A whole lotta lovin' or a handful of nothin'

Matt and I do two types of teaching in Japan - Language Consulting, the fancy-pants name for teaching solo, in companies and Assistant Language Teaching, which is (in theory) team-teaching with a JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) in a school.

In my opinion, team teaching is much more difficult. Every day I have to navigate the cryptic mine-field of the JTE lesson plan and stop myself from taking over the class preparation or screaming, "Just tell me what the f@#$%k you want!" (damn Aries. Must. Take. Control). It goes against the grain of my very nature to resist this temptation, but I am too aware that such obstreperously foreign behaviour means social suicide in the Junior High School Teacher's Room.

Solo teaching, on the other-hand, is a fart in the park. Even if you're not prepared for the lesson, you can usually pull something out of your arse and no-one is any the wiser.

There are many different species of JTE.....

* The extremely organised Angels who welcome your ideas and value your input when it comes to teaching English (what the hell they do with their other classes is their business);

* The well-meaning scatterbrains who rely on you for their lesson plans because they are either 1) disorganised or 2) lazy, have no idea what they want, a list of things they don't, but end up letting you do whatever the hell you were going to do in the first place. These little monkeys have the annoying feature of being enormously popular with the kids once you actually get them to class (its this breed of teacher I particularly want to give the smackdown - can't hate 'em, sure can't love 'em either...).

* The insidious saboteurs who really don't want you there (for a variety of reasons, some personal, some cultural) and treat you like the dreaded "Human Tape Recorder" - "Do that! Say this! No, not that! This!";

* The disorganised control-freaks with no discipline skills, who change lesson plans during the lesson and expect you to come up with new activities on the spot (then deride you after the fact if you can't). Meanwhile the kids are showing off their Gets! impersonations to imaginary friends outside the window or planning the next "Crack-shooter" on the ALT (involving a prayer-like hand position, an upward motion and an unsuspecting crack).

.....and all the funky colours of the rainbow in between. And hell, that's just the Junior High School teachers! The Elementary School system is a whole different bunny-warren. Strictly speaking, Elementary School Teachers are not English teachers, so usually they speak less English than I speak Japanese. Which is frankly pitiful.

Some teachers make a genuine effort to welcome you (one teacher I taught with had his students so well-trained that when I entered the room, he said; "Standing Obation!" to which all the kids stood and applauded me) but others stand to the side, watching the foreigner entertain the children with a hatful of rabbit tricks.

Most of the teachers we teach with are bliss and we've become friends outside of school with some of them. But when it comes to frustrations felt as an ALT, difficult teachers are far worse than difficult students. Unfortunately, difficult teachers do not respond to the "Look of Death". Life would be a hell of a lot easier if they did.