Different Roles

In America it is up to the parents to instill values into their children.  If a child turns out bad people assume that they were not raised “correctly” by their parents or guardians.  Here in Japan the responsibility of raising children and turning them into productive adults is divided a little differently.  My students take classes in moral education as part of their normal school lessons.  Important daily habits like always brushing your teeth after eating and eating balanced meals are strongly reinforced at school.  I have heard that if a student gets into serious trouble the police go first to the school and then to the parents.  Here, if a child were to behave badly I think that people would ask what school they went to and would think that it was a bad school for not teaching the children how to behave properly. 

One day, while I was sitting in the teacher’s room at junior high one of the first grade (7^th grade) girls came into the teacher’s room to talk to the English teacher.  He was also one of the first grade homeroom teachers.  All of the teachers at my schools are assigned to one of the homerooms.  I don’t know what all their duties are, but at this school those teachers handle the homeroom periods in the morning and before the kids go home or to club activities, eat lunch with that class, check their daily diaries, make announcements that concern that class in the morning meeting, accompany that group on school trips, and are just generally responsible for those kids and their activities. 

So this little girl comes in and before long I realize that she is being yelled at.  Now, he wasn’t shouting, but he did raise his voice (which is rare for this teacher) and sounded really mad and went on for quite a while.  She looked like she was about to cry and I just felt really uncomfortable sitting there at the next desk.  I was wondering what she could have done to deserve such a talking to.  And I couldn’t understand enough to really tell.  At the time I thought it might have to do with English class (where she is one of the weakest students), but now I’m not so sure.  Because a few weeks later it happened again. 

This time it was the Japanese teacher who was yelling at her.  And she is one of the nicest ladies ever so it was really odd to see that side of her.  This incident happened right after the students took their term tests.  From what I did pick up on in the one sided conversation I can only assume that she did abysmal on most if not all of her tests.  Again the student stood there and looked miserable and responded on cue and averted her eyes.  And it was at that point that I realized why I felt so uncomfortable.  I felt like I was watching a parent scold a child. 

I felt like one of my friends had just been called over by a parent and was being severely scolded for something.  Or that I was watching one of my friends eat into one of their kids for something I didn’t understand or didn’t think was all that bad.  I’m sure everyone has been in this sort of situation.  Watching someone scold their children in public is never fun and always makes me a little uncomfortable (unless they are being scolded for annoying you, then it is slightly satisfying).  That’s something you expect to happen at home, not out in the open.

And the same was true here.  I didn’t expect to see something like that at school.  Now she wasn’t being paraded around in public or anything.  She was in the teacher’s room and it was after school so there were fewer students about.  They weren’t doing it to publicly embarrass her.  It also seemed out of place to me because I don’t normally associate that kind of tough love with teachers.  I expect it from parents or a guidance counselor.  And then I remembered that we don’t have counselors in schools in Japan.

I started thinking back to my high school days and how much work my counselor did for us.  On top of general encouragement for all and individual attention for those in need of someone to talk to, she did a TON of work in order to help us all succeed in college.  She gave us scholarship handouts and reminded us of deadlines.  The teachers here have to do all that kind of work themselves on top of their normal teaching duties.  I already knew that sometimes my teachers have to miss a day of school to go deliver forms for my students to take high school entrance exams.  But it didn’t dawn on me until then that that was the kind of thing I would normally associate with a counselor’s job and not a teacher’s. 

One of my third grade students asked me the one day, “What were you doing yesterday?”  I told her I was reading a book and asked her the same question.  “I was taking a test,” she answered and by that she meant her entrance exam for a High School in Kumamoto City.  “Was it difficult?”  “Yes.”  Then she turned to the English teacher and asked him the same question.  He laughed and said “I was waiting for you!”  She smiled and said, “Thank you for yesterday!”  It was adorable.

Everyday my students write in their school diaries.  Each afternoon they write the next day’s schedule in the notebook, along with any preparations they are supposed to have done for that class (homework and such).  Before they turn them in the next morning they also write a little note to their homeroom teacher about how they are feeling and the other things going on in their lives.  Concerns, hopes, achievements, progress they are making, that kind of thing.  And every morning the home room teacher collects them, reads them, and writes a response to every single one of the students. 

Now this isn’t optional; the student’s have to do it or they get in trouble.  But to me, it seems to help the teachers play the role of parent.  An actual parent would probably talk to their child over dinner or during some other family time, but the teachers are almost always busy.  They certainly don’t have time to seek out every student for some quality conversation time.  But the teacher’s really connect to the students through these journals.

This week several of my schools let out early to allow for parent teacher conferences.  In Japan, it is not the parents who come to the schools.  Instead the home room teacher goes and visits the student’s homes in order to meet with the parents.  I’m not exactly sure how these meetings go but I imagine it really lets the teachers see what the home life of their students is like.