Japan « University of Venus

Posts Tagged ‘Japan’

ESL, GenX, Higher Education, Japan, Students, Teaching, Women

Being Creative in a Safe Space

In Vistas from Venus on 2010/04/09 at 09:00

Last night, Mizoni, one of the Japanese students in my Pronunciation class, stuck out her freshly painted bright red toenails, and wiggled her toes, chanting “Red Sox! Red Sox!” as she pointed to her bare feet. I chuckled, but then got worried; this was an ESL class. Maybe she didn’t know the word for toe nails! Wanting to fulfill my teaching responsibilities, I launched into a vocabulary lesson on toes, toe nails, nail polish, socks, and baseball.

My sense of responsibility to teach spills over into my administrative role as well. The time has finally come when I am no longer the youngest person in the room at my many weekly meetings. Younger women are looking to me for leadership and advice. I want to deliver.

I was recently assigned a mentor and I met with her over tea this morning. I have been reflecting with her on my strengths and weaknesses, trying to figure out what I want to achieve in my work life, and what skills I need to develop to get there. She assured me that she doesn’t have the answers either, but that she could provide a safe place for me to talk about it, which is really all that I am looking for. For me, having an opportunity to discuss these things with a colleague is extremely valuable. Although academia is about learning, on the administrative side, we are expected to just figure things out. There seems to be an illusion that our work lives are more collaborative than those of the faculty. In reality, problem-solving is usually a solitary activity. People are often hesitant to take the risk of openly brain-storming in public. A mentoring relationship provides a safer space for sharing ideas and sparking creativity.

Being a mentor is making a commitment to someone in a caring way. A mentor prepares her protégés for changes that are about to come. She helps them understand change and provokes discussion about how to adapt to the changes when they do come. A mentor demonstrates the skills she has learned. A mentor asks questions, like “What have you learned from this experience?” and “How useful was it?” Mentors help protégés realize their potential. They also demonstrate that personal credibility is as essential to success as skills are, perhaps even more so.

In many ways, mentoring is like teaching. I established a teaching persona to demonstrate my credibility as a leader of the class. I create a safe space for students to take risks. I provoke students to reflect on their experience. I enjoy their humor and their unique personalities.

After her meeting with me this morning, my mentor was going off to have a manicure and pedicure with another young woman that she works with. I wonder if she chose Red Sox red.

Meg Palladino

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ESL, Faculty, Higher Education, International, Japan, Students, Teaching

When Entering the Village, Obey the Village

In Vistas from Venus on 2010/02/26 at 09:00

Every fall, I teach a course at a Japanese women’s university. These young women come to the US from their University in Tokyo to study English and American culture. When I step on to the campus, it is like stepping into a different world.

Each one of the students seems to have the same haircut: long hair with long bangs, a few streaks of lighter blonde breaking up the black. They are all wearing colorful Crocs on their feet, sweat pants and hoodies. They are all 19 years old, and they seem to have similar names: Yuka, Yoko, Yuki, Yukari, Yukiko, Yukako, Yuriko, Keiko and Reiko, Mio and Miho.

They appear cheerful, shy and polite. It takes a long time for their personalities to emerge, and for me to know them without a name tag, or if they change seats in the classroom.

Each student is perfectly punctual, and everyone has done her homework. They giggle together quietly, or sing songs until I close the door. A hush descends on the class that is difficult to lift. For 90 minutes, I talk and they listen. I ask them questions, and I have to fish for answers. Unless I call on students by name, my questions will be met with silence. They want to be called on. They never volunteer to speak.

In this environment, my usual casual, communicative teaching style doesn’t work. If I ask the students to work in groups, they speak Japanese. If we try to have a conversation, it consists of me asking questions, and them answering the questions. I become a lecturing, drill and kill, round-robin instructor. I feel like I am doing a terrible job, and not connecting with my students at all.

But at the end of the semester, they are sad that the class is over. I finally know their names, and I know that Yuka has a pet turtle and Yoko likes snowboarding; Reiko loves reading, while Keiko is a fantastic singer. They know about my family, how I spent my weekends, and the last movie I saw in the theater. We have a party with cake, and everyone takes pictures. The students cry, and tell me how much they loved my class. I get high evaluations on my teaching, and I realize that I am going to miss them.

To teach is also to learn. Even though we are in America, I am in their territory. I am the Outsider. I need to change to meet their expectations, or I will not be successful here. Teaching these students has taught me to dig a little deeper and look for more subtle differences than those that I would find in my other classrooms.

Meg Palladino

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GenY, Higher Education, Japan, Students, Study Abroad

Hard to get in, easy to get out

In Guest Blogger, That's So Next Generation on 2010/02/24 at 09:00

Today’s post is from guest blogger Leslie Ann Hynes, undergraduate student at Simmons College in Boston. This is the first in our That’s So Next Generation series, highlighting voices from the generation born after 1980 (GenY or Millenials)

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Through an agreement with the university my study abroad program is associated with, my fellow study abroad students and I were able to take courses taught in English and offered to both Japanese and overseas students. I opted for one such class, an introductory course to Japanese popular culture.

There was no homework. The readings, it seemed, were merely suggestions, and while the only students on laptops were the international students, the professor never seemed to mind when people text messaged or got off topic during our group conversation time. The syllabus was vague about the grading requirements, or even the assignments to expect during the semester.

In the end, we had a single assignment: an eight to fifteen page long take home, open book exam. When another American student and I, unnerved by how easy this was, approached our program director to ask what was going on, he explained that it wasn’t uncommon in Japanese college-level classes for the entire course grade to ride on the final exam. We were horror-struck: our entire grade would depend on one assignment? We didn’t even know what sort of grader the professor was, what he looked for in a paper.

One day after class, we stayed back (something only the international students seemed to do) to ask those questions to the professor, himself. What kind of work was he looking for? Should we cite our sources? If so, what style? Would it be appropriate to simply cite the name of the article and the page numbers from the photocopied handouts he gave us? He told us not to worry, that a fifteen page final would be sufficient for an A, in as many words. (He wasn’t joking; I wrote fourteen pages and received an A-. If I’d been aware that he wasn’t making a generalization, I would’ve found something to put in that last page.)

Speaking to our program director again, we were told that this is actually fairly common. Except for the big universities like Todai (Tokyo University), where the major corporations and even the government scouts for new hires, college in Japan is “hard to get in, easy to get out.”

As a New Englander, I thought I understood college application stress. (I hear New England is infamous for this; being from there, I always assumed that’s just how college admissions went.) I had no idea. The system here relies entirely on a single test taken by prospective students. All through high school, students study hard, not because an interviewer will ask why they got a D- in physics and give then a chance to explain what they learned from having nearly bombed a class and why it won’t happen again, but because it will be on The Test.

“Pass on four, fail on five,” goes another idiom. Students who go to cram school and sleep only four hours a night will pass their entrance exams; those who indulge in an extra hour will not.

The campus becomes deadly quiet during examination week. This is a big deal, and the high school seniors are not to be disturbed; all of our classes are either cancelled or relocated to the library building on the far side of campus, and we’re directed to go around, not through.

Once you’re in, you’re in. Most students attend most classes most of the time, but for a handful to be missing on any given day is routine, and the professor never seems to mind. (Though if you are showing up today, he wanted you to at least do so on time.)

Another study abroad staff member explained to us that companies will really want to know about the clubs students participated in, their involvement in on campus activities and that they at least passed their classes, and it was much more common to see the flamenco or hip hop teams dancing, the English club talking excitedly together, and the (American) football team practicing than students studying quietly in the library.

It’s not as though these things don’t happen in American universities, but unlike professors I’ve had at home, the pop culture professor didn’t even seem to mind that not everybody showed up. Then again, maybe my home university is the outlier here; I can’t make sweeping generalizations of either the American or Japanese higher education system, having only attended one college in each location. (I don’t want to stand here and say “all Japanese colleges are X and all American colleges are Y.”)

What would Z look like? Biased as I am towards the American model (or, at least, the University I Attend There model), I don’t know. I like what I have at home: the coursework is more vigorous, discussions are deeper. However, I know some of my fellow (American) students enjoyed the model of the University We Studied At Here; they liked having little readings and almost no homework. Some admitted to being here more-or-less on vacation. (That is a topic for another time.)

Maybe American universities should offer more Underwater Basket Weaving courses, for fun. A class like my pop culture classes, with light reading and only a few, easy assignments: less than a survey course or introduction, something students can take for fewer credits than usual for the sake of pure curiosity (which is how most of the overseas students ended up taking an introduction to anthropology and Japanese pop culture in the first place).

Practical? No, probably not. However, if there was one piece of the university I study at here in Japan that I could bring home with me, it would be classes like Japanese Pop Culture. Not to replace the other courses, but to be presented alongside of them as enrichment.

(Maybe undergrads don’t need to do a hundred pages of reading a week to get a basic idea and decide whether or not we want to continue this line of study.)

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