What goes up... well let's leave it up there for a while.

We’ve been doing a lot more writing in my classes this school year than we did previously. This means that I have a lot more marking to do between classes, but it also means that I get to read about my students more thoroughly.

We had students write about their future dreams this week in class. This entailed that I read paragraph after paragraph about students wanting to either be a teacher in the future because they liked a particular subject and enjoyed working with children, or they wanted to be a pharmacist because they wanted to help sick people; I estimate about 60% of assignments were completed as such. There was a fair bulk that also aspired to be doctors and lawyers (not such a big stretch considering the academic focus of this school), and the rare gems who wanted to be concert piano players and cartoonists. There was also a student who wanted someday to be a pilot, which I thought was cool.

I think that my favourite of the lot however, was this one:


I want to be a magician or a juggler. Because I like to surprise people. When I told my friends, they said “if you become a magician, you won’t get enough income.” It is not a well-paying job. But I would still like to be a magician.


I have to make efforts to realize my dreams. For example, the No. 1 juggling club is in the University of Tokyo and the No. 2 is in Kyoto University. It is too difficult for me to enter these schools. But, I’ll never give up! I will realize my dreams!


Thank you for listening.


There are a few things that I like about this piece of writing – my favourite being the acknowledgement of the adversity he faces and the persistence in spite of this. Not only do his friends not support his dreams, but also the future prospects of the career itself don’t appear to be very self-sustaining. Even the pursuit of the dream itself appears to be unrealistic in his eyes as the academic requirements to enter Tokyo or Kyoto University, which will allow him to truly excel in his chosen profession and to study with the best of juggling talents, seems beyond his means (last year, only one student from Iwaki High School was able to enter each of these universities respectively).

There is also the irony, which I can’t help but mention, in attending such a rigorous school as Iwaki High School in pursuit of a dream to study juggling, of all subjects, at Japan’s top academic universities (where most students go to pursue successful and highly distinguished careers in areas such as medicine).

I’ve been doing some reading on autonomous learning practices lately and I’m also very appreciative of the fact that he’s taken charge of his learning. He knows the prospects; he has a clear picture of where he needs to go and what he needs to accomplish this; and I saw him the other day from a second-floor window, practicing his juggling in an empty classroom after school – a further demonstration of his persistence in achieving his dream (as a once juggling hack-enthusiast myself, I can also say that he was pretty damn good).

Anyway, I probably won’t be around long enough in Japan to see him realize his dreams, but the inspiration is nonetheless comforting.

Thanks for listening.

Shokuinshitsu

“Shokuinshitsu” is what we call the teacher’s room in Japan. For some reason, this is a very difficult word for me to remember. It is my hope that by using this word to name this blog, I will be able to remember it better.

The shokuinshitsu is usually a fairly quiet place – even depressingly solemn at times, where teachers often have their faces buried in books, or are busy typing at their computers. At home, teachers generally have their own classrooms and students will come and go according to the classes they’ve been assigned. Here, the students are put into homerooms where they stay for the entire day. It is the teachers who move from room to room. When they are not teaching, they are usually at their desk in the teacher’s room. In such rare cases as myself, I have an office away from this room.

I was in the teacher’s room the other day when suddenly, a teacher burst into the room, cell-phone in hand, and shouted something to the other teachers in the room. Immediately, all of the teachers reached for their own phones and began to gather together, speaking quickly and waving their hands around. It’s times like these where I am lucky to find someone with the patience to translate events for me.

As it turns out, many universities in Japan post entrance results online, but for whatever reason, Tokyo University does their postings by bulletin board. As such, our school sent a teacher to drive the 3.5 hours to Tokyo to check the results. The eruption of excitement in the shokuinshitsu occurred when the teacher received a photo from Tokyo that showed that of the 5 students from Iwaki who applied to the university, one had been accepted to the school.

Tokyo university is regarded as Japan’s best university and for a school to have a student pass the entrance exam, this makes the school look very good. In fact, there has been quite a bit of disappointment over the last 3 years because no Iwaki students have made it into the school. Iwaki also had a student pass the Kyoto entrance exam, which is considered Japan’s #2 university.

Both universities are National Universities, which are subsidized by the government. They are considered to be of better quality than the private alternatives and are also much cheaper. I think generally, private university tuition is about $10,000 for one year, while public schools cost about $6,000 -$8,000.

I’ve also heard from a few teachers that the difference between high school and university is much different than it is in North America. In North America, the typical high school student will occasionally skip class, maybe do an hour or two of homework each day, and still manage to get into university, where they will be overwhelmed with the intense workload of post-secondary education. In Japan, high school is the time when students must work hard to get into a good university – they will arrive at school before 8, stay until 7pm studying, then go home to eat and go to bed. But when they get to university, the workload is actually quite manageable. I learned this when I was talking to a teacher who played in a couple of bands, was a member of a theatre group, and I think played kendo as well. I asked him how he had time for all of this and he said that university in Japan is not so difficult.

Even though it is the end of the school year, students only get 2 or 3 weeks off, and so, next year’s freshmen have already been announced. I will write more about this in the next few days, but one teacher mentioned to me, upon seeing how excited these new students were, the irony of their excitement: “if only they knew how hard they will have to work for the next three years…”