i found this book at the back of my
cupboard yesterday it's a book
filled with goodbye messages from
japanese students i used to teach i got
this in my
last week as an english teacher now i
don't want to brag too much but you'll
get a sense of
uh what a great english teacher i was
and the positive impact i had just by
reading out
a few of these messages i've got one
here from yooka who says dear chris
hello chris thank you so far it was
always fun
of course it was watch for a body it
will become big
vip de big what
this was written what four years ago and
i still don't know
what that means i mean to me vip de big
sounds like a chronically overweight
rapper but perhaps is alluding to the
fact that at the time i was teaching a
lot of students and teachers were
worried that i was putting on weight
just because my diet
was pretty awful it does seem to be a
recurring theme
amongst a few of these messages i've got
one here
from karen who says dear chris thank you
for teaching english until now
it was fun to be able to club together
it's important to point out for legal
reasons
i didn't go clubbing with underage
students she is just referring to the
after-school english club and she
continues
please be stomach much more healthy in
the future
please be stomach much more healthy in
the future uh well i did heed her words
i'm not yet
entirely stomach um but it's just nice
you know reading through these
heartwarming comments um reminds me of a
simpler time a time when i
used to teach english in a room to
thousands of students
and today given that i've discovered
lots of stuff from my past i thought i
would discuss
teaching english in japan because it's a
popularly requested topic
and i've got a lot of stories and
experience from my time teaching
with over 2 000 hours of classroom
experience that i can draw upon
i'm not going to hold back on my
opinions today on the teaching methods
the teachers the students the
environment
i'll try and cover it all so you know
what you're getting into
if you should follow a similar path now
i'll be open up front about the fact
that i didn't come to japan because i
was excited
about the prospect of teaching english
like 80 percent of people
i came to teach english in japan because
i was excited about the prospect of
living in japan
in my rare defense i did take a short
course on teaching english as a foreign
language at my
university and my degree was in business
and english linguistics
so you know i can speak really good at
english words i i know all the most best
words
that there are that there is this bunch
of torn and tea stained documents why is
there tea stain on it this is my
original jet application my
application for the japan exchange
teaching program which i also discovered
at the back of my wardrobe i didn't even
know i had this still now i know the
criteria for getting on the jet
programme or getting a job teaching
english in japan
i can see that my application has none
of those things
i mean it's so bad that i even wrote
about a holiday that i had in dubai
as an example of culture shock and how
i'd be able to adapt to culture shock in
japan
i was culture shocked by dubai because
it was hot and there's lots of sand
i hate sand that's not even culture
that's just a geographical fact
and for the section on japanese language
ability um
yeah it's just blank there's nothing
there nevertheless with my wealth of
cultural experiences
i got on the jet programme i somehow
passed the application process and i
ended up with the role
as an alt assistant language teacher and
i got placed
right here in a beautiful rural area
where absolutely nobody feels the need
to know english
now i've had a lot of people criticize
the jet programme over the years because
they say
that that money invested in the foreign
teacher could be spent on japanese
teachers it could be spent elsewhere
in better ways but lord knows they need
more foreigners
in rural japan i once dated a japanese
girl from that town and when it came to
meeting her mum her mum had never met a
white person before despite being 50
something
so i met her and she was actually so
scared of me that she hid behind her
daughter she was scared
as if i was some sort of rabid dog who
would rip her arm off
which you know i wouldn't do that i
would that's not sort of thing i would
do to be fair i did think about going
along with it and being like oh yeah
but i didn't do that because i'm not
mental the senior high school where i
worked had about 1200 students it was
pretty big and they were all aged 16 to
18.
within that school they're about 12
english teachers and 120
teachers in general and i quickly found
out when i arrived that of the
dozen teachers that i was going to work
with only eight of them actually spoke
english the others had
somehow slipped the net uh and i don't
mean they spoke english badly i mean
they just genuinely
really struggled to communicate in
english which was quite a surreal
situation
to be i never held it against them they
were all over 50 years old and i suspect
when they did apply
to teach english the extent of the
language test must have just been
what is your favorite color red
you're in however one of the things i've
been taught during my long tedious
induction in tokyo during the first week
was that you should never
correct a teacher in front of the
classroom lest you undermine them and
make them look inferior in front of the
class
so i spent my first few weeks conflicted
dying inside because i wasn't sure if
stepping in and telling the teacher they
were wrong would destroy
my fragile relationship with my
colleagues early on
you know which is really important so
let's do a 10 second pop quiz and see
what you would do
choose your own adventure a ignore the
situation and carry on or b
tell them it's wrong and change it
answer now well done the answer is big
because what's the point of even being
there if you're gonna stand in the
corner and do nothing
and you know what i found by correcting
them it never burned any bridges
and they were grateful for the input the
worst classes though weren't with
teachers that couldn't speak english
they were the ones with teachers who
just didn't know how to use me
in the classroom and certainly in my
first year when i lacked confidence and
i wasn't very assertive
more times than not i was used as a
human tape recorder
standing in front of the class repeating
an endless list of words
and then having students repeat them
back out loud to practice their
pronunciation
pheasant shrubbery
consequences by the time i was done i
must have said
every single word in the english
language at least four times if you're
already having a bad day and you find
yourself standing in front of a
classroom repeating words over and over
wondering why you spent 30 000 pounds on
a university degree you know you do
start to question if you've taken the
right pathway in life the only thing
worse than being a human tape recorder
was the actual tape recorder oh god we
had audio tapes in the 90s voiced by
awkwardly enthusiastic yet ultimately
unskilled american voice actors and they
didn't speak like
real american people i've met i've met
an american person once and it wasn't
like that it was like
aliens had crash-landed in a garden in
oregon
belonging to a couple who were arguing
and the alien looked through the window
and tried to mimic what they were saying
in slow motion hello lucy i am home
so where were you this evening john well
lucy i was working at the office again
i saw the messages on your cell phone
john i know
what you've been doing well gee golly
gosh lucy get off my back
we're not going over this again i have
had enough
of your poor quality attitude john i am
leaving you
comprehensive question one why was lucy
suspicious of john
r is a [ __ ] nightmare by that point i
was practically begging to be a human
tape recorder again there were the
teaching materials themselves which had
been written by non-native
english speakers and came packed full of
fun spelling errors where you had to
decide on the spot whether you went
along with it
or tried to correct it on the fly
although some of them were
simply beyond repair like are you aware
of your own defect
although to be fair it is a great
conversation starter for a first date
once i had to read out a chapter from a
textbook called
soccer balls to afghanistan about how a
japanese school
had handmade 200 soccer balls to ship
off to afghan children during the
conflict which is brilliant and noble
until i had to read out the phrase
when we showed the children the bulls
they gave us big smiles
it was like a magic imagine reading that
out
in front of 40 teenagers in a big deep
booming voice
and then trying to maintain some degree
of composure
which i simply didn't do and i just
laughed and looked like a sadistic
bastard
thankfully though after my first year
with a few hundred hours of classroom
experience under my belt
i did become more proactive and
assertive and teachers became more
confident
leaving me in charge and letting me do
my own thing and that was really
when i was in my element because look i
made a magazine
split splendid magazine yeah
my unwavering hatred of japanese english
textbooks made me
just throw them out the window not
literally unfortunately
that i should have done but i started
doing practical things i started getting
students using the english they'd
learned to do things like short films
doing sketches or in this case making a
magazine and this was great students
spent time
um researching a topic uh then writing
it out
adding some photos in and there's some
there's some good stuff in here we've
got hai al miyazaki
um some handsome comedians oh yeah
mcdonald's now we're talking it did mean
a lot of extra time and effort for me i
mean we did have to put this together we
binded it and we gave every student a
copy but it was worth it the students
enjoyed it i had fun
and the teachers thought i was a genius
for unleashing this groundbreaking
concept the concept of
having fun in the classroom still even
if i was vip to big
not all classes went smoothly like a
gladiator charging into the arena you
always knew
how things were going to go the moment
you set foot in the classroom
and about 70 of my classes i was given a
hero's welcome
to rapturous cheers and applause
genuinely it was brilliant i'd walk in
everyone erupted and you just knew it
was going to be an amazing hour the
students
saw my presence as an opportunity to
break from the norm and do something
that wasn't just read out of a textbook
the other 30 percent of the classes
were not so good um i'd walk in and feel
like a convicted war criminal
because it would just be silence and
it'd be awkward and you'd feel like
[ __ ] what have i done one problem you
find in japanese classrooms is
students are often reluctant to put
their hands up uh in the uk if you take
a class of 30 students
and a teacher asks a question you often
get you know seven or eight hands up but
in japan
it was never more than two in a room
with 40 students
and it seems to be in japan there's this
culture around not making mistakes the
idea
of making a mistake is really bad and
that starts off early on especially
in the classroom and one of my most
awkward memories of this
happened in my first few weeks as a
teacher when i was doing a class
on british desserts now one of the
things we're encouraged to do as an
english teacher is to introduce your
culture into the classroom in this case
british culture and for this particular
activity i gave them a list of british
desserts and the photos to go with them
then they had to use their dictionaries
to look up the words and try and work
out which one
went with which suffice to say i made a
spectacular blunder by adding
spotted dick into that list hilarity
ensued and then after that activity
students had to memorize the words
and then go up and spell it from memory
on the chalkboard
but the hardest dessert to recall and
spell on the board was the ice cream
dessert
knickerbocker glory and to be fair not
even i really know how to
spell that but the only boy in the class
bold enough to write it was a really
shy kid at the front of the room who
kind of kept to himself he didn't talk
to anyone
and for some reason he felt this this
was his moment
so he came up to the chalkboard and i
said to him right the word is
knickerbocker glory and he picked up the
piece of chalk and he wrote on the board
and this is true knicker poker g
which to me sounds like a charismatic
master of texas holden poker
uh and no sooner had he sat down that
the class erupted into laughter
they found this hilarious as they could
see that it was a spectacular error they
could see that it got it completely and
utterly wrong and i went along with it i
said oh it's not nico poker g
um but that would be a great name that'd
be a cool name and amidst the laughter
all of a sudden there was a loud banging
noise
and the guy had thrown his textbooks all
over the room it banged the [ __ ]
table
he started kicking the desk it was
really awkward and the
whole room just went silent straight
away the teacher had to jump in and say
oh i'm sorry you know i'm sorry
uh about this everybody stopped laughing
but it made me realize my students often
don't try
to make mistakes why stand out and get
laughed out you can just
keep your head down and do nothing
fortunately that experience did happen
early on and for the next two years
whenever a student put their hand up or
took a risk regardless of whether they
got the question right or not i would
encourage them or reward them i'd give
them a high five i'd say well done
anything to show that to try and fail is
an important part of language learning i
wanted them to adopt a risk-taking
mentality you know the sort of
risk-taking mentality you'd expect from
someone like nick or poker g as you can
probably imagine i wasn't overly serious
i didn't want students to feel
intimidated when coming over to me
and just chatting with me in the
corridor i didn't want to repeat of my
ex-girlfriend's mum by all accounts
and because they were senior students on
the brink of making big life decisions i
love chatting to them about their
dreams and aspirations in life i
remember one time we did a lesson on
life goals
as an initial example i talked about how
when i was a kid when i was
your age i wanted to be james bond but
unfortunately for various
reasons that that didn't work out and
the class genuinely felt sorry for me
that i'd not been able to fulfill my
dream of becoming
a fictional character nevertheless the
next day i went to the staff room and i
went to my desk and i found this on it
it's a poster for the james bond film
skyfall there's a little note on it that
says dear chris
i think you can still make it don't give
up your dream not to regret
from bomb girl how amazing is that i
mean this alone just shows you how
awesome the students are and you know
what every day
i look at this poster on the wall and i
know if i believe in it hard enough my
dream
of becoming james bond still won't come
true
objectively speaking was i a good
english teacher
of course i [ __ ] was i made a
magazine didn't i no in my first year i
was awful i lacked experience i lacked
confidence and i spent far too much time
sitting in the staff room at my desk
with my head down but by my second year
i could just walk into a classroom
at a moment's notice and conjure up a
lesson plan out of thin air i knew
dozens of students on a first name basis
and i got on really well
with all the teachers all in all i
really did love the job by my
second year and the teachers did a
fantastic job of making you feel way
more important
than you actually were i remember in my
second year i had to go and get the
contract for my new year from the
intimidating but undeniably suave
school principal and he handed me the
contract the paper contract like this
as if he were bestowing me with a
legendary sword
of some sort and he looked at me and he
said in perfect english for the first
time i'd heard it he said
we need your help again and i said
you're not gonna lie
i took the paper and it was
spectacularly theatrical i felt like a
samurai who had just liberated
a town from ruthless bandits it's still
the closest i've come to having my
last samurai moment so unsurprisingly i
signed up for a third year after that
but unfortunately by that point the
school principal had left
and we had a new school principal who
wasn't quite as dramatic
and he handed me the paper and he said
go and teach english and i went yeah
right then
um suffice to say i didn't sign up for a
fourth year but fundamentally by that
point i'd done everything i could and i
no longer felt like i was pushing myself
or challenging myself
anymore and a lot of my favorite
students who graduated have moved on
and i felt like it was time for me to
move on as well if you do ever
teach in japan though do hold on to you
know things like this
because reading over comments like the
ones in this book did take me back to a
time in my life that
brought me a lot more joy than i ever
realized spending my time alongside
fantastic teachers and students who made
every day worth going into work i can't
say whether or not i had any real impact
as a teacher but i'd like to think for
the 2000 or so hours that i stood there
in front of the students in the
classroom i at least made their time
studying the english language just that
little bit more bearable
if i could go back in time to 2011 and
meet my past self
writing this jet application form in the
university dorm would i tell him to go
through with it
absolutely i would tell him it's going
to be worth every minute of it i would
tell him
it's going to change him for the better
and perhaps above all i would tell him
not to put his [ __ ] cup of tea on the
application form because that's
just an absolute disgrace isn't it so
those are just a few stories from my
three years as a teacher i will be
talking about more
experiences in the future but if you do
have any comments or questions about
teaching in japan
fire away in the comments below and i'll
try and answer as many as i can
but finally for more extra
behind-the-scenes content do check out
the abroad japan patreon page but for
now guys as always many thanks for
watching
i'll see you next time