Teaching Essay
My ideas about teaching English in Japan used to be harder, more rigid and stringent, more academic, and a lot more complex and structured than what they are today. That’s the kind of person I was as a younger man. My ideas were more fixed. I was more certain about myself. But over time my thinking about it has softened. I think it’s a natural effect of age and experience.
At first, I was very rigid. I had an idealistic and grand overview of education in general, of language education as well as the place of language in the curriculum and in life, etc. I described ridiculously detailed plans to affect the classic listening-speaking-reading-writing plan. That path might have been foolish.
Then, I thought hard about Team Teaching, and how best to work with Japanese teachers in the classroom for mutual goals. That path might have been foolish.
After that, I concentrated on topics and themes that I thought were important. Important for communication. I dove headlong into curriculum development and the creation of my own materials. I wrote my own textbooks and tried to tailor them to my Japanese students. I pursued a path between my ideas of what was both important and useful, and my ideas of what the students were able to accomplish. But much of that might have been foolish.
So, then, I focused more enthusiastically on the idea of language function and practicality. My idea was that student motivation would spring from recognizing the use of the language I was giving and modelling and the functions they were/might be called on to use. There was the language they needed for English classes at school, and after that the language they might possibly need in their lives. I worked hard to trim and streamline my teaching to what I thought were their practical needs. But that might have been foolish.
Today, I am thinking more about the English I already hear around me in Japan. When are Japanese using English and how are they using it? I hear and read English instructions everywhere in this country, and I think this is their unique language, not my language. Japan is well-established as an English-using society. Maybe even a multi-lingual one. I don’t think I have to condition my high school students to speak like a foreigner. We have to continue to cultivate the language salad that already exists here. So, I am like a language farmer, or a language manager. I am happy to hear them speak to their best ability. At this point in my career, my role is more to model and nudge students in a direction than to instruct them in a classic sense.