Another relatively unsuccessful attempt to utilize Karen's expertise was the monthly "study session" instituted during the Wednesday morning meeting slot for the English teachers. Several times during the semester she gave short talks on various aspects of the United Kingdom, including "English Poetry" and "English Food and Drink." But these talks were sparsely attended, and several were canceled. On one occasion, according to Karen, "Kitano-sensei told me to go ask Sasaki-sensei to come because they said if they asked him he wouldn't come, but if I asked him, he would. So I did and sure enough, he showed up, but when he stuck his head in the room and saw that it was just me and four female teachers, he said he was too busy to make it that day."
About halfway through the year Karen became very interested in environmental issues in Japan, and she began weaving environmental themes into her team-taught classes. Eventually, she decided to begin an informal campaign against disposable wooden chopsticks on the grounds that their use was depleting the rain forests. She even got several teachers from Yamagi High School, the school she visited twice a week, to go to a local tourist venue to pass out leaflets about the perils of wooden chopsticks, and her efforts were written up in the local newspaper. But for the most part Nishikawa teachers kept a safe distance from this enterprise. They tolerated it politely, and even praised her for being true to her ideals-but those teachers to whom she had spoken on the subject told me they felt uncomfortable, as if they were being implicitly criticized, whenever she would bring out her plastic chopsticks to eat lunch at school. Hayano-sensei explained, "We admire her, but it's not the Japanese way."
Several conclusions can be drawn from Karen's overall experience at Nishikawa. First, there was certainly some slippage between the ideals and the actual implementation of the JET Program. Karen's potential to improve the English curriculum was effectively tapped by only one or two teachers, and JTLs saw little carryover effect on the English classes they taught by themselves. Only two of the JTLs said they had changed the way they taught; the majority noted that if anything they had to "make up" for the time lost to the team-taught class in the remaining two periods a week by focusing even more heavily on grammar. In addition, Karen's integration into the social routines of the high school was minimal, and the confusion and uncertainty over how to use her in class extended to extracurricular activities. Kawakami-sensei reflected:
It seems like just yesterday when we visited a long-term base school to get advice on hosting an ALT. I remember nodding as they cautioned that the hard part is getting to the point where the ALT is living comfortably in Japan or the importance of treating them as one of the staff rather than as a guest. But the reality was different. I didn't know how to react to her most of the time. For example, even though we said we should treat her as one of us, I found myself struggling because there was no clear standard to indicate the extent to which she should participate in after-school clubs, special events, or the many kinds of meetings we hold during the year.
Murakawa-sensei concurred, "Even though she accommodates our way of doing things to a certain degree, it's still a real struggle."
Perhaps the larger story of Karen's visit, though, was that despite their initial reluctance, the JTLs succeeded in providing a positive experience for the ALT. Karen greatly appreciated the numerous kindnesses extended to her and the meaningful relationships that she formed with several JTLs. Both Kitano-sensei and a young, part-time JTL became her female confidantes, and Ueda-sensei became like a father, inviting Karen to his home and helping guide her through her entire stay. In a letter reflecting on the two years he mused, "Since August -1989 I have learned a great deal from Karen not just in English teaching but in life itself. By sharing various activities with her such as talking, teaching, eating, drinking, cycling, hiking together, I have come to feel Karen is one of my best friends. I've never felt any foreigner as close to me as Karen. When I am talking with Karen I find the similarity rather than the difference in her beyond the walls of nationality, race, age, and sex-she lives every minute in this world as I do." Karen found her experience so positive that she decided to renew for an additional year, and then returned to Japan the following year for a visit. Eventually, her JET experience ended up shaping her career: she went on teach English in a secondary school in Britain.
For the Nishikawa faculty, however, such success had a high cost: the mental and physical fatigue of the JTLs who were largely responsible for Karen's visit. In 1993 when I revisited Ueda-sensei and Hayano-sensei, I discovered that they had next requested a married ALT. Ueda-sensei explained: "Hosting Karen was a great chance to improve my English and learn more about foreign ideas, but it was an awful lot of work, not only in the summer with opening bank accounts and all the preparation for her visit, but also just looking after her during the year. We asked for a married couple because we felt that a young single woman was hard to manage. We guessed that a married ALT would be much more stable, and from an emotional standpoint, much easier. And to a certain extent we were right." This second ALT turned out to have a very different personality than Karen. Ueda-sensei continued:
Tracy is very active and enthusiastic. She joined the judo club and she interacts with students a lot. She even has a group of students that she supervises during cleaning period. But that assertiveness has its difficult side too. She actually will bad-mouth other teachers right in the teacher's room while we're talking in English! Once Tracy told me that English education never changes in Japan, and that made me a little uncomfortable, but she has good relations with everyone so we don't take offense even though she's out of place (katte ni) criticizing us. After one open classroom, she got very excited at the discussion session and talked for a long time, exhorting us to study English and speak in English even during class. At the time I supported her and said we should all speak English more often, but not much has changed. We agree with her ideals, but we balance it with the knowledge that it's difficult.
In reflecting on Nishikawa's handling of Karen's visit, I was strongly reminded of Harumi Befu's classic description of a foreigner who is invited to a Japanese dinner party. Befu argues that the foreigner often goes into the situation without knowledge of crucial ground rules concerning reciprocity, modesty, and so forth and without the practice of improvising lines and behaviors in the way appropriate to the Japanese social scene. The result, he claims, resembles Fred Astaire trying to dance gracefully with a Zoo-pound woman who has never danced before. Because the Japanese hosts are too polite to tell their guests they are clumsy people, guests leave the scene believing they have played their part according to the script; but in reality, the hosts have strained themselves to make up for the guests' deficiencies by making their cues excessively obvious, covering up the mistakes made by the guests, and even trying to make mistakes look like charming improvisations on the correct script.'
NISHIKAWA IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Karen and the Japanese teachers and students at Nishikawa interacted in ways shaped by a variety of factors: school type, school size, composition of the school's faculty and administration, the level of enthusiasm of the JLTs, students' demeanor, and the motivations and personality of the ALT. Variation in any of these can produce strikingly different patterns of interaction, as the following examples make clear.
Minami: An "International" High School
Minami High School is a public "international" high school located in a new bedroom community just thirty minutes by train from the major metropolitan center in the prefecture. Only ten years old, it offers expanded selections in foreign language education, and many of its female students (roughly 70 percent of the total student body) go on to colleges specializing in foreign languages. Minami's teachers of English are the most competent in the prefecture; at the time of my fieldwork, even the vice-principal was a former English teacher. Many of the JTLs have lived or traveled abroad, and most are comfortable in speaking English. In addition to regularly hosting AFS (American Field Service) students and accommodatin
g "returnee children," Minami also actively engages in other activities with an international focus over the course of a school year. Shortly before I visited Minami in the spring of 1988, for example, a UNESCO delegation had visited the school. Approached by the prefectural board of education in 1987, Minami's English faculty enthusiastically requested two full-time ALTs.
Because of the school's international theme, Sato-sensei took special care in assigning its two ALTs. Roger, a twenty-eight-year-old native of Rochester, New York, was chosen for his teaching experience and his degree in international studies. Tammy, twenty-three, a native of Chicago, was selected because of her cheerful disposition and love of children. According to Tanabe-san, the match was perfect. Six months into the assignment, Tammy concurred: "It's like a dream come true." In addition to holding a morning meeting in English, the JTLs actively solicited Roger's and Tammy's input about improving English classes in a variety of ways.
In part because of their own English skills and in part because of the generous time allotted to English classes (twice that required by the Ministry of Education), most JTLs were willing to experiment with new and innovative teaching strategies. English classes usually based on translation and memorization were filled instead with an assortment of skits, cooking lessons, and other communication-oriented activities that turned the teacher-centered model of learning on its head. Students even experimented with diaries and critical essays in English, on which they received feedback from their new teachers. For the annual English Recitation Con test, students wrote their own essays rather than reciting one from the textbook. Both ALTS complained that far from being underutilized, their main problem was meeting the many commitments they had made.
Extensive efforts were made to integrate Roger and Tammy into school life beyond their three team-taught classes each day. They took full part in the series of parties and workshops held by the English faculty throughout the school year, and their relationship with most JTLs was lighthearted and collegial. In addition, students were noticeably more comfortable with the ALTS at Minami than at other schools I visited, and this only served to encourage Roger and Tammy to get involved in school activities. Roger joined the judo club, while Tammy coordinated the ESS club. A music fan herself, she was thrilled to find that the ESS students loved to learn and sing the lyrics of popular American songs. Each was assigned to help a group of students during after-school cleaning, and each attended all school events even when they were held on Saturdays. Having forged meaningful relationships with both JTLs and students, both enthusiastically renewed for an additional year's assignment in the JET Program.
Karoo Junior High
Nishikawa and Minami seem like a paradise compared with Kamo Junior High School, located in the heart of a largely Korean working-class district in a major urban center. While many ALTs expect that all Japanese students are highly disciplined, schools with high concentrations of Korean students often reflect the economic, social, and political marginalization of Koreans within Japanese society as a whole. In 1989 the school of loo-plus had a reputation for some of the worst discipline problems in the city. On my first visit to the school to watch a baseball game I was shocked to hear firecrackers exploding at regular intervals from within the school building, and by the time the game was over the air had been let out of the tires of the car belonging to the head English teacher, Yamada-sensei. He explained that while he had succeeded in getting half of the "problem students" to join the baseball team, the other half were jealous that he was paying attention to those who had joined the team: the prank was one way of getting even.
Kamo had reached its low point with discipline problems shortly before my string of visits in 1989, and the principal asked the board of education to transfer several young male teachers to the school. Yamada-sensei was one: at age thirty-two, he would normally have been far too young to assume the position of ninth-grade head of student guidance, but difficult times called for drastic measures. When he arrived, he found that teachers were being routinely intimidated by a core group of students, who were divided into two main factions. These two gangs also regularly extorted money from other students. To make matters worse, the school's language lab had been taken over by one faction and converted into their hangout. At one point the situation became so desperate that in a complete reversal of societal conventions, the authorities opened the school up to parents to show the extent of the problems.
What impressed me the most about this school, though, was the utter dedication of its teachers, who refused to give up on their students. Viewing the students' misbehavior as a cry for love, they deliberately refrained from exerting authority and spent innumerable hours counseling students and trying to repair the social fabric without resorting to heavy-handed correction. Yamada-sensei established a close relationship with the father of one of the gang members in order to gain leverage. One teacher spent the night in the teachers' room every night of the week. Yamada-sensei explained, "Even if students are bad now, we believe they'll be good in the future. If we punish them too harshly, then students won't trust us. We usually give them lots of lectures so that they will realize their mistake."
Into this environment, the antithesis of the stereotype of orderly Japanese schools, entered the ALTs. Ordinarily a school with such severe discipline problems would not have invited an ALT, but Yamada-sensei was passionate about teaching English conversation and he was determined not to let the students' behavior sabotage his opportunity to bring in native speakers. The other two JTLs, however, were not interested in team teaching, forcing Yamada-sensei to take complete responsibility for the visits. He managed to arrange for twice-a-week visits from ALTs posted to a local board of education, though the specific ALT would change from one semester to another.
What was most instructive about this situation was how these ALTs reacted. Yamada-sensei recalled: "Our school had two ALTS, and they were completely different. Rebecca came barging in and wanted to change everything to her way of thinking. We all thought, 'Whoa, so this is what Americans are like.' But then Marian came, and we expected the same thing, but she was more Japanese than we were. All the other teachers and even the office staff and principal loved her. Myself, I can work with either type, but Marian was much more acceptable because she was sensitive, so they gave her lots of presents when she left." Yamada-sensei showed Marian's picture to his classes and had all his students write letters to her be fore she even arrived. By the time she appeared at the school, everyone was bubbling with anticipation. But neither Rebecca nor Marian were much involved with after-school activities, and though they loved working with Yamada-sensei they found the students to be extremely unruly in class.
It was with the third ALT to visit Kamo, an American named Richard, that disaster finally struck. Richard was quite irritated by the disruptive classroom behavior of some eighth-grade students who would hang out windows, talk with their neighbors, surreptitiously read comics or play handheld electronic games, or even move about in the back of the room. He found it virtually impossible to carry on the team-taught class. But Richard was even more nonplussed by Yamada-sensei's strategy for handling the disruptive students. Day after day he stood by helplessly as Yamada-sensei stopped class repeatedly to exhort the boys in the back of the room to pay attention. Sometimes he would ask one of the offenders to stand and would proceed to lecture him at length, completely disrupting the flow of the carefully devised lesson plan. Rarely did these approaches have much of an immediate effect, and in several instances Richard, against his better judgment, intervened. Once he lost his temper and screamed at the class at the top of his voice, "Shut up!" This worked like magic-once; by the next class period nothing had changed, and subsequently he found that raising his voice had only a minimal effect. On another occasion Richard actually walked to the back of the room, grabbed a boy by the shoulders, and pushed him firmly into his seat, but afterward it seemed that the class was even more unresponsive than they had been before.
One day,
Richard decided he could take no more. He stalked out of the room in the middle of the lesson and went straight to the principal's office, where he complained that Yamada-sensei was unable to control the students. Because Yamada-sensei refused to resort to appropriate interventions such as physical punishment or suspension, Richard argued, there was no clear deterrent to the students' behavior. He also informed the principal that because teaching under such circumstances was useless, he would not return to Kamo until the situation had improved.
Yamada-sensei, however, was equally befuddled by Richard's insistence that he send the offending students to the principal, a strategy he believed to be simply a self-serving means of passing on the problem to someone else. For him, discipline began with a caring relationship, and effective control rested on warm interpersonal relations between himself and the offending students. Yamada-sensei knew that the class behavior of these students was a symptom of a much larger problem, and he was not about to sabotage his schoolwide attempts to mobilize peer and parental pressure to change these students' behavior by lashing out at them in anger or punishing them. Such a confrontational approach, he was convinced, would only lead these students to resent authority figures more deeply: it would do nothing to address the underlying cause of that resentment.
Yamada-sensei's disciplinary approach is consistent with Gerald LeTendre's and Rebecca Erwin Fukuzawa's descriptions of the philosophy underlying school guidance (shido) at the junior high school level. LeTendre notes that the standard disciplinary techniques used by Japanese teachers-patient illustration of desired behavior, interviews with the offenders, reflection papers, formal apologies, after-school lectures, and informal counseling sessions-all rely on learner and teacher having an emotional tie based on a shared set of goals and values. An effective teacher-student relationship requires trust, and it assumes that the teacher is guide and the learner is follower.6 Fukuzawa elaborates that discipline in this model is assumed to be largely psychological; that is, students reflect on their misdeeds until they "understand" (i.e., internalize the school norms and routines).' We should note that this normative model does not take into account the various attempts by Japanese teachers to come to terms with what they perceive as an increasingly unruly population of middle school students. More than a few ALTs have reported witnessing severe physical punishment, such as students being burned with a cigarette butt or slapped in the face, and Yamada-sensei himself contrasted the approach his school had taken with that in a neighboring school where teachers regularly used threats, intimidation, and physical punishment to keep students in line.'
Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program Page 25