catbarf on 4/4/2013 at 00:41
Wow! I can't think of any questions off the top of my head, but this is some cool stuff and thanks for sharing.
Yakoob on 4/4/2013 at 03:00
Holy crap, that looks awesome! I'm kinda jealous!
I have A LOT of friends who do the Jet Program (teaching English in Japan), few who do the same in Korea, and one in Vietnam. I've actually been considering that myself, though I feel like a "cheater" because I frankly want to do it more to visit, live and immerse myself in a new culture moreso than because I want to teach. In fact, I somewhat fear I might be a bad teacher since I don't have much patience for stupid people (tho I'm getting better at it, especially dealing with dealing with web development clients hehe :P) Does that make me a Horrible Person™ ?
Did you face any similar dilemmas? What were your reasons and how did that change over time? Did you have a hard time building a "social life" if you didn't speak the native tongue (or did you / was it english mostly)?
(I do remember you posting about teaching a few times so, AFAIK, you genuinely went there to help out and teach the kids rather than just to immerse in a new culture).
Also, how strenuous was the program?
PigLick on 4/4/2013 at 04:17
Very cool stuff, what an experience!
rachel on 4/4/2013 at 08:34
That's a pretty darn cool set of pics :) What a trip it must have been... Please do share more! :D
demagogue on 4/4/2013 at 10:34
Quote Posted by Yakoob
I have A LOT of friends who do the Jet Program (teaching English in Japan),
I taught for JET too, Nagasaki-ken (little island called Tsushima) in 2000-2001.
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few who do the same in Korea,
And at a hogwan in Seoul Korea in 2000. ;)
Not Nam though, although I visited there.
I forgot to mention in my OP that the law school I taught in this year (Peace Law Academy, PLA) is actually in Thailand, the city of Mae Sot, on the border with Burma, because you can't have a law school focusing on human rights law inside Burma for obvious reasons; it's still effectively a military dictatorship despite the recent openings.
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I've actually been considering that myself, though I feel like a "cheater" because I frankly want to do it more to visit, live and immerse myself in a new culture moreso than because I want to teach. In fact, I somewhat fear I might be a bad teacher since I don't have much patience for stupid people (tho I'm getting better at it, especially dealing with dealing with web development clients hehe :P) Does that make me a Horrible Person™ ?
I say go for it. To take the JET program, everybody knows it's pretty much just about Japan wanting to get Westerners to like it, since lord knows they don't design a particularly good program for teaching kids English (and Korean hogwans are a transparent cash grab from parents). But the program (JET) does give you a lot of money and time to travel around, has ken meetings (parties) every month or so, and provides a whole network of other JET people around to make it easy to travel around & soak up the culture. Then you want to go back to your home country & keep thinking about Japan.
So Japan gets something from you, you get something from Japan, and the students get a break with a more fun class than math & history... Wins for all. But what happens is that you can't help but get to know your students, and some of them will genuinely be interested & get into the class, and God help you, you'll end up teaching them some useful things in spite of everything. But when you're there, you don't feel like a horrible person because everybody is there for basically the same reason you just mentioned; you're young & want to see the world. Not to mention, you quickly find out that Japan- & JET program-bashing are the official pastimes when teachers get together to hang out and party with JET program money. They're all greedy horrible little monsters having a grand old time together, the whole lot of them.
All in all though, I'd stand by the "wins for all" statement; it's a great program and I recommend it if you want to try, given exactly your interests. Teaching other places (like Korea) would be about the same without all the perks.
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Did you face any similar dilemmas? What were your reasons and how did that change over time? Did you have a hard time building a "social life" if you didn't speak the native tongue (or did you / was it english mostly)?
(I do remember you posting about teaching a few times so, AFAIK, you genuinely went there to help out and teach the kids rather than just to immerse in a new culture). Also, how strenuous was the program?
Well teaching at a law school to college students is different than teaching English at a middle school in Japan. At the law school, these are Burmese students that are going to go back to their country and risk their life to press for human rights, constitutional reform, land rights, etc. So the stakes are higher. I taught English to middle school students because I wanted to travel around Asia & live there, and I got just what I wanted out of it. So my first experience a decade ago is a lot more like what you're talking about.
I taught human rights to law students because I've been working for a human rights NGO for the last few years, concentrating on rights in Asian countries, and I care about reforms in Burma -- that and I'd like to be a law professor someday. So when they asked me if I'd like to teach some courses at PLA, I thought it'd be a good opportunity. I'm in a different stage of life where I've put in my time romping around the globe for fun, and now it's more about building a career. Well ok, there was also still a little romping involved. Also, law classes, especially international law topics, are usually more interesting than something like English. You're always dealing with crazy cases and it involves almost logic kinds of puzzles that are interesting to explain and work with.
Uh, social life... Everything was in English. I just learned a smattering of Burmese. We had activities with the students constantly ... festivals, birthdays, holidays, a movie-night or two every week, sports everyday after class... And I could hang out with the other teachers and chat and go out. Sometimes older lawyers would visit from inside Burma, either to teach or take training, and they were the most interested in taking me out for drinks and talking with me about life in the West, from the high (constitutional law and democracy) to the low (tv shows, sex, what we drink). So it was particularly fun when we had visitors like that.
I wouldn't call the workload strenuous. They gave me a schedule of classes, and I put together the classes myself. Half the fun for me was actually planning the classes, since it re-taught me a lot of interesting topics... And I learn again when I'm teaching them and they ask good questions & force me to be clear on things. I had to shoot at their level, which is a bit lower than a US undergrad, so I had to pace the classes out rather slowly & carefully... But that gave me the chance to really get to know the material well. And I'll know when I haven't done my end when they don't get something, since the main thing keeping them from understanding in most cases is the quality of my teaching. So it's a humbling experience sometimes.
SubJeff on 4/4/2013 at 22:04
That's great dema and it looks to me like it would be a life-changing experience. Props to you for doing that, it could really do some real good for the wider community, heck even the country/world. I don't think I could do something like that now (I'm too stuck in my ways at the moment) but years ago I did a small stint teaching English in Taiwan. That was great and I'd recommend it to anyone thinking of going out to the Far East to teach English.
There looks to be one other Westerner in the photos. Was that another teacher? How did you find out about this and then get into it? Of all the places to teach human rights law... its pretty far out! Where next? Pyongyang? Riyadh? :p
demagogue on 4/4/2013 at 22:41
There were a few other Westerners & Japanese teachers that came through, maybe 10 or so in my time there. It's the kind of thing some high-profile professors & activists like to do to appear really engaged with Burma, although it sort of screwed with the schedule when they came in, since they interrupted our long term classes with their week-long things. But overall maybe it balances out.
The Western girl in the pictures, Catie, is from San Francisco and was actually the English teacher. She just graduated from LSE, although she's about 15 years younger than me so sort of on a different plane.
The reason I got involved is because the NGO I've been working for as a human rights lawyer, Human Rights Now, is supporting the school, and sending teachers to teach courses is part of that. And I kept writing research reports for my NGO while I was there.
Next for me is a Rotary Peace Fellowship in at Int'l Christian University in Tokyo to do research (the sister school of UN University there). I'm shooting to be a international law professor focusing on the Asia region, so the goal is to just stay in academia at this point. And if I stay on as an academic at UN University that might be pretty cool.
Yakoob on 5/4/2013 at 05:23
Quote Posted by demagogue
I taught for JET too, Nagasaki-ken (little island called Tsushima) in 2000-2001. And at a hogwan in Seoul Korea in 2000. ;)
Oh damn, you've been around! How did Korea compare to JET? I ask because...
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I say go for it. To take the JET program, ... So Japan gets something from you, you get something from Japan, and the students get a break with a more fun class than math & history... Not to mention, you quickly find out that Japan- & JET program-bashing are the official pastimes when teachers get together to hang out and party with JET program money. They're all greedy horrible little monsters having a grand old time together, the whole lot of them.
I guess I should have mentioned I actually studied abroad in Japan for 5 months, and my Uni was a small buddhist-funded school that is literally 50% Japanese. So I'm not at all unfamiliar with the country and its culture. And while I've been dying to revisit, I know I'd never want to really live/work/settle there for a longer time.
But also because I already did the whole "living in Japanese culture for extended time" I think it might be more interesting to go somewhere else, hence I was thinking Korea (one of my best friends in particular loved his english teaching there).
ALso, I hear all the programs (JET included) actually pay like utter crap, but it's ok since you get all your expenses paid for at least so it's basically like a foreign vacation with part time teaching on the side.
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Well teaching at a law school to college students is different than teaching English at a middle school in Japan.
Ugh, I could not handle middleschool. Ideally I'd prefer teaching adults/college students since those are mostly people doing it because they want to, not because they're forced to, so easier to handle. But that probably wouldn't be an option without some prior teaching experience/credentials. I remember what little shits most of my high school classmates were in elective classes...
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(teaching law) ... They gave me a schedule of classes, and I put together the classes myself. Half the fun for me was actually planning the classes, since it re-taught me a lot of interesting topics... And I learn again when I'm teaching them and they ask good questions & force me to be clear on things ... But that gave me the chance to really get to know the material well. And I'll know when I haven't done my end when they don't get something, since the main thing keeping them from understanding in most cases is the quality of my teaching. So it's a humbling experience sometimes.
YOu know, that actually gets me thinking, maybe I should look not so much programs for teaching english but maybe programs teaching a field I am actually interested/experienced in (film / game programming / web development)? Like I said I've never had a big inkling to teach, but I might actually enjoy it if it's in my area of interest. But then I'd probably need more proper teacher credentials/experience compared to english-program which requirements basically boil down to "speak english? HIRED!"
