

Is a perfect score something that we should give out often, once in a while or never at all? Of course, if it’s a math or science test with multiple choice answers and the student gets them all right, then, obviously, he gets a perfect score. But I mean when there is any hint of subjectivity in the evaluation; is it ok to give a perfect score for something that exceeds our expectations?

I guess we need to start by wondering why we evaluate. Is it to give a constructive retroaction to the student in a way that helps him learn more and get better with time? Is it so we can measure his performance and compare it with those of the other students in his class, his school, his province (prefecture, state), his country… his planet? Is it to give his parents a feedback on how he is doing at school? Is it to give universities a measurement of the student’s value and his abilities to perform in a specific undergraduate programme? Is it to give everyone a sense that something as been learned and to say: “See!? We didn’t only waste time in the last month. I made a measurement of the learning done and translated it into a number (or a letter)”.

Depending on where you work and on your personal perception of education, the truth might be any, some or all of them.

Let’s be a bit utopian and pretend that the evaluation’s purpose is to help the student progress by showing him his strong and week points and by motivating him to persevere. I think that giving a perfect score can be interpreted differently by different students:

Some might think that they’ve reached perfection.

-“Ha! Ha! Right! Perfection… pfft!”

After all it IS a “perfect score” so they might not work as hard next time, thinking that they already know all they will ever need to know.  (Actually, I would really be surprised that many students would think that way, especially A⁺ students …)

Some other students might see a perfect score as a well deserved reward for working very hard (it can be dangerous if the student actually DIDN’T work very hard and got a perfect score). It might give them a feeling that the world is just and hard work pays off in the long run (ideally, there should be a choir of angels singing at this moment).

But let’s not forget our good old friend; the Pygmalion effect. By perceiving the student as a great achiever, he (or she, as is often the case in more “subjective subjects” (by the way, school is structured in a way that facilitates the success of girls and most boys actually struggle in that environment… maybe I’ll elaborate more in another post))… sorry about that… So, as I was saying… uh, go check the Pygmalion effect on Wikipedia ( :p ).

I think giving a perfect score can be a good thing. If the student really deserves it of course. If perfect scores are handed out like candies, it just becomes a joke and the course looses credibility.

- “So. You ask. If a student does an amazing work and really stands above the other students in the class, he should get a perfect score but if he does the same work and 6 other students in his class do an equally amazing job, then none of them should get a perfect score?”

Uh… I guess I would answer; -“it depends”.

It depends on the class dynamic, the course itself, the age and maturity of the students, how incredible their work really is…

So here comes “subjectivity” once again: she’s never really clear, we need to interpret the signals. Even if there is technically no obvious right or wrong answer, we better choose the right one or she’ll get mad and bring it back every time she can.

I think a good way to keep “subjectivity” at a distance is to have very well defined objectives. It’s even better if the students understand clearly what is expected of them. That way, by becoming a bit more “analytical”, we should be able to give each student his deserved appreciation. After all, isn’t the world supposed to be explained by elegant equations eventually? (For more theoretical physics...)

Without a clear syllabus, a course could become like a “wine appreciation” course where the only objective is to “learn (!) to appreciate wine”.

- “Here. What do you think of this wine?”

-“Oh! I really appreciate it!”

-“Good work. You get A⁺.”

What’s your interpretation of a “perfect score”? Do you ever give any?

========

A little side note to finish: I remember that my art teacher in my first year of junior high school (secondary) said that she would never give a perfect score because a work of art can never be "perfect". It is simply too subjective. 

My sister had the same teacher when she began high school 6 years later and I`m pretty sure she got a couple of 100% scores from that same teacher.  I guess that "subjectivity" is almost synonym to "opinion", so it is not surprising that people change their way of thinking.

In her defense, my sister is truly a phenomenal artist. You can see some of her work HERE. 

Tokyo Orientation and Paying For It

(La version française se trouve ici)


Any foreigner in Tokyo needs a map or something to provide orientation. It is HUGE! Just go on google map and look at how far it expands. Imagine yourself walking in there and trying to find a specific street (by the way, to add to the foreigner’s confusion, they name the city blocs and not the streets in Japan). It seems too big to be functioning but somehow, it works out.

 I guess the same thing can be said about the JET Programme: With about 36 participating countries and over 4000 JETs in Japan, it is a huge programme.  If I was to try to provide a “map” of the programme, I would  need to include three ministries (The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)), the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR) and the Contracting Organisations (the boards of education and the schools actually hiring us). I would also need to include all the foreign Japanese embassies that take part in the selection process and the preparation of the new JETs.

I won’t go into the details of the roles of each one of these organisations but I think you get the picture: It’s kind of a big deal.

We could feel it at the 3 days orientation seminar at a luxury hotel in downtown Tokyo (is there anywhere in Tokyo that is “not” downtown?). Whether they wanted it or not, at some point, everybody wondered how much money was involved in all of this (the free flights, the seminars, the luxury hotel, the transportation, our salaries and, as we would find later; the things provided by our contracting organisations: for some people it might include a car, a house (!), furniture…)

View from the room

What I’m getting at is that JET is a publicly financed programme.  If I’m not mistaken, the Japanese economy, like many others, is not doing so good (I actually stumbled upon an article of the New-York Times today about that). A lot of people are looking at ways to cut down the expenses and the JET Programme is one of their target. About a month ago, I read a very interesting article from Debito Arudou about the situation of the JET Programme and why it is not meeting the expectations.

If I grossly oversimplify that article; it says that the programme costs a lot of money and that Japanese students are still not learning English. But it’s not the JETs fault, it’s the Japanese education system’s fault.

Ok… so if we can’t teach English to the students, what are we doing exactly? Why are we here? Why are they still spending so much money on this thing?

Well, the official purpose of the JET Programme (as stated in many of their official documents) is to : “Promote internationalisation and mutual understanding through foreign language education and local international exchange activities.”

Even before I left Canada, I’ve been told that a way to see the job was as a “cultural ambassador”. So, is this a way to justify everything or does it actually means something and has a real application? -(By the way, if you ask a question with “or” in it to a Japanese person, they’ll answer by yes or no! More on this in another blog post about language).-

I think the term “cultural ambassador” does mean something and that our presence here is not pointless: When I was teaching sciences in Canada, I realised that 95% (if not more) of what I teach will be forgotten by most of the students a year later. (How much do YOU remember from your high school science classes?) So why should we keep trying to put these facts and equations into their heads?

The point is not for them to become proficient scientists while they are in high school. The point is for them to know that these things exist and become curious about the world around them. We want to ignite some passions and get them interested (which means that the way we teach is very important). If they have that curiosity, they will pursue their learning fuelled by their own motivation and will make career choices accordingly. Anyways, the introductory classes in most college and university science programs tend to teach all the basics again to make sure everyone is at the same level.

So the point is to get the Japanese students interested and curious about foreign cultures. English is a mean to do that. If they have the spark and decide to travel abroad after high school, they will figure out a way to have functional English.

That being said, I think there are ways for us to be more than "promoters for holiday destinations" while in front of the class.

More on that later…

Purpose

(La version française de cet article se trouve ici)

I've been given an amazing opportunity to learn more about pedagogy, internationalization,language, cultural identity, different school systems, curriculums and myself (!) with a job that involves teaching English to Japanese high school students.

This blog's purpose is to share my observations with anyone who is interested in the aforementioned subjects and, hopefully, get your take on them. I'd like input from other JETs that are doing similar (or completely different) observations and from people back in Canada who want to discuss the similarities and differences of the school systems and cultures.
Please, don't hesitate to leave comments and give your point of view so we have a discussion going.

I also plan, in the next week, to do the same blog in French. I think I'll sometimes translate my posts from English to French and sometimes it'll be the other way around. (Hopefully, some day, I can also do it in Japanese! Maybe next year.) I'm guessing the writing style should be quite different whether the original post was in English or a translation from French. In either case, I definitely won't win any Pulitzer.

I think it's time to get blogging. It's already October and I have yet to start writing about everything that happened since August when the JET journey began in Tokyo...