Vale Nagata Shōgyō

Like many Hyogo JETs, I have been teaching at more than one school. Kobe Takatsuka has been my base school, and until now I have also been teaching one night a week at Nagata Shōgyō, a commercial high school. Nagata Shōgyō is something like a Tuart College or Canning College, in that it caters to mature-aged as well as high-school aged students, though in this case most of them will be entering the workforce rather than going to university. Students can elect to do a three-year or four-year course, and in the final year they must take English Oral Communication. I taught with Tsuji-sensei, who was always willing to let me do my own thing as far as lesson planning was concerned, and would always look for ways to incorporate my material into his exams. To me, this is the mark of a good team-teacher and JTE: allowing the novice to take the lead, take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them.

As you can imagine, the classroom dynamics at a commercial high school are very different from a normal senior high school, given the diverse ages of the students as well as diverse levels of interest in learning English. Last year, I taught a pretty wide spectrum on both counts: students ranging from 16 years old to 60, some of whom were very shy, some of whom were very loud, some of whom were always willing to participate, and some of whom would sit facing sideways and listen to their MP3 players for the entire lesson (and flee the room whenever it was time to play a game). The 60-something fourth-year student was always keen to participate, and at the end of the school year he gave me a thank-you card.

My 2008 fourth-year class

This year, or rather, this term--because it was sadly my last at Nagata Shōgyō--my classes were much smaller, much more genki, and much more interested in my lessons. I don't know how much of this can be attributed to the fact that I was much more generous in doling out KitKats, but in any case the attitude of the students was superb, and it motivated me to constantly look for ways to keep them entertained and engaged. I really appreciated their willingness to work with me, rather than against me as can often happen in Australian classrooms. It's a shame that I was only able to teach them for one term.

My 2008 third-years

But all good things must come to an end. The Hyogo Board of Education reduced its intake of new JETs for the coming year, which meant that it had to reallocate those JETs (like Emma and me) who won't be going home in August. Emma will be teaching at Seiryo as well as Maiko from August, and I'll be teaching at Akashi in addition to Kobe Takatsuka, which means that a different ALT will take over from me at Nagata Shōgyō from Term 2. So last Wednesday I taught my last classes. I gave my farewell speech during the staff meeting (don't tell anyone, but as I don't speak a word of Japanese I had to "adapt" an existing speech I found on the Internet), and then exchanged farewells with the students in the lessons. Both classes had prepared beautifully-decorated farewell cards for me, which was very touching. I'll miss them a lot, and hopefully I'll be able to see them next year at graduation.

Emma and I are staying with the JET programme for at least another year, but last Wednesday was a small glimpse of what returning JETs must be feeling as they deliver their valedictory speeches in their schools' gymnasiums or staff rooms, and wipe clean their blackboards/whiteboards for the last time.