Japanese Education: My Life as an International School Teacher in Tokyo

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Academic Disclaimer: This blog is a class project for my Visual Anthropology class; as such it is for educational purposes only. All photos posted here were taken taken by myself unless otherwise noted.

At Tokyo International school, setting up for playtime with
preschool students (ages 1-3).

Teaching at an International school is challenging, rewarding and mutually beneficial for teachers and students. Since my particular school is centered around educating Japanese children from ages one fourteen (preschool to high school) the English language, communication can be tough. Moreover,  culturally derived forms of child rearing such as discipline, comforting and rewarding efforts are bound to clash with one another.

Classes include two teachers, one of Western ethnicity (American, British, Australian and Kiwi) and one (the Native English staff) and one of Japanese ethnicity (the Japanese staff). Because of differences in culture and language pragmatics, the Japanese and English staff members can often come to disagreements on how to approach a situation or problem and what words are okay to use in English as they may have different connotations in Japanese (i.e. "crazy" = "psycho", so the word "active" is recommended as a replacement; sometimes "salary man," the English equivalent of the Japanese sarariiman," can be contrived as a negative term and so "office worker" is advised to use in its stead; saying a question is too "hard" for a student can be offensive to a Japanese parent, so the English staff is advised to replace it with "challenging").

Disciplining is obviously a huge part of educating young children, as they must learn at a young age what passes as acceptable behaviour and how to co-exist peacefully with one another. This peaceful co-existence is especially valued in Japan, since their is huge value placed on wa (harmony) and amae (dependency on others). Yet Eastern and Western approaches to discipline differ in general practice. While the majority of Japanese people like to avoid conflict as much as possible, unless the child is severely disrupting the class, Japanese teachers will more often than not let the children alone. However, since it is an English school, if the child is heard speaking Japanese through the majority of the class, the Japanese staff will reprimand the child in the Japanese language. I, however, will intervene a bit more frequently if a child is causing a scene because I fear it will escalate and the child will believe his or her behaviour is acceptable if I do not. 

Rewarding is also done in a very particular and careful way in Japanese schools. In the West, it is very appropriate to give a child who went above and beyond a special sort of approval. Although it would be wrong to say competition is not at all valued or does not exist in Japanese society, it is certainly more accepted and encouraged in the West. My school, for example, works on a point system where the highest possible value to earn by the end of class is 3 points, then 2, then (only given rarely) 1 point. The 3 point value can only be given once a month to classes with 5 students or less to ensure that the children in larger classes are receiving an equal chance. Also, if a teacher wants to make a special remark about a student while speaking with the parents after class, it is more acceptable to have something positive to say about every student. In general, I have really learned so much about similarities and differences in American and Japanese practices that this job has been extremely beneficial to me and my understanding of the Japanese psyche and culture.